The No Evil Killer 2008-11-08
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
As much as fans eventually hated it, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines [Blu-ray] is lights years ahead of this tedious show. You might end up wondering how the timeline in this show can exist considering the story of T3, but if you consider that this was Skynet's fourth attempt at killing John Connor AFTER the TX failed then it would create a tangent timeline in which the events of T3 would never happen.
The show doesn't even attempt to explain this to us, however. I hate exposition as much as the next viewer, but TSCC has no sense of time, character or importance of event. Nothing is clearly presented to the audience and it's hard to keep with the barely interesting story. It's bad writing, plain and simple. And the constant in-jokes (a robot called Cameron, a character called William Wisher) are another sign of lazy writing which leads me to believe that the show is written by fanboys instead of qualified writers. Even this I could turn a blind eye to if they stayed true to the original story, but they tamper with too much of James Cameron's history. For example; Kyle Reese says he grew up after the nuclear war in The Terminator [Blu-ray], but here we see him and his previously unmentioned brother playing baseball on Judgment Day (now moved to 2011). And why didn't Skynet send back another T1000 instead of the old T800? It's not model 101 this time since Arnie wouldn't embarrass himself with trash like this, but it would have made sense to send a mimetic poly-alloy instead of the metal endo-skeleton surrounded by living tissue.
However, doing it that way might have ended the show on day one, and the folks at the WB need to s-t-r-e-t-c-h this junk out as far as possible.
Lena Headey is visually similar to Linda Hamilton, but I never liked the direction they took the character in Terminator 2: Judgment Day [Blu-ray], where she becomes hardcore warrior (almost a human terminator herself) who narrates every scene with a pointless and pretentious voice-over. There's very little to like about her in this show, mostly because she never displays any kind of affection for anyone around her, even her son.
Summer Glau is the only reason for watching this. Any scene that does not feature her threatens to kill the series dead on the spot. Some of this stuff is really painful, especially the Dr. Silberman plot. Not only is it incredibly disrespectful to what James Cameron had created, but they didn't even get Earl Boen back. Instead they got someone who looks and acts nothing like him. It feels like a totally different person and you can tell that he's only in there to stretch the lumbering story out further. Even composer Bear McReary seems frightened of using Brad Fiedel's iconic Terminator theme (and, let's be honest, it was the only noteworthy theme in Feidel's lackluster career). The score for the show is instead made up of noises and sound effects with the slightest of themes repeated in each episode with no variation. Plus, the existence of the Terminators after the destruction of Cyberdyne is still not clearly explained either.
I know a lot of shows struggle during their first season, maybe this is why the network gave TSCC the benefit of the doubt and ordered a full second season. But this nine episode Blu Ray is only worth the money if your a serious fan, and even then you're likely to be disappointed.
The Blu Ray features a 1.78:1 1080p picture that doesn't impress a helluva lot and an adequate sound design with lots of extras I couldn't care less about.
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