With 18.3 million viewers for its first episode Sunday, January 13 and 10 million more the next night, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is already looking like the biggest new show on TV this winter. Debuting right after a highly rated NFL game and benefiting from the lack of new scripted shows certainly helped to pump up the show’s ratings, but those aren’t the only reasons viewers should tune in.
Headey, Glau, Dekker lead cast
Terminator stars 300’s Lena Headey as the titular Sarah Connor, replacing the films’ Linda Hamilton. Headey is spot-on as the no-nonsense, anything-for-her-son-and-the-future warrior that Hamilton portrayed so effectively on film. Sarah Connor’s mythos as a hard-living, butt-kicking commando is such that the opening scene of the series, showing her engaged to a regular guy and living a calm, suburban life, seems jarringly out of place.
The easy life doesn’t last, typically. As in Terminator 2, a pair of the cyborgs are sent back in time – one to kill Sarah’s son, John Connor (played by Heroes and 7th Heaven alum Thomas Dekker), who’s destined to lead the future resistance against the machines, and one to protect him. Instead of hulking Arnold Schwarzenegger, the “good” Terminator is played by the wispy Summer Glau, of Firefly fame. Despite being about a third of the governor’s weight, Glau icily handles the action sequences well, her slight figure making the scenes appear all the more impressive.
It would also appear that Glau’s Terminator has slightly different programming than the models fans are familiar with. Her eyes glow blue instead of red, and she shows more emotion at times, bordering on genuine warmth. This provides an interesting twist to the “cold, killing machine” mentality that previous Terminators have been known for – though there’s still plenty of that, as well, and Glau plays both aspects of that personality eerily well.
Dekker’s John Connor is a little more uneven, at least this far in the series. He’s more the petulant, angry child played by Edward Furlong in Terminator 2 than the reluctant, yet ultimately heroic character Nick Stahl portrayed in Terminator 3. It’s to be understood, though, considering the character’s age (15) and turbulent background. It also gives the show’s creators plenty of room to move the character forward, hopefully culminating in the hero of the resistance John will ultimately become that’s only been hinted at in the movies.
For fans of the Terminator series, or anyone looking for a fresh new action series in this winter of re-runs and reality shows, The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a breath of (admittedly violent) fresh air. The first three episodes show intriguing promise, even if the storyline (another plot by the Connors to destroy Skynet) is reused from the second movie. Still, with the freedom of television and the possibility of long-term storylines, the show has a lot of room to roam from this basic premise and keep viewers hooked for a while.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles airs Monday nights at 9/8 Central on Fox.
