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]

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.

Great observation.

And I'm still not sure if the show is playing the very Christian theme straight or just as symbolism, using it the same way Buffy used horror movie tropes. It's certainly getting more pronounced this season, but Charlie throwing the Bible away at the end and the lost lamb Ellison are both pretty strong hints that they're not turning this into Seventh Heaven. Personally, I think it makes sense for a show which, with John Connor in the midst of it, is essentially Jesus: The Missing Years with Mary packing a shotgun and the donkey replaced by a killer robot. Except John seems to have more of a choice in the matter than Jesus did - if the theme of the movies was "this boy will grow up to be THE John Connor", then season 2 of the show seems to ask the question "Well, what if he doesn't want to become THE John Connor?" If so, is he being a selfish brat dooming humanity, or is he just trying to stay human?

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Well, Jesus was also offered several opportunities to just jack it all in, and go and raise a family in the South of France with Mary Magdalene. (*koff*)

And do you know I only realised today what John Connor's initials are? *hangs head in shame*

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

do you know I only realised today what John Connor's initials are? *hangs head in shame

*headdesk*

Thanks for pointing me to that.

Er, while you are busy having epiphanies maybe you (or aycheb) can enlighten me as to how the actions of these latter-day apostles is impacting the future. For example, shouldn't Andy's death have changed the timeline and therefore the existence and presence of Derek and Cameron in 2008? If there is such a thing as a science of time travel, it would seem to me that there would have been a... ripple effect or something. *scuttles away in confusion*

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

It seems that time travel in the Terminatorverse works on the "wherever you go, there you are" principle: ie current events that change future events that will change past events don't change what will have happened in the past, and vice versa. Or something. What with John Connor never having existed if he hadn't sent his own father back in time to knock up his mom, etc.

...Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey...

My brain hurts.

Here's a brave attempt at making sense of it.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I think the timeline in the Terminatorverse is like rubber: you can change it, but it keeps trying to spring back to how it was before. If you stop Skynet from being invented one way, it'll probably get invented some other way.

Other than that, see BGF's quote re: timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly stuff. Thinking about it too hard will hurt your brain. :-)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Like rubber but if it were infinitely elastic there would be no hope. I like to think of it as some configurations being more stable than others, such that after a disruption the tendency is to revert to the original but that alternative equilibria exist and with sufficient disruption the system might fall into one of those and stay there. More specifically Skynet will always find a way to re-birth itself until things change enough for it to be able to consider co-existence as an alternative to annihilation.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Also, considering Skynet's long-standing plan to win by killing John Connor, it/they obviously thinks the future is not completely unchangeable.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Buffy used religious tropes as well but they were less specifically Christian. Buffy as Jesus dying to save the world in the Gift but the sacrificial god/hero thing pre-dates the New Testament. Here you have the entire holy family and in a way it's more blasphemous - this is what Jesus would have been like if he were a real boy (although personally I think it's more about Mary, John is the Dawn in this story).

The other difference from Buffy is that in this story the character's faith or lack of it is important. Willow was just Jewish enough to feel odd about crucifixes and know about stones on graves but that was about it and Riley went to church off screen. In SCC it matters whether they can still believe seeing what they've seen

[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.

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think you are right about the 'wherever you go, there you are' principle. *ponders* Yes. I think that's been consistent through TI & II and the series (I never braved III). I have to set aside my Trek-informed notion of time-travel.

Thanks for that link. *chuckles*

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

Bona fide flex time, huh? ;)

Work being LJ-free, I ended up falling down the Wikipedia rabbit hole as I followed the timeline trail of various verses. I'm afraid the Batman one was the straw that broke my spirit. LOL.