TERMINATOR show (spoilers)

[Steve B]

And of course the best thing about last nights episode:  "Person getting hit out of nowhere by a car"

Does it really have the same element of surprise after you've seen it 10 times in two hours and can see to coming from a mile away?

Was that a "Fight Club" reference in there?  When John was in his mom's old boyfriend's (fiancee? step dad?) house he looked at the mail and the address was "Paper Street".

[sean]

I kinda like the show so far.  I think it's almost entirely Glau.  And robots.  And the dude from OZ and 30 ROCK.

Oh and the DUH DUH DUH DUUUUH DUN music.

That is a list of both things which will keep me watching and things which make me think the show should be better.

Especially Dean Winters (who looked uncannily like Robert Patrick in the first ep, I thought).  Who I'm hoping gets to be a Terminator some how before it's over.

[LpF]

Especially Dean Winters (who looked uncannily like Robert Patrick in the first ep, I thought).

Looked and sounded (minus the southern accent), I thought.  

Who I'm hoping gets to be a Terminator some how before it's over.

I think if they bring in a T-1000, he should be the default form it takes in order to get close to Sarah/John.

[Raikus]

Was that a "Fight Club" reference in there?  When John was in his mom's old boyfriend's (fiancee? step dad?) house he looked at the mail and the address was "Paper Street".

There's been a couple of pop culture references. The address for the computer store was "1337." Even if the characters jumped to the present time, it's glad to know the writers are still writing for 1999.

[Cuppy]

Was that a "Fight Club" reference in there?  When John was in his mom's old boyfriend's (fiancee? step dad?) house he looked at the mail and the address was "Paper Street".

There's been a couple of pop culture references. The address for the computer store was "1337." Even if the characters jumped to the present time, it's glad to know the writers are still writing for 1999.

That was also the safety deposit box number.

[sean]

I wasn't sure after the first episode but I really liked the second one.  I'm worried though.  It's hard enough to keep the "time travel" premise solid for a movie or two.  I'm not sure you could sustain a whole series on it and not have it fall apart on itself.

That's the opposite problem I had; I thought the show could easily be a 'Dr. Who' type of thing, where they time travel all over and fight crazy robots in a variety of settings.  I mean, the Connors and their pet robot travel through time pursued by a few other crazy robots (including one without a head), fighting Skynet -- or, perhaps, extending it so that they're fighting any machine-based totalitarian state which they come upon.  I'd watch that.

Instead, they used time travel to get the characters caught up to the present day without (ICK!) aging, and then now it looks like they're just going to be fighting in 2007.  If they ever use the time machine again, I bet it will only be to jump to the next time that Skynet incarnates, after they defeat Skynet at the end of this season (I assume).

I just think the show is going in the wrong direction, ie: straight into the ground.

I like Donnacha's idea of stupid robot overlords, though.

[JCEFalconi]

So maybe it's not smart enough to put a gun back in time wrapped in organic material.

 If Skynet's a defense systems computer, it must know about weapons technology and the such, enough to arm a soldier sent to a particular mission.

  I think the explanation is that it was cooler for James Cameron to have this, basically, unstoppable and relentless zombie-robot coldly hunting humans with nothing but its strentgth and wits. After all what inspired the franchise was just a cool image (terminator walking out of fire unscathed), Terminator seems to be pretty much about cool images inserted into a somewhat coherent story.

 But I agree that the show must come up with  some sort of logic to explain why they don't smuggle a gun inside their toraxic cage. I say the ammo blows up if it time travels.
 

Maybe the machines just sent back a naked terminator because it would fit in better without a big pulse rifle, and said terminator was too dumb to understand that (which is why he asks for a pulse rifle in the gun shop).That'd clear up how many problems?

 I like that idea, because it opens up the possibility for better smarter models, I remember the T-1000 was pretty smart, he didn't make a lot of mistakes.

[Donnacha]

I like that idea, because it opens up the possibility for better smarter models, I remember the T-1000 was pretty smart, he didn't make a lot of mistakes.

Yet, while in the shape of a cop, didn't use "fellow" cops to help him. He could've had John apprehended at the Galleria and killed him at his leisure.

[JCEFalconi]

I like that idea, because it opens up the possibility for better smarter models, I remember the T-1000 was pretty smart, he didn't make a lot of mistakes.

Yet, while in the shape of a cop, didn't use "fellow" cops to help him. He could've had John apprehended at the Galleria and killed him at his leisure.

 
 Well, yeah, they are not very good lateral thinkers, they are basically very good killers. The terminator could've made a 1 year plan to inflitrate Connor's life  to choose the perfect moment to kill him. Although maybe that movie wouldn't have been that exciting.

[Donnacha]

Well, yeah, they are not very good lateral thinkers, they are basically very good killers.

And if they're not very good lateral thinkers, they probably wouldn't think to send a raygun wrapped in lunchmeat back in time...

[sean]

I like that idea, because it opens up the possibility for better smarter models, I remember the T-1000 was pretty smart, he didn't make a lot of mistakes.

I always thought it was funny that, once Sarah and John left Los Angeles, the T1000's plan seemed to be to just drive around waiting for something to happen.

I guess the joke's on me, though, since that plan *did* work (more or less).

Think about Skynet: it either invents time travel or develops the invention or whatever, but by the time the machine is built, it is used once before the humans destroy it... then it builds another machine, and the same thing happens!  (We can guess that there may have been other machines destroyed before they were even completed.)  It does seem as if strategy wasn't programmed into the computer so well, or else it might think to build the time machine somewhere the humans couldn't get to.

[JCEFalconi]

Well, yeah, they are not very good lateral thinkers, they are basically very good killers.

And if they're not very good lateral thinkers, they probably wouldn't think to send a raygun wrapped in lunchmeat back in time...

 But then you're assuming that Skynet has the same thinking capacity or scope in planning as a Terminator. I don't think it's really lateral thinking for Skynet to go from "only things wrapped in living tissue can travel through time" to "let's put a raygun inside living tissue".  But yeah, maybe Skynet is just a hopped up terminator, it really is pretty blunt when planning the missions.

 I always thought it was funny that, once Sarah and John left Los Angeles, the T1000's plan seemed to be to just drive around waiting for something to happen.

Well that's the terminators version of "waiting in the tall grass" I guess...

 OK, terminators are dumb I give!

[Donnacha]

Oh, we're such nerds.

[JCEFalconi]

I'm so lonely

[Neri]

Well, yeah, they are not very good lateral thinkers, they are basically very good killers.

And if they're not very good lateral thinkers, they probably wouldn't think to send a raygun wrapped in lunchmeat back in time...

I don't think they have lunchmeat in the future.