While I'm Thinking About It

While I'm Thinking About It

"Your son is a hero in the future." "I don't have a son." "I know. That's why I'm here."

I'm sort of what one might consider a moderate fan of the Terminator. I've seen all three movies, once each. I've spent some time thinking about the time travel elements. But that's about it. Never played the games, bought the action figures, or read the books and comics. But I know they exist, so that's something. And now Fox has a new show, "The Sarah Connor Chronicles", which premiered Sunday night.

A Terminator without quite as much bloody violence as the movies? Maybe I'll give it a shot. Oh, and it's got Summer Glau? River Tam of the legendary Firefly saga?

Sign me up.

First episode wasn't bad. It had everything you would expect from toned-down for Fox broadcast standards, including that standard of Terminator movies, the random, gratuitous naked time travel. I liked the twist at the end, where the use that time travel to skip forward from sometime shortly after T2 to the present day. Not only does it let us have teen John in the present, but it completely screws up the timeline of the movies.

It's far from perfect, though. The guy they've got playing the T-800 reminds me more of Bruce Campbell than Arnold. And, frankly, I'm not sure there's enough raw material in the Terminator storytelling engine to really support a weekly series. "Run from the evil Terminator, try to destroy Cyberdine, and wish the good Terminator was human" feels like it'll get real old real fast. But I'm willing to give the next episode a shot.