Dev Imperium

I’ve watched the first two episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and while I have enjoyed parts of the show I just can’t justify watching it. I have two serious issues with the show:

Warning there are some spoilers for the first two episodes.

Time Travel: while the original “Terminator” started with time travel it was treated as a near unique event (only done twice — the Terminator and Kyle Reece). But in the series, there are six time travel incidents: Good Terminator, Bad Terminator, the scientist, the bank jump, the freedom fighters, and Bad Terminator 2. This strikes me as the worst kind of Rick Berman plot that culminated in the “Temporal Cold War” that was the initial plot of “Star Trek: Enterprise”. This is just a sign of desperate writers that don’t have a good plot and have to rely on attracting a sci-fi audience with gimics.

Inconsistency: The show doesn’t even follow the time travel rules faithfully — even at the same time the rules are quoted. Specifically, nothing artificial can travel through time (unless wrapped in organic mater). At the Bank Jump, just as the protagonists are about to make their time travel, Sarah fires plasma weapon (?) at Bad Terminator destroying its skin and blowing of its head. At first I nodded in approval thinking that this was how SkyNet gets its start — with the technology from this destroyed Bad Terminator — but no. The damaged bad Terminator is transported to the future with the protagonists — when it should have been eliminated just like the plasma weapon and the protagonists clothes.

I cannot forgive these failures because allowing them to continue just drags down the quality of future shows. Instapundit seems to enjoy the show — and I agree about Summer Glau’s acting skill and spookiness, but it isn’t enough for me.