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Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete Second Season (Blu-ray) |
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Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete Second Season (Blu-ray)
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| Warner Bros. // Unrated // September 22, 2009 // Region A |
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List Price: $79.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
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Review by John Sinnott |
posted September 19, 2009 |
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The
Series:
This time I can't complain that a network didn't give an
excellent SF show a chance before pulling the plug.
After a short 9 episode first season Fox
renewed the show and aired a full 22 episodes before pulling the plug
due to
poor ratings. That leaves me without my
favorite whipping boy to blame. Instead
I am stuck scratching my head wondering why more people didn't tune
into this well
thought out show that gets just about everything right. They
even avoid the mistakes that the third
and fourth Terminator movies made; leaving us with an action packed fun
show
that has a lot of suspense.
Warning: If you're
not familiar with the Terminator universe and who the main characters
are,
you'll probably be lost reading this review.
Go watch the first two movies then come back.
While season two was saddled with wrapping up one of the
least suspenseful cliffhangers in TV history (at the end of season
one,) the
show managed to turn that lame conclusion into a distinct advantage. As you might remember, Sarah (Lena Headey)
and her son John Connor (Thomas Dekker) were looking for a chess
computer
(called The Turk) that they had reason to believe was going to evolve
into the
AI that tries to destroy humanity in the future. They
have help in the form of a soldier from
the future Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green) and a Terminator that John
sent
back in time to help his younger self, Cameron (Summer Glau). As the first season ended the people who had
The Turk planted a bomb in Sarah's truck, and when Cameron turned on
the
ignition, it blew up.
No big deal. If a
Terminator can withstand an exploding tanker truck full of gas as it
did in the
first movie, a car bomb isn't much of a threat.
Cameron easily survives the blast and removes herself from the
wreckage
while Sarah and John are fighting the men who planted the device. The problem is that a shard of metal embeds
itself in the back of Cameron's head, which partially damages her chip. She can still function at nearly as good as
new, but the program that was installed to make her friendly to the
resistance
is no longer registering so she falls back on her primary mission: to kill John Connor.
Though Sarah and John manage to fix Cameron, she's still not
quite as good as new. Little things go
wrong. She freezes up in a supermarket
and also starts to remember details of the life of the person she was
modeled
after. She also becomes curious about
emotions and why humans do some of the illogical things that they do. This really starts to worry Sarah and
especially
Derek.
They don't have a lot of time to worry about Cameron though,
because Skynet keeps them jumping. More
evil Terminators are arriving from the past, and another resistance
soldier
from the future is sent back with a list of objectives that these
machines
have. The only problem is that he's
fatally wounded and dies before he can pass the information along. With few options, he writes names and clues
to Skynet's plans on the basement wall of the Connor's residence in his
own
blood. Now the group has to decipher the
cryptic messages in order to find out what they need to do.
As if that wasn't enough, there's another subplot involving
FBI agent James Ellison (a tip of the hat to SF writer Harlan Ellison
who
inspired the first movie, played by Richard T. Jones) who knows about
the
existence of the robots from the future.
He's been hired away from the Agency by a company that's looking
for
Terminator parts so they can reverse engineer them and make a fortune. It's the same company that bought The Turk
through back channels. Ellison's a good
employee and does his job better than they could have hoped for. The only problem? The
company is run by a Terminator.
Watching this season of the show I realized what makes this
franchise so interesting and why the third and fourth movies missed the
point. The franchise isn't propelled by
the action or even the plot of how John and/or Sarah will survive. The things that make the Terminator franchise
so engaging are the characters, particularly Sarah Connor.
Think back to the changes she underwent in
the first movie, transforming from a typical empty-headed young adult
to a
tough fighter with the weight of the world on her shoulders. T2
examined how Sarah handled that burden.
This series continues that theme and expands to John too. Sarah has been running her whole adult life,
never making friends and never having a close companion aside from her
son. She knows that if she starts to
feel for someone the best thing she can do for them is to leave. It's a price that few could pay.
What's worse is that she has to train John to
think that way, and that's doubly hard for a teenager.
John wants to go out on dates, and is at that
time of his life when kids naturally rebel.
One of the great ironies of the show is that both Sarah and John
have to
separate themselves from humanity in order to save it. By focusing on
this
aspect of the characters the series hits all the right marks.
While every show has a good amount of action, suspense, and
adventure, these episodes also flesh out the Terminator universe very
nicely. They spend a bit of time in the
future, filling in some gaps and expanding on what has gone before. One of my favorite episodes involves just who
Cameron modeled her body after and why.
They also introduce Derek's love from the future, someone who
may or may
not still be of the side of the humans.
I was also very surprised at how artful the show became in
this second season. They could have
played it straight and mimicking the direction style for every other
action
show out there, but in several episodes they try to do something
different, and
it often works. In the first episode at
the beginning John and Sarah are tied up and being questioned violently
by some
creeps. It's a typical scene except for
the fact that the audio consists solely of a song.
The lack of sound effects and just the
haunting lyrics was a beautiful touch, one they use again in the series. It grabs the viewer's attention in a way that
a typical action scene won't. In another
episode the climactic battle between the John and Derek and a
Terminator is
accompanied by Sarah's voice reading sections of "The Wizard of Oz" to
a young
child. It's touches like this that made
the show so special.
The
Blu-ray Disc:
Video:
The show is presented with a
1.78:1 aspect ratio on five DVDs encoded in 1080p with the VC-1 codex
and the
Blu-ray discs look better than the HD broadcasts. The show has a few
'pop'
moments that work very well, especially brightly lit exterior scenes,
but even
in the low light sections, which there are more than a few, the image
has a
very good amount of detail. Smaller objects have nice definition and
the lines
are tight. The colors are also good with the flesh tones being accurate
and the
various shades looking realistic without being boosted to an unreal
level. The
blacks were nice and deep, and the whites were bright without being
crushed.
On the digital
side things also
looked very good. Aliasing wasn't a problem, thought there was some
very minor
posterization in a couple of spots and some grain did appear. Blocking
and
other compression artifacts were not a problem and edge enhancement
wasn't
present.
Audio:
Unfortunately the only audio
option is a 5.1 English sound track. While it sounds good, I couldn't
help but
wonder what the show would have been like with an HD audio codex. In
any case
the discs sounded good, especially when you consider that this is a TV
show.
The rears were sent a good amount of information during the battle
scenes but
there wasn't as much ambient noise coming from them as I was expecting
at other
times. The range was fine and there weren't any noticeable defect to
the track
itself.
Extras:
The Blu-ray edition offers all of
the special features that the SD DVD set does, which is as it should
be, most
of them are even in SD this time too. Spread over the discs there are
four
commentary tracks featuring executive producer/writer Josh Friedman and
various
members of the cast and crew. Though I
enjoyed the program, none of these really grabbed me. There were a few
too many
dead spaces and the comments didn't really enlighten me or add much to
my
enjoyment of the show. These weren't bad commentaries they just were
not
anything very special.
The
Storyboard Process: Cameron Goes Bad is
a three minute look at one scene and the corresponding story board. Similar to that is Cameron vs. Rosie:
Fight Rehearsal a 5 ½ minute look at a fight scene including
a look at the
raw footage before special effects are added and the storyboards.
One cool extra is Collision with the
Future: Deconstructing the Hunter Killer Attack.
This Blu-ray exclusive bonus feature allows viewers
to see a scene with one or all four options activated.
These include "Production,"
"Direction," "Special FX," and "Visual FX". It
was fun to play with.
The
biggest bonus item is a nearly 45-minute (total) 8-part featurette
entitled The Continuing Chronicles.
This is a pretty interesting look at the show
and includes section on the concepts, the future world, and the
characters. The extras section is wrapped
up with a
series of deleted scenes from several episodes and a gag reel.
Final Thoughts:
It's really too bad that this show
was cancelled. It's much better than
many shows that were renewed. Filled
with action, suspense, and some wonderful character development it has
everything viewers want in a good SF show.
Watching the series all in a row is an even better viewing
experience
than watching it one week at a time.
Don't let last summer's theatrical movie keep you away. This is a show worth watching. Highly
Recommended.
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