T:SCC 2:3 "The Mousetrap"

[hazelk]

Well that was tight. Fast and even funny in parts and the George Lazlo “Tarzan and the Tiger” B movie has a fake IMBD page. At least I hope it’s fake but either way showing it in the first act meant John would recognise Lazlo as the walking dead, ergo metal and know when to run in the third.

Cromartie seems to have spent his disembodied years learning something of human weaknesses. He’s learnt that humans are one another’s weaknesses, he’s learnt not to kill them wantonly, no bullet for Ellison no bomb for Michelle. He let her get to the phone to call Charlie because he knew she would pass any test he couldn’t by pure mimicry. If Charlie hadn’t called Sarah, would he just have left her there for the next time? She might have lived. I liked her, she was terrified but still able to walk, still able to tell Sarah that everyone would die. I liked that very quick scene during the opening montage where Charlie looked at her after wiping the windows and she wouldn’t smile at first. I liked how he fell apart and she was stronger than he was really. The women on this show are tough.

Samson and Delilah was all fire, The Mousetrap all water. Water proved a Terminator’s weakness for the second time, after short circuiting bad!Cameron in the premiere it sunk Cromartie in this one. The T1001, Weaver, is more fluid by nature and seems to find water her element. Her office is shot like an aquarium, her clothes are aquamarine and she sips ostentatiously at a glass of the wet stuff while interviewing Ellison.

The New York Times had an article on the show opposing faith and science and placing faith on the side of the angels. I think that’s a massive oversimplification even without the lazy conflation of science and technology that people always seem to make on TV (I’m looking at you Doug Petrie on the Buffy S4 commentary). One of the many things I liked in S1 was the depiction of Andy Goode as genuinely curiosity driven and genuinely sympathetic, with Skynet more the product of his scientific curiosity getting into bed with the military-industrial complex and giving baby a gun. Sarah in the movies had a big rant about scientists and their wombless creativity but show Sarah narrows it down to Oppenheimer and her son was hardly raised Amish. As for faith, both Cameron and Weaver seem drawn to Christian symbolism but Sarah herself is perfectly human without being programmed that way and the man of most faith may be the greatest betrayer. Does Ellison think he can play double agent with Weaver or is it that his beliefs give him some kind of dangerous fascination with the coming Armageddon?

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Buffy used religious tropes as well

Oh, absolutely. (Hell, they did the pietà at least twice - both times with vampires in Jesus' place.)

the sacrificial god/hero thing pre-dates the New Testament

Arguably, most Bible stories are based on older religious tropes (the NT certainly is). All of the "great" religions, after all, started more as descriptions than prescriptions; it all goes back to human experience being attributed to divine beings - subsequently subverted into divine beings made models for mere mortal humans. Skynet is obviously the Antichrist of the story; what is Future!John Connor? Father, son, holy ghost? What happens when his followers lose faith in him and build their own temple?

...sorry. I'm taking a course in History of Ideas right now which deals a lot with questions like these, and John's Revelation is on the syllabus. T:SCC is fitting in a little too well. I ramble.

Getting back to the subject, there's certainly two very different approaches to the future here. Buffy freed herself from all prophecies in "Prophecy Girl" and was free to forge her own path. The Terminatorverse is all prophecy and predestination. Buffy, therefore, first and foremost needs Faith... sorry, faith in herself; the T:SCC characters ignore the very obvious signs of what's (inevitably?) to come at their own risk. If you don't believe in the apocalypse, that's just fine with Skynet.