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selenakWhat is it with titles in my shows this week that are allusive as hell? This one is the title of Robert Graves' memoirs of his youth, a significant portion of which deals with World War I (which made said book into a modern classic. The other thing it's famous for are the early chapters dealing with life at a public school (that's a private one for you Americans), which he frankly hated. (I read Goodbye to All That for the first time shortly before reading C.S. Lewis' autobiography Surprised by Joy - in which he hated his public school so much he called it "Belsen", and a short time after I found a Neil Gaiman quote in which he called the section in Seasons of Mist in which a boy is tortured to death at a public school autobiographical. Conclusion: English writers through the ages really, really hated their time in school.
Aaaaanyway. Despite the school setting of one plot in this episode, I assume the title was chosen because of the World War I classic status. Books and memories and the stories we tell being a major theme of the episode.
There is considerable anger for gung-ho patriotism in Graves' book, which describes the total disconnect between the newspaper rethoric and the whole jolly good adventure attitude towards war and what life in the trenches was actually like. I thought of it during Derek's reaction to the student who talks about "kills" because that is definitely a Gravesian scene, complete with the story that follows about one soldier carrying another whose guts were bleeding out. It occurs to me that Derek with his shell shock is very much a character from the type of narrative about WWI Goodbye to All That, or Siegfried Sassoon's memoirs, or Wilfred Owen's poetry formed, with one significant difference: Derek's war is a mission he believes in, because it's a question of the survival of mankind, while all the major WWI poets and writers came to see the fight they were engaged in as a pointless slaughter cynically prolonged by politicians. Derek tells John Connor at the end "he died for you - we all die for you", and that kind of absolute believe in a leader is impossible in a WWI narrative. Here, it's also presented as a burden. John and Martin Pedell the cadet talk about the impossibility of living up - to his parents and family history, Martin thinks, while John is thinking of the impossibility of living up to this mystical saviour-of-mankind figure Derek and Cameron in different ways insist he becomes. There is an inherent irony in his scenes with the other cadets; John, who never went to military school, nonetheless was raised to be on the run and fight by Sarah from the day he was born. He's not a veteran in the way Derek is, but he knows how to do that in a way that the other students simply don't. Cameron, over in the other plot, claims The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was FutureJohn's favourite book, and he and Derek as their alias chose the last name of its author, Baum. The Wizard, of course, the man behind the curtain is not whom everyone in Oz thinks he is, but the trouble is very real. What John got from his mother: the unwillingness to accept those human sacrifices, and the need to risk his own life to protect the Martins of this world beyond what they might or might not become.
But in no flashback/ flashforward to the future did we see Future!John (though in one of Derek's memories when he should appear his face melts into presentJohn's.) Is there a man behind the curtain?
(And yes, I know, they just want to avoid having to cast an adult John Connor, but leaving aside such Doylist reasons.)
At the start, we get a creat callback to the first Terminator movie, when Derek asks how many Sarah Connors died before the Terminator found "our" Sarah. Two, she says, and you know she had never forgotten. Two Martins to save in this episode, and a third one who dies in the teaser. One Martin is saved for future death, unless it's possible to change the future for good; the other Martin's future is free of pre-determination and knowledge, and Sarah talks to him about the differences between films and books, about improvisation and plans that aren't, about returning him to the life he had. This Martin's future is an open book.
Then there is Ellison, who when talking to Catherine Weaver about the evidence for two machines he found is leaving out something highly significant in his story; the discovery he made about Sarah having been in the plant. The barkeep asked him "Did you find what you were looking for?" and Ellison replied "Quite the contrary". His determination not to lead anyone to Sarah Connor still stands, and since he didn't mention her to Catherine Weaver, I doubt he writes off the fact his first investigation for her led him straight into evidence for Sarah's past whereabouts as a coincidence. I don't think he suspects anything like the truth yet, but he definitely doesn't trust her completely, and edits what he tells her. (His report still condemns an unfortunate man to death; I suspect that he'll find out, and this will lead him to certain conclusions.) As for Weaver, I think everyone who speculates that the machine she really wants to find is Cameron is right; she perked up when Ellison mentioned the two machines were in his opinion fighting each other. Going back to the season opener, her big speech was all about machines going above and against their programming and that being the rarest and most remarkable ones; while she was ostensibly talking about the Turk, it more and more looks like what she really meant was Cameron.
Aaaaanyway. Despite the school setting of one plot in this episode, I assume the title was chosen because of the World War I classic status. Books and memories and the stories we tell being a major theme of the episode.
There is considerable anger for gung-ho patriotism in Graves' book, which describes the total disconnect between the newspaper rethoric and the whole jolly good adventure attitude towards war and what life in the trenches was actually like. I thought of it during Derek's reaction to the student who talks about "kills" because that is definitely a Gravesian scene, complete with the story that follows about one soldier carrying another whose guts were bleeding out. It occurs to me that Derek with his shell shock is very much a character from the type of narrative about WWI Goodbye to All That, or Siegfried Sassoon's memoirs, or Wilfred Owen's poetry formed, with one significant difference: Derek's war is a mission he believes in, because it's a question of the survival of mankind, while all the major WWI poets and writers came to see the fight they were engaged in as a pointless slaughter cynically prolonged by politicians. Derek tells John Connor at the end "he died for you - we all die for you", and that kind of absolute believe in a leader is impossible in a WWI narrative. Here, it's also presented as a burden. John and Martin Pedell the cadet talk about the impossibility of living up - to his parents and family history, Martin thinks, while John is thinking of the impossibility of living up to this mystical saviour-of-mankind figure Derek and Cameron in different ways insist he becomes. There is an inherent irony in his scenes with the other cadets; John, who never went to military school, nonetheless was raised to be on the run and fight by Sarah from the day he was born. He's not a veteran in the way Derek is, but he knows how to do that in a way that the other students simply don't. Cameron, over in the other plot, claims The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was FutureJohn's favourite book, and he and Derek as their alias chose the last name of its author, Baum. The Wizard, of course, the man behind the curtain is not whom everyone in Oz thinks he is, but the trouble is very real. What John got from his mother: the unwillingness to accept those human sacrifices, and the need to risk his own life to protect the Martins of this world beyond what they might or might not become.
But in no flashback/ flashforward to the future did we see Future!John (though in one of Derek's memories when he should appear his face melts into presentJohn's.) Is there a man behind the curtain?
(And yes, I know, they just want to avoid having to cast an adult John Connor, but leaving aside such Doylist reasons.)
At the start, we get a creat callback to the first Terminator movie, when Derek asks how many Sarah Connors died before the Terminator found "our" Sarah. Two, she says, and you know she had never forgotten. Two Martins to save in this episode, and a third one who dies in the teaser. One Martin is saved for future death, unless it's possible to change the future for good; the other Martin's future is free of pre-determination and knowledge, and Sarah talks to him about the differences between films and books, about improvisation and plans that aren't, about returning him to the life he had. This Martin's future is an open book.
Then there is Ellison, who when talking to Catherine Weaver about the evidence for two machines he found is leaving out something highly significant in his story; the discovery he made about Sarah having been in the plant. The barkeep asked him "Did you find what you were looking for?" and Ellison replied "Quite the contrary". His determination not to lead anyone to Sarah Connor still stands, and since he didn't mention her to Catherine Weaver, I doubt he writes off the fact his first investigation for her led him straight into evidence for Sarah's past whereabouts as a coincidence. I don't think he suspects anything like the truth yet, but he definitely doesn't trust her completely, and edits what he tells her. (His report still condemns an unfortunate man to death; I suspect that he'll find out, and this will lead him to certain conclusions.) As for Weaver, I think everyone who speculates that the machine she really wants to find is Cameron is right; she perked up when Ellison mentioned the two machines were in his opinion fighting each other. Going back to the season opener, her big speech was all about machines going above and against their programming and that being the rarest and most remarkable ones; while she was ostensibly talking about the Turk, it more and more looks like what she really meant was Cameron.
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Date: 2008-10-09 07:27 am (UTC)Also, Martin'S girlfriend he wanted to run away with -- didn't he say her name was Alicia? Which was the name Weaver used in the bar.
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Date: 2008-10-09 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-09 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 05:40 pm (UTC)