T:SCC 2.09 "Complications"

[hazelk]

The Night Porter
On the Terminator blog the writers of this episode were talking about having wanted to have based it on The Night Porter with the twist that neither of them had ever actually watched the movie. The night porter, the ex-SS man, of Complications is obviously Fischer but whether the version of the movie the writers didn’t watch includes a Charlotte Rampling equivalent, the ex-victim who becomes his lover, and if it does whether that’s intended to be Jesse or Derek is unclear. It’s Derek who’s supposed to have been Fischer’s victim and it’s Derek who knows, as if from experience, that torturing a self-loathing masochist is futile but it’s Jesse who finds both Fischers suspiciously easily and Jesse who gives the self-loather what he ultimately wants. I wondered for a little while if Jesse and Fischer were working together, playing out some sado-masochistic game to its logical conclusion with Derek, funny Derek, as the fall boy. It feels a little over complicated in retrospect but the murkiness about Jesse’s role and Derek’s history all adds to rather than detracts from the story as a whole. Who has power in the torturer/tortured relationship, how easily does one become the other, how do you know what you would do? In the old timeline Fischer became a monster for no reason we know of. He was made an offer and he didn’t refuse. In the new timeline whether by accident or design he most likely still becomes a monster but this time a monster with an origin story. This time when he chooses Corporal Derek Reese to be his subject he won’t be inflicting his own weakness on some random stranger, he’ll be taking revenge.


Sarah dreams
I can’t place the dress. It’s not quite like Dorothy’s or (apart from the colour) the waitress apron she dreamed in the movies or the s1 premiere. It looks very Little House on the Prairie, handmade, handed-me-down, a product of the pre-machine age. Cameron’s is more 1960’s maternity smock, manufactured with perfect make up and shiny hair. The middle dream symbolism is the most obvious, the turtle of her good deed playing into the hands of her enemy – she confesses that one to John (I really like their relationship this episode). But as the good doctor told her, what about the dot she won’t talk about? Why is it Cameron nursing the turtle, making the desert bloom. These turtles are armour plated and cactus flowers like living weapons even before they turn to metal. The Doctor is less welcoming than previously, Sarah’s last visit was followed by his receptionist being killed, maybe he sees her a bad omen. Still he makes her look away from the dreamworld - in this instance maybe her body knew better than her mind and was heading for the basement all along. The three dots lie next to the name “Greenway,” the one they thought they’d dealt with in the nuclear plant episode.


Wanting to believe
Elliosn chooses a side and he doesn’t choose Sarah’s. He was a man of faith who lost it when Cromartie couldn’t be beaten, so Cromartie’s defeat should have been an opportunity to regain what he’d lost. But not from Sarah, faith isn’t part of her programming.

“There’s nothing behind the curtain, this is all there is.”

It’s an atheistic creed and not one he can be satisfied with. Weaver is more human as he knows human, her loses are commensurate with his – a husband not a world. And she saved him, she believes in him, she has an absence of doubt, which not knowing what she is, may look like the faith he once knew.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

She also has a plan. From Ellison's pov, Sarah doesn't, except for "this is all I do" (i.e. try not to be killed by evil robots from the future, be on the defensive). Catherine Weaver, otoh, who has a cause he can understand - lost husband - wants to study the machines in order to fight them more effectively, and she has the means to do so. Were I Ellison, knowing what he knows instead of what the audience knows, I'd think Catherine was the woman to follow, too. (Not to mention Sarah told him to get lost and Catherine has asked him to work for her.)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I don't blame him for choosing what he did and it's in character for many reasons. Some of them bad luck, he caught Sarah at a bad time. If things had turned out otherwise he could have been all over interpreting the wall of bloody writing and better qualified than most of them to do the job. But it still would have been reactive rather than proactive and in the longer term I do think that changing Skynet rather than stopping it is the way to go and to do that they need to understand how it works even if it's a dangerous knowledge.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

On the Terminator blog the writers of this episode were talking about having wanted to have based it on The Night Porter

I haven't seen that one, but I kept thinking of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, filmed with Sigourney "Ripley" Weaver as a formerly helpless political prisoner and Sir Ben "Gandhi" Kingsley as her (possibly) former torturer, which has a very similar plot to this episode (except without the time travel, obviously).

Why is it Cameron nursing the turtle, making the desert bloom.

One possible angle: this is all about self-creation - the psychological creation of a self (Cameron seems to have learned to prefer some types of music to others, John continues to become what he must become, though his humanity makes him fail here), but also in very real terms: it's the wreckage of the first terminator that made Skynet possible, it's the existence of future!John that makes young!John possible - several times over, by now. The three - Sarah, John, the Machine - create each other, destroy each other, turn each other into their opposites. John in the dream is half angel, half victim, born to become a weapon, kept safe by machines to keep the world safe FROM machines. Sarah wakes up with the gun pointed at her mirror image.

Three dots. Three interrogations (Sarah, Ellison, Fischer), where everyone has something to hide. Three terminators... no, wait, two now, right? Right? I hope it's not as simple as Jessie or Derek having been replaced with metal, but... in either case, as you pointed out last week, Cromartie is similar enough to the old T-800 to represent The Terminator, the idea at its purest (unlike the ambiguous Cameron); even in death, he haunts her like he has since she stared into a laser sight in an LA club 17 years earlier. Fittingly, and continuing the theme of Cromartie's death, when they open the grave (three?) days later, it's empty.

...there I go again.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

they open the grave (three?) days later, it's empty.

Have you worked into your analyis the role of the Blessed Virgin Weaver, Holy Mother of Skynet yet? :-)


Remind me: her company logo isn't three dots, is it? (And it's not called Tri-Optimum...)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Zeira Corp but I think she's the whore of Babylon not the virgin (virgin queen maybe, old carroty bess). And if Cromartie is the antichrist risen who's the antifather and the antiholy ghost?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

...and Zeira was a Talmudist known for keeping secrets. He was born in Babylon, funnily enough.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I love this show!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen that one
Makes four of us including the two writers - has anyone seen that movie? I do remember the poster from somewhere.

this is all about self-creation - the psychological creation of a self
Written all through it like Brighton Rock, Fischer created himself this episode too, through the power of retcon and his old self dying. I was thinking how BSG is all about death (rewatching the fourth season) and the whole thing begins with a genocide. Terminator begins with a conception but the TV series has moved on to being more about the birth of consciousness (and a fine story hall of mirrors that becomes).

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

I was thinking how BSG is all about death (rewatching the fourth season) and the whole thing begins with a genocide. Terminator begins with a conception but the TV series has moved on to being more about the birth of consciousness (and a fine story hall of mirrors that becomes)

I have to agree with TSCC being about the birth of consciousness. The contrast with BSG is apt. Previously, I'd only seen parallels between the shows' aims, but now I realise why TSCC doesn't depress me. It is perhaps fatalistic, but not nihilistic.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I am looking forward to the final BSG episodes, the last half season was so permeated with death there's some hope things have got to change. It did seem that Hera and Nicky and even Caprica's pregnancy were being deliberately passed over throughout. Used to move other plots forward but with none of their own, so I have some hope that this means that they will come into play at the end.