Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles
Feb. 21st, 2011 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have just finished watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles.
... *blinks a lot*
... brb, brain rebooting...
Twisty goodness.
Some of it I could see coming, but only from one episode away.
That ending... that's not an ending. That's no fair as an ending. That's like a bazillion beginnings in a stack.
Also, it's like totally the opposite of a Blakes 7 ending.
I like it.
However Derek that we knew still died, same like Jesse that he met wasn't the Jesse he knew before. No Fate but what you make, okay, but lives matter.
So in the Terminator universe they think they're travelling back and forth along a single timeline rewriting it. I think it's less brain breaking if it's more like the trousers of time, going back up to a common past and then bouncing as much of the future as possible into a different timeline. The universe that happened before is still out there in the multiverse, but suddenly it's not the major most likely thing, there's a whole new most likely thing. So travelling forward is to the most likely thing from that moment.
So the universe without John Connor, to his mother's great surprise, still exists.
... in my head the next logical step is to realise that Sarah Connor leads the resistance and doesn't only have value as the one who birthed the great one.
Or possibly the simple thing where a whole lot of humans could make a difference, so if it's not that one, someone else steps up.
Either way awesome.
Plus it gives John the option of becoming the hero instead of the falling rock. It's like his life thus far has been inertial, flung by someone else, but now whatever he chooses will be his own deal. Plus he'll have to convince people to follow him, do what he says, all that, because he's no longer The John Connor. Nobody has heard of him. Awesome personal growth opportunity there.
Either he stays and deals with after the apocalypse or he persuades someone to help him nip back and make it all not happen. Because those clothes were clearly post apocalyptic. So things still went boom.
Jesse kept on insisting that this time was Paradise, that she'd taken Riley to Paradise. So it's like the whole idea is that even if Paradise went boom we can still fix it. Only, fix it with time travel so it never went boom in the first place.
an interesting approach would be to have Sarah working on making it never happen in the first place and John work on fixing it, rebuilding after the boom. Two lines twisting. What would happen if she fixed the future he was already time travelled into? What's the most interesting story there?
That ending is such a stack of stories.
That was psychologically deep, consistently complex, interweaving, fair play puzzle pieces, engrossing storytelling, with a female character in the title, half the characters women, and a story focusing on motherhood and arse kicking as necessarily intertwined things. Plus there were great action sequences, things blew up, Summer Glau kicks things, and sometimes shiny metal walks around. That is such an excellent show.
Also, I'm vaguely regretting not having spread the episodes out more so I could do more thinking between episodes. Except the what-happens-next urge was far, far too strong.
... so now I'm making eep noises about how come that's the end of the disc and the box and the show...
*big sigh*
The whole setup is just fanfic bait. AU central. The ending throws it all wide open, that tension there's always been between is it predestined or was No Fate true, it comes down hard on No Fate. Anyone can go back to any point in time, with all the knowledge we the viewers have, and start over. The gift to writers in that... oh so much possibility!
... and yet when I start figuring how to play with it, I like the characters we know too much to want to jump in and boot their timelines. Every intervention creates an AU, there's no way to do it without creating new people with familiar faces. We lose everyone we love.
... *blinks some more*
... brain still working on it...
... *blinks a lot*
... brb, brain rebooting...
Twisty goodness.
Some of it I could see coming, but only from one episode away.
That ending... that's not an ending. That's no fair as an ending. That's like a bazillion beginnings in a stack.
Also, it's like totally the opposite of a Blakes 7 ending.
I like it.
However Derek that we knew still died, same like Jesse that he met wasn't the Jesse he knew before. No Fate but what you make, okay, but lives matter.
So in the Terminator universe they think they're travelling back and forth along a single timeline rewriting it. I think it's less brain breaking if it's more like the trousers of time, going back up to a common past and then bouncing as much of the future as possible into a different timeline. The universe that happened before is still out there in the multiverse, but suddenly it's not the major most likely thing, there's a whole new most likely thing. So travelling forward is to the most likely thing from that moment.
So the universe without John Connor, to his mother's great surprise, still exists.
... in my head the next logical step is to realise that Sarah Connor leads the resistance and doesn't only have value as the one who birthed the great one.
Or possibly the simple thing where a whole lot of humans could make a difference, so if it's not that one, someone else steps up.
Either way awesome.
Plus it gives John the option of becoming the hero instead of the falling rock. It's like his life thus far has been inertial, flung by someone else, but now whatever he chooses will be his own deal. Plus he'll have to convince people to follow him, do what he says, all that, because he's no longer The John Connor. Nobody has heard of him. Awesome personal growth opportunity there.
Either he stays and deals with after the apocalypse or he persuades someone to help him nip back and make it all not happen. Because those clothes were clearly post apocalyptic. So things still went boom.
Jesse kept on insisting that this time was Paradise, that she'd taken Riley to Paradise. So it's like the whole idea is that even if Paradise went boom we can still fix it. Only, fix it with time travel so it never went boom in the first place.
an interesting approach would be to have Sarah working on making it never happen in the first place and John work on fixing it, rebuilding after the boom. Two lines twisting. What would happen if she fixed the future he was already time travelled into? What's the most interesting story there?
That ending is such a stack of stories.
That was psychologically deep, consistently complex, interweaving, fair play puzzle pieces, engrossing storytelling, with a female character in the title, half the characters women, and a story focusing on motherhood and arse kicking as necessarily intertwined things. Plus there were great action sequences, things blew up, Summer Glau kicks things, and sometimes shiny metal walks around. That is such an excellent show.
Also, I'm vaguely regretting not having spread the episodes out more so I could do more thinking between episodes. Except the what-happens-next urge was far, far too strong.
... so now I'm making eep noises about how come that's the end of the disc and the box and the show...
*big sigh*
The whole setup is just fanfic bait. AU central. The ending throws it all wide open, that tension there's always been between is it predestined or was No Fate true, it comes down hard on No Fate. Anyone can go back to any point in time, with all the knowledge we the viewers have, and start over. The gift to writers in that... oh so much possibility!
... and yet when I start figuring how to play with it, I like the characters we know too much to want to jump in and boot their timelines. Every intervention creates an AU, there's no way to do it without creating new people with familiar faces. We lose everyone we love.
... *blinks some more*
... brain still working on it...
no subject
Date: 2011-02-21 09:54 pm (UTC)... damn, I think it was B7 with clones, with changes of that magnitude in their personal past, everyone we ever met did in fact die.
... with the possible exception of Sarah and John Connor. Oh, and the silver metal person we'd spent two seasons assuming was a bad guy. and John Henry the not actually a Terminator. Bzuh...