Topic: The Sarah Connors Chronicles

[Todd]

Wow, is that series ever crap. I suspected it would be bad when they announced it, but I had no idea how bad. Even though it is bad I'll probably end up watching the rest of the season on my DVR out of morbid curiosity.

The sins this series commits

1. Destroys cannon!

Not that I think T3 is the greatest movie ever made, but this series stomps all over it. This series happens in between T2 and T3. Which sounds fine at first blush since quite a bit of time passed between the 2 movies. However, huge problems arise. First in T3 Sarah Connor dies of cancer in 97, the show starts off in 99. Oops. Then there is the whole thing about John Connor thinking they stopped Judgment Day and was surprised to see the Terminators coming back to protect and kill him. So obviously he hasn't seen one since the end of T2. Oops again, but an understandable oops. Next, the new Judgment day happens in 2004, but in the show they Time Travel to 2007! 3 years after it, and guess what! It hasn't happened yet, and they even say it happens in 2011. That is a seven year change for no apparent reason. Oops again.

2. The return of the whiny John Connor

Of all things they decided to keep from T3 it had to be the most annoying part, the whiny baby John Connor.

3. The Terminators

I loved Summer Glau in Firefly, but she has trouble passing for a skinny as a rail badass terminator. Really Christina Loken was only a bit better in T3, plus  they are probably trying to get loyal Firefly fans to tune in. The terminator sent to kill John is probably the worst shot ever. lol The way they bring that Terminator back in 2007 is a cringe worthy plot twist. Bad, bad, bad. I must say though, it was amusing to see a big bad man (a terminator in disguise) running away from Summer.

4. The one liners.

This was the same sin that was committed in T3, bad one liners. T1 and T2 were chock full of one liners, it is a staple of the series, and the first 2 movies did it well. The ones they are putting in the show make you flinch. Trying to hard here.

5. The story.

The story so far is just bad. In the first episode you learn that they've been sending people back to the past, one to 1963 to engineer a weapon and the time machine that brings everybody to 2007. Then you learn that they've been sending back resistance fighters to the past, and Skynet has been sending Terminators back to kill them. Terminators that don't know what John Connor looks like. *facepalm*

"Class dismissed."

[Dana]

I wasn't impressed either.

[Geoff]

Yeah...I mentioned to a friend that 35 million people had watched the premiere.  He assured me that 34,999,996 of those people hated it, and of the 4 that didn't, 3 slept through the first 56 mintues of the show and woke up just in time to see the "really big boom" at the end.

It's always a terrible shame when TV shows kill movies.  Not that the Terminator movies were particularly good, you understand.  The first one was good.  The second was only palatable because there is nothing, and I repeat nothing sexier than Linda Hamilton reloading a pump-action shotgun with one very well-muscled jerk of her arm.  The third was special effects glom-fest that I didn't even make it past the first 20 minutes of.

Come to think of it, everything other than the aforementioned shotgun reload is fluff.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

[MalorGradan]

Tv shows screwing aroiund with canon? That never happens!

*coughEnterprisecough*

[Todd]

All of the Star Trek TV shows and movies destroyed canon, sometimes even within the same series. Star Trek is a perfect example of a series that never cared about canon until it was too late and everything was already f---ed up.

[Geoff]

Fairway hint, here Toddo....no-one but the most dedicated uber-geeks gives a **** about canon.  I don't care about it, and I'm a huge Star Trek fan.  I enjoy a good story and don't really worry if timelines don't match up between episodes or series.  That's what the creators count on; that the story will be engrossing enough and the actors believable enough that little things like "continuity" are overlooked.  I loved Next Gen and Voyager, silliness and incongruities be damned.  It was just fun TV.

[Todd]

Geoff, that is true to a point. I think most fans care that a series has timeline that doesn't get contradicted every other week, but just as long as the series remains engrossing and the canon isn't too badly messed with people can forgive the changes. However, you can't deny that Star Trek has hurt itself because of the way it treats it's canon. Maybe if the last 2 Next Generation movies had been halfway decent and Enterprise had been embraced by the fans nobody would be rumbling about how Star Trek canon has been left in shambles. Things didn't work out like that though.

Honestly though, I am not a big Star Trek fan. I am generally not one to worry to much about canon, but changes for the sake of change that make no real sense do kind of irk me. It just ruins the story for me.

[MalorGradan]

I will have to admit that I am an uber Star Trek geek who is anal about canon. Not that it does me any good. *sigh* What bothers me most is how casually sci-fi writers/producers/whatever seem to sacrifice canon in the name of "creativity." i.e. "hey, let's make an episode about Romulans with cloaking devices in the 22nd Century!" "But it was established in [x episode] that they didn't develop them until much later." "So what? It's a good story!" "Okay, run with it." The TNG movies and Enterprise are cases in point, especially the latter. It had great potential, but I think that making good TV at the expense of 30 years worth of established canon was a thoroughly bad idea. Taken on its own merits Enterprise is a good show, but within the larger Trek sphere it's simply jarring.

I agree that the story is important; heck, you won't get any viewers without it. I think there can be a good balance between making a compelling story and maintaining some continuity with established stories. But what's the point of trying to maintain a consistent storyline when things can be wantonly thrown out the window the very next week? For me, Star Trek isn't just a collection of independent, self-contained episodes, but a very complex and detailed sci-fi saga that spans centuries. I felt the same way about The Phantom Menace; part of the originall trilogy's charm, I think, was the mystical Force, but in Episode I all of a sudden we now have a quasi-scientific basis for the Force (midichlorians)? It ruined the concept.  Add in all the new stuff about Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Anakin (heck, in Star Wars [I never call it "A New Hope"] Obi-Wan says "I don't recall ever owning a droid," but even if he never actually owned R2D2 you think he'd remember the little blue guy from all those earlier adventures! Oops, Lucas. And how, exactly, did he serve Bail Organa during the Clone Wars? Was that ever established in the prequels?).  It just became an absolute mess. One can, I think, safely ignore anything presented in Episodes I-III and still enjoy IV-VI (or, for that matter, enjoy I-III on their own merits), but for those of us who want a consistent, detailed storyline and stupidly bought into all the Episode I hype, it's dissatisfying in the least. And what really sucks is that for many people who didn't grow up with the original trilogy (and I am speaking as the guy who owned the first movie on LaserDisc in the mid 80s and watched it at least 100 times as a kid) the new prequels are the standard. They've never encountered IV-VI without I-III; they have a longer and more complicated story, but they also have all the new mumbo-jumbo to deal with. They probably think Luke Skywalker always had a huge midichlorian count. *sigh*

Anyway that's enough out of me.

[Jianna]

It's all about continuity...

For some people, the lack thereof is like fingernails on a blackboard.

*is one of those people*

[MalorGradan]

It's all about continuity...

For some people, the lack thereof is like fingernails on a blackboard.

*is one of those people*

*is too* Amen!

[Archelous]

Agreed with the first two.

The only real notable exception I have from canon in general is the Smallville series, except the creators have stated since the beginning it's not supposed to be directly alike to the comics/tv shows/movies.

As for TSCC...

I agree with Todd on 3 100%, and most of his points in general as well. I wasn't impressed at all..

But what can you expect, with the WGA Strike still on, they're getting desperate. In comparison to reality tv, I'll watch TSCC if I'm desperate, or pop in a TVDVD like Smallville, Supernatural, House or 24.

[JamesReed]

>> I didn't have to watch the show to think in my head that it was going to be a piece of crap. >> i only want to see a sarah connor played by the same actress who played sarah connor. So if its not her then its not her. just like there can be no Ripely with out Weaver or there is no spider man with out tobey maguire, no Jean luc pecard with out Patrick Stewart etc etc etc. If you cast some some else to play a character that has already been associated with another actor i will automatically think its a crappy movie.

[Todd]

Linda Hamilton is probably a little old to be playing the part right now. Especially since they had the whole "Time travel into the future" ****. The series did get better as the season went on, but it was still nothing special.

I am happy the next Spider Man won't have Tobey McGuire as Spider Man. Spider Man III was such a piece of **** it really does need a breath of fresh air. Hopefully the replace Kirsten Dunst as well. She was never a good choice for Mary Jane.

[JamesReed]

>> i Linda Hamilton is Sarah Connor accept no substitutes.

[Archelous]

Linda Hamilton is probably a little old to be playing the part right now. Especially since they had the whole "Time travel into the future" ****. The series did get better as the season went on, but it was still nothing special.

I am happy the next Spider Man won't have Tobey McGuire as Spider Man. Spider Man III was such a piece of **** it really does need a breath of fresh air. Hopefully the replace Kirsten Dunst as well. She was never a good choice for Mary Jane.

Did they announce they weren't returning for 4? I liked Tobey in most of them, he has that geekish charm I always attributed to Parker, but I've seen much better casting as of late. I only picture Wolverine as Jackman, Downey Jr. was a perfect cast for Tony Stark, Norton a much better cast than Bana, Brandon Routh was a great cast for Superman (Though I was always rooting for Tom Welling from Smallville), and my favorite to date was Christian Bale as Batman.