Terminator:SCC "What He Beheld"

[hazelk]

Fantasy series often work by having an entry point character, someone unfamiliar with the brave new world who the audience can explore it with. A Dorothy, a Lucy, a Harry Potter. Agent James Ellison seems an unlikely Dorothy but then this isn’t Dorothy’s story, this isn’t Oz where everything you wished for is waiting for you back home. Neither is it Lucy Pevensie’s reworking of the resurrection and the life, all our sins forgiven. This is Judgment Day. The day our Lord returns in fire and no human stories can keep him at bay.

The Johnny Cash song is jarring at first, so unlike the usual background music at first you think it’s meant to be playing on the car radios except that the sound balance is all wrong. It throws you out, what’s with the music video? But it keeps coming, relentless, music for terminators and when it ends sparing Agent Ellison alone of all his people then you see. Then you believe.

There are practical reasons for Cromartie not to have killed Ellison. To leave a suspect for the massacre in order to cover his tracks or because he recognizes him as the current holder of the Sarah Connor files and calculates him to be more use dead than alive. But Agent Ellison is an honourable man, a smart man and I think he’s not going to be able to avoid the possibility that the reason he was spared because he has a personal role to play in activating Skynet/or ensuring its ultimate victory.

Why did Ellison go along with the SWAT raid? He knew by then that he was dealing with something more than the standard human monster, something Book of Revelations bad. He could quote the words, I suppose, but he hadn’t beheld and until then the very familiarity of those words was a last remaining defense against the truth. He thought as Dixon did that he might be able to help, he brought them there and their blood is on his hands now. I think of all the characters James Ellison is the person I envy least at this point.



It didn’t feel like a finale, more like an opener in some ways, character introductions and world building. This makes sense given the production history, it wasn’t written as an ending but as an inducement for a new beginning but it works with the in story theme of masked identities too. The pilot showed us the masks. The finale end with Cameron’s mask being (presumably) burned away and we get to see Sarah, John and Derek at their most human and ordinary.

I don’t trust Derek. I sympathsise with him, he’s lost more than any of them, a world and a brother (and with what he now knows he’d have reason to blame John Connor for ordering Kyle to his death knowing that’s what would happen). I don’t trust him doing the male bonding thing with John, subtly (possibly unintentionally) dismissing Sarah for not being a killer for not remembering the birthday. And he covered the little girl’s eyes but left Sarah to explain things to her. This was probably a good thing under the circumstances but I don't think it even occurred to him.

Dirty Dan from Eastenders was pretty good as the fake Sarkassian, shades of The Limey, but how much does the real Sarkassian know and who was the person who came to buy the Turk before Sarah?

Who or what is the Haitian girl, is she going to be important too?

Comments

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I must have replayed the Johnny Cash scene at least half a dozen times. :-) I got the impression that Ellison was confident, with all the firepower he had available, that even a killer robot from the future would be overwhelmed. He was wrong. And yes, I suspect his face appears in Skynet's databanks... or maybe Cromartie just thinks he'll lead him to the Connors.

It was definitely the sort of ending that makes you really hope that Fox does renew the series for a second season... if only to see whether the explosion really did do more than muss Cameron's hair and burn off her clothing.

Who is more human - Derek or Cameron? The answer is getting less and less clear-cut.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I think he is or has convinced himself he may be by that stage but he seemed almost diffident when the woman FBI agent suggested it. Great actor and that Johnny Cash scene is very addicitive.

I keep reading reports that they're going to renew but Fox won't admit it yet which is kind of nerve wracking. If it does get renewed though I refuse to put up the Virgin 1 transmission, the ad breaks (and the ads) are driving me nuts.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

that Johnny Cash scene is very addictive

You know what? It actually seems more like a vid of the show than a genuine in-continuity scene from it...

I've seen the episodes but I'm waiting for the DVD set to come out before I get heavily into meta/review/whatever, assuming I do.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I am having a hard time deciding how to feel about Derek at this point. On the one hand, his surprise birthday gift to John was beyond touching, but what he put that little girl through makes him hardly different than a Terminator. But then, he comes from a world where little girls experience things they shouldn't every day.

This show has been surprising on a number of levels. I hope to see more this fall.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't trust Derek but he is sympathetic and he might even be right. Definitely hope they renew.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

The Johnny Cash song is jarring at first, so unlike the usual background music at first you think it’s meant to be playing on the car radios except that the sound balance is all wrong.

I thought the song fit perfectly, and it's one of the most powerful scenes I've seen on TV in quite some time. "The Man Comes Around" (the last song Cash wrote, AFAIK) was also used during the opening credits of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. It's interesting that it's a song not just about apocalypse but about salvation (or rapture) as well - the separation of the righteous from the doomed (and I should probably point out that I'm not exactly a believer, but hey, it's sci-fi). "There will be a golden ladder reaching down", "Will you partake of that last offered cup", "the father hen will call his chickens home". And of course, it's THE MAN who comes around while we watch the MACHINE killing, adding yet more ambiguity (viz Derek, and how bittersweet wasn't that Reese family reunion?) to a season that's dedicated itself to blurring that line. And there's Agent Ellison, the man who over the cause of the season has rediscovered his faith, and has now been spared... because he's righteous, or because this particular MAN is wicked? Can you truly change the future - T3 said you couldn't, but then again they skipped that one in the series - and if so, at what cost? "Til Armageddon, no salaam, no shalom." A chicken race towards doomsday, with Sarah or Future!John or Skynet or whoever as "father hen".

(Having watched season 1 of BSG now, I can definitely see similarities. Man built the Cylons, man built the terminators, both in his own image. They look like us now. Man kills his fellow man. Man worships that which created him, that which he's created. Sometimes they go bad. No one knows why.)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely to the song and the jarringness of when it first comes on is all part of the effect. Also not a believer - God is much scarier than robots - so the inverted rapture has a painful rightness to it. That transition from the end of the Cash song into the standard Terminator theme so chilling about the futility of human resistance.