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.