Just a quick note to say, I have been watching this series and I will go back to review 1.01 – 1.05 but I started taking notes during this episode so I’ll begin her for now. My quick and dirty overview on episodes 1-5 was that the show started off as a bad weekly rehash of Terminator 2 but that by the end of the third episode it had made enough strides to show potential. It’s not there yet, but it sparkled enough to keep me from eliminating it from the DVR.

1.06

“Dungeons and Dragons”

The main problem with time travel stories is that they need to be quick. In and out. Trying to maintain a series that’s major focus is about an apocalyptic future that keeps sending back robots to change or preserve the past inevitably will leave holes the size of Jupiter in the form of paradoxes that will make your head spin. It is the rare occasion that a show can hurt itself by revealing things the audience wants to know.

Case in point, one thing the movies were pretty careful about was depicting the future…or for the most part not depicting the future. We saw very little in that timeline. It left us wanting more, and able to fill in the blanks in our mind. It also didn’t give us any questions we’d want answered.

“Dungeons and Dragons” opens with another Sarah Connor voice over discussing Kyle Reese and how John Connor is the hope for the future. Considering this is something discussed in the opening every week, it is overkill, as the voiceovers usually are in this show.

We see a bloodied David Silver…er…Derek Reese on the kitchen table as Sarah’s ex-fiancee works frantically to stop the bleeding. Charley is dazed and confused, trying to save Derek while at the same time coming to terms with seeing Sarah for the first time in eight years.

Cameron is attempting to help stabilize Derek but he will have nothing to do with her, screaming at them to get that machine away from him. Charley tells her to get away, not wanting Derek to agitate his condition.

Derek drifts off to unconsciousness and into his past giving us a glimpse at the future. Got that? We are in the resistance headquarters, a small, dingy place with murals of lions eating Terminators and things strewn about as if ready to go on a moment’s notice.

Derek is sitting with fellow resistors straining his water through a cloth as they trade barbs about the “legendary” Kyle Reese and his rescues of John Connor. Kyle takes it in stride and takes out a picture of Sarah.

When a patrol shakes the encampment, the Reese brothers and fellows go upside to check out their movements. The resistors are all forgettable unfortunately which makes the viewer not really care about their throughline at all.

Kyle leads the squad North-Northeast because it’s what he’d do if he were a cyborg. Great analytical approach. He smells jet fuel and is quickly reminded that they found a tank factory the last time he smelled fuel.

Wisher, one of the resistors believes that Connor is after a secret weapon of Skynet, but Kyle claims that Connor has not mentioned anything like that to him. Suddenly the highly trained recon team is surprised by the Terminators dragging a jet engine across the ground. Um….how can they NOT hear that coming?

The team scatters and Kyle and Derek both get shot at, with Derek getting caught by a machine.

Back in the present Charley verbally attacks Sarah again, while John watches from afar, torn about the situation as he tries to explain it to Cameron.

Summer Glau as Cameron gets better with each episode. The first 2 episodes it seemed she was merely riffing on her River character from Firefly, but it has begun evolving. Unlike any of the “bad guy” Terminators we’ve seen, she really seems to be a more evolved T-model.

Thomas Dekker as John Connor has also gotten slightly better as we progress. Although it may be simply that I am pitting his performance against Edward Furlong which I hated.

Charley, being played solidly by Dean Winters, is trying to come to terms with everything that is being thrown at him. He obviously needs a beer, which John happily provides. (I guess John does know a thing or two about leadership)

Flash forward to the future and we see that David Silver is in an apocalyptic 90210. Derek is chained to the floor of some mansion. A real high tech prison. Derek tries to spark conversation with some fellow inmates but no one is real coherent. Suddenly a shining light flies over the mansion and bursts into the room, and then goes away. Derek hears music and one of the prisoners indicate that there’s a room in the basement, but no one knows what happens down there. Derek looks around and realizes that Wisher is gone.

Back in present time, Derek needs a blood transfusion of AB- blood. Sarah offers hers as she is O-, the universal donor. Charley says that he needs too much and it would have to be AB-. John offers to get his tested and it works. Now of course this is impossible as O- can’t have offspring with AB-, but we’ll pretend that Cameron can do something about that right?

Back in the future, Derek tries unsuccessfully to unscrew the bolts holding his chains in place. But when you’re using your fingernails, what do you expect? Wisher gets dragged back in and re-chained but he remains catatonic.

Sarah and John get to have a nice heart to heart about John taking chances and it working this time. It’s a nice family moment as John asks if Derek looks like Kyle. Sarah says that he does except for his eyes. She dreamily talks of Kyle’s kind eyes. She sounds like a lovestruck teen here and a great example of why Lena Headey remains my biggest problem with the series. I understand that Linda Hamilton set a pretty high bar, but Headey is just not what this series needs. I can’t put my finger on it, but the more I see her, the less I want to. When I’m more interested in David Silver than the lead…that’s a problem.

FLASH back to the future! Wisher begins to talk with Derek and he needs to confess. Derek doesn’t want to hear it but that doesn’t stop Wisher. It is here that Wisher reveals himself to be Andy Goode! I have to admit, that maybe I wasn’t watching as closely as I should have been, but I did not recognize him at ALL. When the reveal happened, I looked closer and finally saw it, so kudos to the team there.

Back to the present, Charley and Sarah discuss John and whether or not Derek is his father. Sarah is very hesitant to talk about it, but before they have to go much further Derek starts screaming about Kyle. Charley has to sedate him again to calm him down.

Future. Derek is dragged back to his manacles. A little later they wake to discover that the Terminators are gone and there’s a hatchet by their chains. Derek grabs one and breaks free. The soldiers get out and make it back to their headquarters. Unfortunately when they get there it’s obvious a battle took place as smoke is billowing, and everything seems damaged.

Again back to the past for yet another Charley-Sarah scene. I like Charley’s character and it is a realistic sequence, but for the audience, we are simply NOT invested enough in the relationship to really care that much and it’s taking up half the episode. If Sarah and Charley had been together for a season before her leaving, it might have made more sense, but it happened in the first ten minutes of the season.

In the future, Derek and the resistance are met up by a roving band of resistance fighters led by Sumner whom Derek knows well. He tells Derek that the Terminators attacked but most of the men weren’t here as they were throwing themselves into a mission led by Connor himself along with Kyle to secure something from a Terminator factory. They took it and stayed in a few days. Connor than left and Kyle was never seen again. Derek demands to see Connor.

Back in the present, Charley finds out more about the Terminators from Cameron who is burning the exoskeleton in thermite. There is actually a GREAT shot of Cameron’s face lit up by the fire of the thermite and you can catch a glimpse of her exoskeleton underneath.

Flash forward, Derek sees a Cameron model Terminator and freaks out before he is stopped. Derek can’t believe that Connor allows Terminators to walk freely around his compound. Later on he’s sleeping, when he is awoken by a Terminator firing down the hall outside his room. He fires his pistol at it. When will anyone learn that a small handgun is NOT going to be effective? It’s simply a waste of bullets and allows them to track where you are. Just DON’T SHOOT!

Derek is about to learn this lesson the hard way until the Cameron model breaks through and shoves the Terminator through a wall before killing him with a slightly larger gun before she turns to Derek and says, “Sometimes they go bad”.

Present. Sarah and Cameron have a conversation and Sarah is pissed although it is unclear why. She tells Cameron to make certain that she destroys every last screw and bolt of the exoskeleton and that includes finding the hand that was left behind. Cameron agrees but rather deceptively pockets the chip from the Terminator unit she had just burned. I’m curious to see where this is going. Perhaps…sometimes they go bad?

After a heartfelt goodbye between Sarah and Charley we see Derek again in the future where Cameron finds him to tell him that John wants to see him. He walks into a room with a large machine going that we don’t really get a look at but Derek is impressed. From behind we see John (still at 15) coming towards Derek and talking to him… when we flash back to the present and John is talking to Derek as he awakens momentarily before going back to the future in his mind.

On a landscape we see Derek and a few others readying themselves. Derek tells of Connor’s plan for them. They are to go back and ready a resistance cell. They ask Derek for word of Kyle, and Derek shrugs them off saying they can save Kyle, save everyone.

The resistance group wakes up in L.A. naked and head off to start their mission.

We end on a flashback of Andy Goode in his hotel room. We see Derek see Andy and fire upon him, killing him. So we know Derek has lied to Sarah now if nothing else. Unfortunately it also sets up that paradox. If Andy Goode is dead…who was Derek talking to in his resistance unit?

Best not to get into paradoxical discussions right now. Just sit back and enjoy. Overall it was a mediocre episode as not much happened in the present time at all. Anything important to the plot we generally got through the flash-forwards, but I’m not sure they helped or hurt the storyline.

C-

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Next – 1.07