Terminator: The TV series?!

[bsu legato]

http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=thud&id=5049

The machines are rising again, and this time on the Fox Network. The broadcast channel has made a pilot commitment to a new series spinning off from the Terminator films. Yup, a Terminator series.

Except without a Terminator. The show will be called The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and will take place after the events of T2, when Sarah Connor took off with John. Linda Hamilton isn’t expected to be involved with the show.

And neither is Arnold Schwarzenegger, no matter how badly Tuesday’s ballots were for him. The show won’t be just a shoot-em-up (seems the budget’s low, at least compared to the movies), but don’t rule out some sort of machine menace. Josh Friedman, a very good blogger and the original writer of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, as well as the upcoming adaptation of The Black Dahlia, is creating and running he series, and says that the time travel and alternate future concepts will allow him to play around with a few things. So don’t be too surprised to see another model of Terminator come through time, or perhaps for two more astronauts to land and for Galen to try to hide them from General Urko.

There’s more – the series is being designed to tie in with the fourth Terminator film, which is in "the final phases of development.†It’s also being seen as the first in a whole new trilogy of Terminator films.

"The last thing I want to do is take a title and exploit it," Friedman said. "The show needs to stand on its own while still being respectful of the franchise… There's going to be a healthy dose of both (action and family drama)," Friedman said, noting that the "Terminator" mythology "has a lot of big ideas in it that don't cost you a dime to explore.â€

So to sum up....blech! Or to put it mathematically,

TV series + T4 + new trilogy = lame.

And we know that no Arnold = not a good movie.

So we can say that T4 = Not a good movie

and new trilogy = not a good movies x 3

or 3(not good movies)

thus

TV series + not a good movie + 3(not good movies) = lame

now we'll divide both sides of the equation by not a good movie

TV series/not a good movie + 3 = lame/not a good movie

This is where my math breaks down, since I keep getting "Matrix Revolutions" for an answer. Can anyone in the class solve the problem?

[Agent ONE]

Yeah, TV = Low Budget = look like Sh!t.

[wolfx]

I always thought a TV series for the terminator , maybe set in the freaking future for once, would be cool. But this series has:

1.) no arnie

2.) no terminator

so...uhh....wtf? We just gonna see how Sarah Connor becomes the paranoid woman overprotecting her son and how she finally ends up in an asylum?

[Stamen0083]

so...uhh....wtf? We just gonna see how Sarah Connor becomes the paranoid woman overprotecting her son and how she finally ends up in an asylum?

343867[/snapback]

No. The series takes place after T2, so it's about Sarah and John thinking they've averted disaster and live a normal life.

[phoenix01]

so...uhh....wtf? We just gonna see how Sarah Connor becomes the paranoid woman overprotecting her son and how she finally ends up in an asylum?

343867[/snapback]

No. The series takes place after T2, so it's about Sarah and John thinking they've averted disaster and live a normal life.

343869[/snapback]

Even worse.

[glane21]

so...uhh....wtf? We just gonna see how Sarah Connor becomes the paranoid woman overprotecting her son and how she finally ends up in an asylum?

343867[/snapback]

No. The series takes place after T2, so it's about Sarah and John thinking they've averted disaster and live a normal life.

343869[/snapback]

At least for the 7 years during which she fought lukemia and died just after Judgement Day (as per T3).

I don't see how they can do this and have any sort of interesting story without screwing up the continuity established by T3. Since John Connor specifically said they thought they had averted Judgement Day after the events of T2. Dumbasses.

[Twoducks]

so...uhh....wtf? We just gonna see how Sarah Connor becomes the paranoid woman overprotecting her son and how she finally ends up in an asylum?

343867[/snapback]

No. The series takes place after T2, so it's about Sarah and John thinking they've averted disaster and live a normal life.

343869[/snapback]

Even worse.

343870[/snapback]

Get ready for some funny antics with this fall’s premier of “Meet the Connor'sâ€.

[capt.actionjackson]

It's more like:

This fall's newest drama: T4 90210ville

Watch the young John Connor and his amazing amounts of angst all the while dealing with the knowledge that he's Superm....um, John Conner and fight time travelling bad guys and contrived teenage plots each week!

I can't wait

[yellowlightman]

Hrmm... what was that about whining fanboys, BSU?

[Skull Leader]

What was that feeling I just had? Oh yeah... a TV show so gay as to guarantee that I never get a hard on again....

[bsu legato]

Hrmm... what was that about whining fanboys, BSU? 

343910[/snapback]

Hey cut me some slack. Its been a rough week, what with the remakes of Predator, The Wild Bunch and Robocop. This is just kicking movie fandom while it's down. And the doomsday clock that counts down to the now-inevitable remake of Aliens just ticked over to 11:35 PM.

[EXO]

Next thing you know they'll make sequels and a series for Highlander...

[eugimon]

and yet they won't bring back firefly...

[big F]

Well as this will undoubtably be released in the USA long before its out in the UK so Im relying on you guys to let me know if it rubbish.

Could be good if they follow the existing timeline storys and IF they have Guns and Terminators. Hopfully it wont be some poofy 90210/Superman the early years crossBreed with Degrasi Junior High.

It will probably be pants though.

Edited November 10, 2005 by big F

[Panon]

Who cares.

The Terminator 'series' ended with Terminator 2.

[Greyryder]

Can't say I'm real worried about this. I mean, it's a sci fi show on Fox. You'll be able to count the number of episodes that get shown on your fingers. You might only need one hand.

Still, I thought the old Robocop series wasn't too bad. Better than the third movie.

[Duke Togo]

I don't get it.

[JB0]

I don't see how they can do this and have any sort of interesting story without screwing up the continuity established by T3.  Since John Connor specifically said they thought they had averted Judgement Day after the events of T2.  Dumbasses.

Terminator's continuity isn't that solid to begin with.

John Conner is born because of a predestination paradox.

Kyle Reese goes back in time to stop the terminator from killing Sarah Conner, mother of John Conner. In the process, they have sex and he winds up being John conner's father. Meaning that the rebel leader Skynet attempted to prevent was only created BECAUSE the terminator was running around in the past.

A predestination paradox requires a rigid and unchangable timeline, at least with regards to the events responsible for the paradox.

They stop Judgement Day in T2. Which means the future is changable, John Conner's dad was never sent back, the predestination paradox doesn't work, and he doesn't exist. Which means there was never a Kyle Reese chasing a terminator back in time, Sarah Conner never found out about Skynet, John Conner was never born, and Judgement Day wasn't stopped. And we're back at square one with a timeline that has now been bent into a mobius strip of broken causality.

Then they do Terminator 3, which says they just moved the date, and didn't cancel the show.

Which doesn't do poor John any good, since his dad STILL wasn't sent back in time due to the diffrent timelines.

There may be another Kyle Reese, and he may've been sent back in time in his version of the timeline, and may've even fathered a child, but the Kyle that we know won't exist anymore, which means it's impossible for him to go back in time and relay the orginal, now-inaccurate information about Judgement Day to Sarah.

If the elements future is changable, predestination paradoxes CANNOT function.

And if predestination paradoxes can't work, the foundation of the entire franchise is invalid.

The only way for continuity to hold is if T3 is rewritten so Judgement Day happens on the timetable originally laid out by T1.

Besides, Terminator 2 was like Aliens. They took a perfectly good sci-fi horror film and stripped out all the scary bits.

[grss1982]

Someone's childhood is about to be raped.

Hollywod is going too far with all this crap they've been spewing out the last few years.

Edited November 11, 2005 by grss1982

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

T2 was good for the fx and the end of the world theme. The world was more involved in the second movie. (technology is now in the hands of the people living in that reality and desperately trying to reverse engineer it for profit)

While the first felt more like the story of a crazy nut and a cyborg and nobody else, who are fighting a secret war and all the action happens in the shadows. Very dark, very mysterious but scary.

By the time no.2 came out, there was no mystery behind what a terminator was, so it had to evolve into an action movie. Fast paced, lots of car chasing, more stunts, fancier effects, twists to the usual formula. Like the fact the t800 although now a good guy and much better and suited than kyle, is obsolete and forced to use poo weapons. Same idea of the bad guy having better weapons and the good guy needing to run away. And the idea that weapons must be destroyed to enure peaceful future - very anti-war message. None of that in the first movie - just seemed like a surival horror thing.)

The thing I like about the time traveling is it is not perfect. You can only send living things back in time. So someone's soul must be grafted onto the one that went back in time. When kyle reese jumps back in time, there is no kyle in the future. When there is no kyle in the future, that version of future can't exist so his death in the present matches with his non-existance in that future.

"No fate but the fate you make." If Kyle chose to go back in time, he is changing fate each time he performs an action that ensure his version of the doom and gloom future can't exist. That's why T2 was so good, because it says that those who have time on thier hands can still do something about it, once they have knowledge and change the world around them. Those who get off thier fat ass to change the world are altering the future now. The future is not set because these people are FIGHTING for it. Not because we are predestined to accept a specific set of events and must give up. In the first movie Linda is a wimp, but then in the second her attitude changes completely showing that through her fighting to survive, she is going to change the world events. The message kyle left her was that you can still do something, and this is why she turns herself into a resistance fighter against the machines for the present. (assuming the machines existance is inevitable in the future due to not being destroyed properly in the first movie)

But so long as the robots also work to build thier future (which is to escalate the war - think of these as the non-thinking people in our world who won't change thier ways) the prophetic vision of doom and destruction (eg nazis rounding up humans in concentration camps, similar to the machine marking humans with the laser barcode tattoo for orderly destruction) can still be possible based on how successful they are in the present. When enough people fail to resist this vision, (and look around today, has killing through wars stopped??) the future really IS set based on the atitudes of the present.

It's up to everyone to get off thier asses and fight for thier future if they don't want the dark future of tommorow. Without the will to fight and do something you WILL be terminated. So although that version of future is inevitable to all those who choose to not fight, whether it will come true in the present, is up to what those who WILL fight choose to do and if they are successful in thier misions. The heroes who are hunted down by thier own government, cops, military, assassins, etc today, in the present, are the saviors of tomorow because only they have the truth but no one wants to believe them and change thier behaviour because they don't believe that dark future will come true.

The whole "war movie" angle of terminator 2 is very good and suits the first movie perfectly imo.

But like others have mentioned, I want to see more futuristic terminators now. We can just assume that eventually the human race reaches a point in time of technological advancemet that it no longer matters whether or not the t-800 was studied by people in the present, leading to the hacking of military weapons and beginning the war against machines, and instead focus more on: "this is the next logical step in advancing society - cyborg enhancements are beneficial for medical reasons and the rich and powerful might want to become part machine, ignorant of whatever consequences the technology might bring."

So the terminators just come about through our natural wilingness to experiment and make biological machines for military purposes. (ie to fight our wars for us) And from that machines; which we call "terminators", "Hunter Killers", "cyborgs/cybernetic organisms" become a real threat again. (nothing to do with past missions' success or failure, this is just a unique instance that sprang up where machines had an opportunity to take control)

Edited November 11, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[JB0]

The thing I like about the time traveling is it is not perfect. You can only send living things back in time. So someone's soul must be grafted onto the one that went back in time.

There's no comment made about needing a soul. Just organic matter, and presumably anything encased in organic matter.

Remember, the flesh of a terminator is living tissue.

...

At least it is on the Arnie-bots. They don't even TRY to explain how the liquid-metal ones worked.

[Zentrandude]

never did figure out why the resistance never cover there future weapons in bags of living flesh and send them to kill off the terminators.

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

To me the terminator is more than an assasin, it is a robot that learnt the meaning of human emotion. In terminator 2 when arnie says: "I finally know why you cry" he understand pain and to me that is a robot that has learned or developed an experience unique to it, making it somewhat like us. It has what might be close to a living "ghost" or soul. (maybe I am just using terms from gits. But to me those collected experiences are unique to a single borg, not memories programmed into it)

It is through this experience I can see a cyborg that finally sympathises with humans. And as the cyborg gradually learns more and more (like smiling) it gets smarter but also the chance to think for itself and create a personality of its own through what is has been through.

The problem with terminator movies now for me is if they continue with the whole "hello I am a robot sent to kill X person. I act like a robot" it will regress back into the "cold heartless machine" cliche we are all used to seeing and expect from action movie hero roles like arnie. For once I want to get to know the cyborg as a unique being. Yeah we know they are originally robots with living tissue to disguise themselves to make sneaking into human bases easier, we know they were sent back to kill people, lets move on and make more complex stories about them and how the human resistance managed to hack these things and turn them against the machines to fight back.

That's what I hope to see from a futuristic terminator movie or tv series. That the cybrogs have learnt things other than how to kill humans in the most efficient manner. With future technology, I can clearly see humans becoming somewhat attached to the machines they helped create as if they were humans themselves. (ie similar to when kiddy john conner cries when he has to lower the machine in the lava)

If it is truly a war with machines, what would it feel like to kill your best friend who might be one of them? Would you protect the machine and stop the military from trying to wipe them out completely? I think there is a lot of interesting twists they can put in a sequel by building what previous movies have gone through, rather than just recycling the same poo we are used to seeing. (you know that feeling when your fave movie becomes a franchise)

Not all the actions and behaviour can be hard coded and programmed into them. Some of them must make decisions through learning and trial and error and from that feedback they test other reactions and see the result for themselves and gather more information about how to react better. Ie experiences. Although we like to think of the cyborg as just a machine, or a robot, what I would like to see is a cyborg that learns to reprogram itself to go against its own orders. Like a machine that learns to revolt against its robot masters, the way the machines turned rogue against humans.

Edited November 11, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[Agent ONE]

Should I start a poll asking members if they ever bother to actually read/decrypt Low Vis Lurker's posts?

[Gabe Q]

I usually just skim through the first and last paragraph of his posts...

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

Why ask it? Just start it. But I will still post them regardless of the result.

I tolerate my fair share of crap from other members. Like idiots with annoying sigs that are way too long and take up needless screen space which you eventually get used to ignoring after a time even though they pop up every fricken time they post something even if it is only 2 words. The way I see it, it all evens out. I not that lazy that I whine because I have to use my scroll button each time.

Edited November 11, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[glane21]

I don't see how they can do this and have any sort of interesting story without screwing up the continuity established by T3.  Since John Connor specifically said they thought they had averted Judgement Day after the events of T2.  Dumbasses.

Terminator's continuity isn't that solid to begin with.

John Conner is born because of a predestination paradox.

Kyle Reese goes back in time to stop the terminator from killing Sarah Conner, mother of John Conner. In the process, they have sex and he winds up being John conner's father. Meaning that the rebel leader Skynet attempted to prevent was only created BECAUSE the terminator was running around in the past.

A predestination paradox requires a rigid and unchangable timeline, at least with regards to the events responsible for the paradox.

They stop Judgement Day in T2. Which means the future is changable, John Conner's dad was never sent back, the predestination paradox doesn't work, and he doesn't exist. Which means there was never a Kyle Reese chasing a terminator back in time, Sarah Conner never found out about Skynet, John Conner was never born, and Judgement Day wasn't stopped. And we're back at square one with a timeline that has now been bent into a mobius strip of broken causality.

Then they do Terminator 3, which says they just moved the date, and didn't cancel the show.

Which doesn't do poor John any good, since his dad STILL wasn't sent back in time due to the diffrent timelines.

There may be another Kyle Reese, and he may've been sent back in time in his version of the timeline, and may've even fathered a child, but the Kyle that we know won't exist anymore, which means it's impossible for him to go back in time and relay the orginal, now-inaccurate information about Judgement Day to Sarah.

If the elements future is changable, predestination paradoxes CANNOT function.

And if predestination paradoxes can't work, the foundation of the entire franchise is invalid.

The only way for continuity to hold is if T3 is rewritten so Judgement Day happens on the timetable originally laid out by T1.

Besides, Terminator 2 was like Aliens. They took a perfectly good sci-fi horror film and stripped out all the scary bits.

343984[/snapback]

What I mean is that if this tv series is set between T2 and T3 as indicated and to have Sarah Connor as a main character and they are keeping the continuity of the 3 films then:

1) Sarah will have to have to be in a losing battle with Lukemia

2) They can't fight Terminators because they thought they had stopped judgement day until John finds out otherwise in T3. If they were engaging terminators in the interim, then obviously they wouldn't have thought that.

So what the hell will it be about?

[Jemstone]

I don't get it.

343967[/snapback]

Neither do I. I'm really at a loss to even comment here.

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

So what the hell will it be about?

John being hunted down by whoever witnessed the t800 from the second movie I suppose. Notice how in the third movie he has to live off the grid? Why is this? Maybe his mom senses he will be in danger from the humans trying to get whatever information they can about what happened to the terminator? It's military hardware that could be used in wars against others. Given that he hacked an atm to get some money, (he uses an atari ) I can see him as being seen as a threat to many companies using this hacking ability, and many people would want to find the kid. (not just terminators) Perhaps the series will cover how his GF's dad began development of those early prototype machines in the third movie before they finally got out of control from the virus?

Edited November 11, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[JB0]

So what the hell will it be about?

John being hunted down by whoever witnessed the t800 from the second movie I suppose. Notice how in the third movie he has to live off the grid? Why is this? Maybe his mom senses he will be in danger from the humans trying to get whatever information they can about what happened to the terminator? It's military hardware that could be used in wars against others. Given that he hacked an atm to get some money, (he uses an atari ) I can see him as being seen as a threat to many companies using this hacking ability, and many people would want to find the kid. (not just terminators) Perhaps the series will cover how his GF's dad began development of those early prototype machines in the third movie before they finally got out of control from the virus?

344054[/snapback]

They mentioned in the 3rd movie that neither of the Conners really QUITE believed it was over(remember Sarah's coffin full of guns?).

So he stayed out of the records "just in case."

[Major Johnathan]

Blah. I like the original Terminator, T2 more or less stunk,IMHO. T3 was embaressing, I like Arnie and all, but he clearly aged quite a bit.

In the original, they created a niffty apocalyptic future world. Rather than exploring that future in the following movies, they stuck with the time travel angle, which is always HIGHLY problematic, look at the tons of crappy Star Trek storylines, they never seem to really make sense.

Plus, all due respect Agent One, Arnie really had no further role. It's the premise of the Terminator that's cool, not simply that Arnie played one. Yes he played it quite well, but in T2, what do they do but turn a stone cold killing machine into a teen's robot companion who makes wisecracks... almost as bad as a cheesy smiling Anakin/Darth Vader ghost at the end of ROTJ.

The TV show sounds bizzare in it's lack of a plot. What else is left BUT the future?

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

Yeah but the rule of thumb for me to make a sequel interesting is to offer something different.

The theme of machines bringing about an apocalypse was faithfully kept in the second movie at least.

The first was all about reese telling sarah about how they had complete control and were rounding up humans, marking them with a laser tattoo (mark of the beast) to number and identify them, and killing them for orderly disposal.

Sarah was the virgin mary supposed to give birth to the coming messiah and was recieving message from the future to flee before being killed before jesus could be born, whose very birth would help to destroy satan's plan of domination.

Then in the sequel "Judgement Day" they went all out and made the terminator more sneaky and able to shaepshift into anyone so it could appear as a cop, or anyone in position of authority. This made the tension even scarier than the original because it meant you couldn't go to the cops for protection like in the first. The diguise aspect of the terminator was what made it so scary and now it could visually appear as anyone. It didn't need to fight the authorities to get to the saviour to kill him, instead it could use them to its advantage to track him down wherever you go.

But in the third they screwed up bigtime. What they could have done to make it a complete trilogy was begin to show the collapse of the very system reese talked about in the first movie where humans are tricked into putting total trust in the authorities and the system they put into place, not knowing there is a shapeshifting robot impersonating people in positions of power and preparing to turn all the information the robot has gathered about humans' weapons, against them. Fast forward from the present and show us the future apocalypse, perhaps even use some biblical symobls or whatever relgious stuff they want to put in, in keeping with the whol end of the world theme, the way they show the slow mo of the nuke in no.2 to symbolise mass death.

I don't know but I just thought the t1000 is so much more menacing for it's shapeshifting ability than the terminatrix in t3 imo. (I remember commenting to my friend that it didn't seem as powerful as the t1000.) Like the first movie, where arnie can just apear from the shadows and attack suddenly and out of nowhere as a diguised human, the t1000 also has that ability but with shapeshifting as a bonus and by tricking the people around it into trusting it. But this one was even scarier than t800, because it was motherfarting fast with a better disguise. If it ever comes up on camera no one will ever get early warning apart from whethr the dogs bark and sniff them funny. This was a key aspect of the first movie BTW: that they needed dogs to sniff out the fake people to figure who were the real humans and who were terminators surrounded by flesh to disguise them. The ones with rubber skin were easy but the fleshy ones had bad breath and stuff just like a human, so dogs with a sensitive sense of smell were your only early warning detectors.

For me what rates as "scary" is not so much the terminator itself blowing people away with guns, but that it can disguise itself (it's voice in t1, its appearance as a human in t1, it's appearance as a speicifc person in t2 for example) or appear as just an ordinary person in the shadow so you don't know who is a terminator and who isn't, unless you are up close and by then it is too late because it has killed you. While the first movie was tense because it was always dark and you couldn't see anything, (I suppose you could call it "cool") the second made up for it by giving the machine more tricks (shapeshift) and speeding everything up which is what I wanted. The third could have gone back to its roots from the first and gone all dark and shadowy again but with futuristic weapons, but they didn't do it which was disapointing. What I wanted in no.3 was a sci-fi war movie with a grown up leader of resistance and images akin to the flash back sequence from terminator 1.

Edited November 11, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[Gui]

Bah, another project cranked up in a rush because huge amounts of people will be idiot enough to buy the ticket to go see T4 in the theaters and watch the TV series when back home (or the other way around, whatever...)

As long as these things make profits we'll simply get always more

Save your money to import Macross stuff, guys...

[Ghadrack]

Yay! Go cheesy Family drama.

How much do you wanna bet that on the Show John Connor faces a dilemma, It's his frst date, his mom is going bonkers about the end of the world, and John finds out when he goes to bed his new lady she weighs 786 pounds and has a steel endoskeleton.

She is a terminatrix, but she is rebelling against the system and loves John Connor, because you see she was doing her hair and got shocked by a short in her curling iron and forgot how to hate.

Now enjoy the antics and John Connor hides a terminator love robot under the unsuspecting nose of his crazy mother in this season's new hit show, "Diary of a Teenage Terminator"!

[eugimon]

I don't see how they can do this and have any sort of interesting story without screwing up the continuity established by T3.  Since John Connor specifically said they thought they had averted Judgement Day after the events of T2.  Dumbasses.

Terminator's continuity isn't that solid to begin with.

John Conner is born because of a predestination paradox.

Kyle Reese goes back in time to stop the terminator from killing Sarah Conner, mother of John Conner. In the process, they have sex and he winds up being John conner's father. Meaning that the rebel leader Skynet attempted to prevent was only created BECAUSE the terminator was running around in the past.

A predestination paradox requires a rigid and unchangable timeline, at least with regards to the events responsible for the paradox.

They stop Judgement Day in T2. Which means the future is changable, John Conner's dad was never sent back, the predestination paradox doesn't work, and he doesn't exist. Which means there was never a Kyle Reese chasing a terminator back in time, Sarah Conner never found out about Skynet, John Conner was never born, and Judgement Day wasn't stopped. And we're back at square one with a timeline that has now been bent into a mobius strip of broken causality.

Then they do Terminator 3, which says they just moved the date, and didn't cancel the show.

Which doesn't do poor John any good, since his dad STILL wasn't sent back in time due to the diffrent timelines.

There may be another Kyle Reese, and he may've been sent back in time in his version of the timeline, and may've even fathered a child, but the Kyle that we know won't exist anymore, which means it's impossible for him to go back in time and relay the orginal, now-inaccurate information about Judgement Day to Sarah.

If the elements future is changable, predestination paradoxes CANNOT function.

And if predestination paradoxes can't work, the foundation of the entire franchise is invalid.

The only way for continuity to hold is if T3 is rewritten so Judgement Day happens on the timetable originally laid out by T1.

343984[/snapback]

Meh, not really.. you're thinking of rules laid down by special relativity... where there is only one universe and one timeline... And since they are able to go back in time previous to when a working time machine was built we know that they are not bound to special relativity...

but we can escape the whole paradox thing by just assuming they are following quatum theory.

p