Sarah Connor Chronicles and Sarah Jane Adventures

[selenak]

Two Sarahs, no waiting. Though I had vastly different reactions to the two episodes.



This was something of a let down after the heights of the last two weeks, to be honest. For starters, I think what was believable as a plot for Rose in Father's Day, what with Rose being 19, is not believable for Sarah Jane at age 50 something. It's not that the season wasn't careful to set up and foreshadow, etc., but I still don't buy that Sarah Jane, with her experience and at her age, would wilfully and selfishly change history like that. In fact, I don't buy she'd want to find out the truth about her parents badly enough to go back in the first place. I've been looking forward to a Sarah Jane character study episode, but if the show doesn't make me believe the very premise, there is a problem.

Trivia note: the Doctor got another name check, this time complete with TARDIS. This is the third or so this season, as opposed to a single one last season, and since all the UNIT name-checks read like a set-up, I'm wondering whether all the Doctor mentions are one, too.

On to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, wherein we find out the truth about Toby Ziegler and Warren Mears. I'll never be able to watch The West Wing in the same way again. To say nothing of the Warren episodes of BTVS.



This episode, on the other hand, I loved. In fact, The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been the show this autumnal season to consistently make me happy in terms of quality. I'm more relieved than ever that they got a full 22 episodes. *draws hearts around apocalyptic show*

All kidding aside, both Richard Schiff and Adam Busch were fabulous as the older and younger version of Charles Fisher. Fans have been speculating about human collaborators in the future for a while now (and not just the brainwashed variety), and now we got one, with the time travel concept of the show used to rare effect as cause and result feed into each other. Young Charles gets kidnapped, beaten up, tortured, sees a man shot in front of him and then gets unjustly imprisoned. No wonder his view of his fellow humans is a tad dark after this one, and he's willing to cooperate with the machines that let him go. Older Charles has betrayed humanity (twice over, as we find out in the closing sequence that shows his sabotage in the present) to the machines and experimented on humans for Skynet's benefit. And we still don't know whether he did this solely to Derek, or also to Jesse - because we don't know whether trust Jesse, who is keeping information from Derek and on some kind of mission as opposed to running from a war, and Derek's memory is unreliable as hell as was made clear from s1 onwards; but he did it, and when they get their hands on him, they capture, torture and ultimately kill him - which causes the equally captured and tortured young Charles, etc. A vicious circle. Derek speculates that there might be different futures already, and he and Jesse could come from different versions of the timeline, which could be possible, but young Charles' fate as seen by the end of the episode seems to indicate the future is still on the apocalyptic track.

Sarah is also in a loop and a circle, in her dreams and in reality, going back to Dr. Sherman but finding herself unable to really confide in him. Dreaming of herself, Cameron and John. She says she doesn't want to talk about Cameron, but in her dream, she not only dresses herself and Cameron in the same dresses but sees Cameron playing mother. "Now you sound like her," John says to Cameron, meaning Sarah. So does Sarah's dream mean recognition of similarities between her and Cameron which her conscious mind rejects, anxiety about Cameron taking her place, or both? If Sarah's dream equate Cameron and herself, John, interestingly, is not equated with the turtle (the helpless creature to be protected) but with the cactus, the desert plant which survives, but at what cost? It turns to steel in Sarah's dream. John at this point still believes in mercy, in what his mother taught him. "We're not murderers." It's open to debate whether Future!John still does, and just how far he is prepared to go. (Since we still don't know who sent the terminator after Dr. Sherman.)

John and Cameron talking about Sarah saving the turtle in a way sums up the episode. Cameron says not all humans would have done what Sarah did, would have that instinct to save a creature threatened or in pain. Some would have ignored it, and some would have killed it just because. Both Charles Fishers and Ellison are in the turtle situation in this episode. Cameron (assuming she's not lying about not recognizing Charles the older) sees he's in a bad state when Derek mails her the picture but ignores this; it's not important to her one way or the other. John doesn't let her use pain to get the truth out of Ellison, and before they leave, she turns Ellison over as Sarah turned the turtle over, mimicking the gesture of mercy. Derek and Jesse let Charles the younger go, putting it as a gesture of mercy ("he's not that monster yet") when it could be also seen as a gesture of callous indifference (even had older Charles not used younger Charles' credentials to hack into homeland security, did they think younger Charles would be gung ho about the future human resistance after such a day?).

I'm a watchmaker, I understand how things work, older Charles says, giving me a moment of bad Sylar flashbacks. There is Dr. Sherman who tries to understand the human mind, to help Sarah who has bad memories of psychiatrists and their assumptions about how she works. And finally there is Ellison who thinks he can prevent the future by giving Catherine Weaver the means to understand how machines work. "Don't you have work to do?" Sherman asks in Sarah's last dream, and she says she has. But what is Sarah's work? Prevent the future or facilitate it?

Lastly: the Derek, Jesse and Charles Fisher plot owed something to "Death and the Maiden" by Ariel Dorfman, a play in which a woman kidnaps and starts to torture a man whom she insists has tortured her back during the Pinochet days. The man insists on his innocence. Her husband doesn't know whom to believe at first. He also thought he knew what torture did to his wife, but now he sees it did even worse. The roles of victim and torture keep switching, and nobody is innocent, or a monster.

Comments

[vitruvian23.livejournal.com]

Still need to watch the episode on my DVR, but... a turtle? Interested to see who passes the Voight-Kampff test, indeed.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*g* Someone sure likes their Blade Runner, true.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

The only time you ever meet horologists is on television.

I watched this episode for Toby Ziegler... Richard Schiff really elevates any show he guests on.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

He does, though I'd venture that this is a show which is good and worth watching in any case.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

Summer Glau does nothing for me, unfortunately. Making me that outlier in fandom.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

Older Fisher used Younger Fisher's credentials to enter the facility before he was captured and killed by Jessie and Derek, so what happened all along was that he caused HIMSELF to be unfairly imprisoned, which led to his collaborating with the machines. A real by-his-bootstraps situation; the kidnapping and torture had nothing to do, the first time, with his being accused of something his older self did, going to prison, and ultimately working for the machines. And because that happened before Young Fisher was captured and witnessed his older self being killed, it still played out that the physical evidence pointed to his having used his access to do something nefarious, for which he has been imprisoned. What has changed is that he has now seen his future: he's seen himself being killed by the resistance fighters, he's heard about what he will do in the future. And since Derek clearly does NOT remember being tortured by Fisher, it is possible that he comes from the timeline in which the young man he kidnapped thought twice about collaborating or at least torturing Derek specifically, which is what motivated Jessie to capture both the older and younger Fishers and then to kill the older one. Because of Derek we already know the future has changed; the imprisonment part is the same for Young fisher, because that was set in motion before the kidnapping, but he now has enough knowledge to avoid the end he already witnessed, and Derek's memories of a different timeline imply that he has successfully changed at least a little of his future.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That's an optimistic and intriguing alternate interpretation, which works with the different timelines. But the show already has pointed to one hole in Derek's memories - what happened to him in the basement with the classical music - so Derek not remembering by itself isn't something that necessarily supports it. (Nor refutes it, of course!)

[dandelionteeth.livejournal.com]

I thought that Older Charles deliberately incriminated his younger self so that a) he would be in prison during Judgment Day, thereby saving his own life and b) he would work for the machines and get his reward--a free ticket back in time to "paradise."

And why would Cameron know about Charles Fisher? He was not in any way related to her mission either as a Terminator or as a protector of John Connor.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

According to Jesse, Charles Fisher had the specific task of preparing terminators for their interaction with humans, which does relate to Cameron's original mission.

On board with Older Charles' motivation, except: how would he know that his younger self would need him to incriminate? I.e. that there was no one else doing this, considering he remembers being arrested and spending time in prison. I'm not saying he couldn't have figured that out - i.e. that the reason for his original arrest must have been himself - but I'm curious as to how. After all, the reason Future John Connor knew he had to send Kyle Reese back in time in order to get born was because Sarah told him who his father was, etc., but nobody could have told Charles.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether we're meant to draw a connection between Derek saying that resistance to torture comes from self-hatred and believing you deserve it, and Ellison not revealing that he took Cromartie's body despite Cameron beating him up.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Hm, not an interpretation that occured to me before but I wouldn't exclude it.

What I thought re: Ellison's motive was: basically his meeting with Sarah was a let-down. Not just because she told him to get lost but because she had no answers and didn't appear to have a plan. Note that she doesn't tell him "we're working towards stopping" etc, but that their lives consist of running away and fighting Terminators while they were at it. On the other hand, he has Catherine Weaver who doesn't just have the money and resources but apparantly concrete ideas of studying the machines in order to fight them. A plan. So he goes with Catherine. Knowing what he does instead of what we do, it makes sense.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I entirely agree about why he's working with Weaver but I think we're meant to draw that conclusion in the scene with John and Cameron. It's impossible that he doesn't feel guilt for getting his partner and the SWAT team killed by Cromartie IMO.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That's true. Come to think of it, there is a later Ellison scene, a conversation with his pastor, which would fit with this.