Armageddon in Small Doses by Prospero E. Pulma Jr.

Armageddon in Small Doses

What is worse than seeing the future? It is realizing that you cannot completely alter it. Apparently Sarah Connor does not believe in the fatalistic belief that fate is unstoppable as she soldiers on for mankind and her child. In “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) continues to fight to keep her son, John Connor (Thomas Dekker), breathing until the day when he will lead mankind after Skynet reduces it to ragtag bands of survivors and resistance fighters. Hunted by Terminator assassins and the law, they are joined a diminutive machine from the future, Cameron Phillips (Summer Glau), initially to protect John before joining them in preventing Armageddon.

Set between “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” the story begins in a backwater town where Sarah was almost tempted to return to normalcy by wedding her fiancée, Charley Dixon (Dean Winters). But she ditches him, unwittingly saving him, as cyborgs - Cromartie (Owain Yeoman), a Skynet Terminator, and Cameron, sent as John’s new bodyguard - crash into their lives. Escaping into the future, Sarah leads the mission to ultimately stop apocalypse after Cameron informs her that it was merely set back by a few years. Along the way, they have to fight a resurrected Cromartie (Garrett Dillahunt) who resumes hunting John, a second cyborg stockpiling materials for Skynet, and a third assassin Vick Chamberlain (Matt McColm) who liquidates a squad of Resistance fighters, leaving only Derek Resse (Brian Austin Green), Kyle Reese's brother, as the survivor. As if fighting Skynet's death squad is not enough, the trio also have to contend with James Ellison (Richard T. Jones), an FBI agent who probes the murder of Miles Bennett Dyson and whose zealousness to throw Sarah to the calaboose for the scientist's death matches the cyborgs' enthusiasm in assassinating John. There's also a techie named Andy Goode (Brendan Hines) who programs a probable predecessor of Skynet. And when Derek hops on board the team, his intense mistrust of things linked to Skynet sparks tension between him and Cameron, especially when she destroys Vick's body except for his chip.

Stripped of the Pentagon-sized budget of its film predecessors, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” still quite delivers, even if everything seems downsized in the TV version, from Lena Headey playing a prettier and less masculine Sarah Connor to John's new guardian, Cameron Phillips, who can pass as a cheerleader, a very cold one that is, perfect for her role as Connor's close in security. She also tickles fans with her shifting mood and her cluelessness about human nature. John is still his old self, whining about the huge load on his shoulders. Together, they are as normal as any family, with Linda as the stern mother, Cameron as the responsible daughter and John as the son who has a knack for attracting killer visitors from the future, except that they are armed and dangerous. The fight scenes resemble the widely enjoyed man versus machine and machine versus machine smack downs in the “Terminator” franchise, although they are toned down a little bit, like everything else in the series. Viewers will also get to visit the future, one marked by mountains of rubbles and shifting battlegrounds between men and machines. But the “Chronicles” has one fatal flaw: it is too damn short, a victim of the writer's guild strike that aborted a promising season, leaving viewers turning in their sleep wondering if Cameron escaped the car bombing in the last episode because it would have been a waste of eye candy if she emerged as an endoskeleton from the wreckage.

What is worse than seeing the future? It's realizing that something good, enjoyable, worthy to waste your time on will abruptly cease with too many unanswered questions. That's what happened to “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”


-Prospero E Pulma Jr. -