Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season [Blu-ray]

This is a great series in addition to the movies. Wonderful story line.

Something weird happened in the late 2000s. Terminator had a sort of short lived Renaissance. But rather than continuing James Cameron's heralded legacy, they split a TV series that ignored the 3rd movie, and made a side movie that ignored just about everything numerically canon. Enter the Sarah Conner Chronicles. Lush, full screen, and bursting with some of the better CGI to come out in a series, TSCC comes blazing at you the moment you flip in the Blu-ray. This was released in Blu-ray's early prime, and in my opinion this shows the best of the media format. Like a lot of Warner's other shows and movies it starts off automatically. It also has a confusing menu scheme, but we're used to that at this point. The cast is A-list for TV. Headley (GoT, 300, Dredd) has proven to be a marketed star on silver and TV. If you don't know who Dillahunt (No Country for Old Men, Looper, Winter's Bone), is by now you've been under a rock. And the Mayhem Guy from the insurance commercials is a regular in this show. They all support John Connors (Thomas Dekker), a young Connor who is balancing adolescence and growing into a military strategist and figurehead for the rebellion against Skynet. The pacing and theme is very similar to the beginnings of both Terminator and T2. Rather than relying on the blue atmosphere and 4 beat pulses like in the movies, it is predominantly day shots and incognito T-800s running around LA blending into society. That is to say, its exactly like the original movies and the protagonists finding out who the enemy is by being deceived at first. In the very first episode the team is joined by a turned female T model (played by Summer Glau) who adds a much needed young powerful femme fatale element to the show, and even a strange potential love interest to Connors. This would not be the first time that the series has dabbled in the cyborg to human love angle as T2 had Schwarzenegger become a parental figure to John. What trips me up about this series is its reliance on the original two movies and keeping within canon while still delivering wham episodes. How Fox managed to cancel the series is still beyond me, but they pulled this stunt on Firefly, Family Guy, Almost Human, so many incredible shows that at his point we can't take it personally. They also let American Idol run for 15 seasons. :/ Don't take my biased review too seriously, but definitely give this long lost gem a try. The second season gets even more crazy when the singer from Garbage joins the cast and the machines crank things up to 11.

A great show that was unfortunately cancelled by the same knuckleheads who cancelled Family Guy and Futurama. TSCC picks up after T2, and incorporates very little from Rise of the Machines, pretty much ignoring what happened with that anomaly. They add a little quirk with Summer Glau's female cyborg unit as the show's bruiser, young love interest, and friend to John Connor. S1 sets up the relationships of all the characters while throwing in the occasional T-800 attack. Unfortunately the 07-08 Writer's Guild Strike cut into the season and lots of minor lose ends of S1 get dropped when the show returned in S2, but nothing that was overly significant to the major plotline going on. Picture is gorgeous, sound is great, there's machines in the episodes and the special effects are pretty spot on. The menu is terrible though. This was released during the infancy of Blu-ray, so the menu is not as navigable as current discs from WB. Lots of extras for the first season, I haven't watched all of them though. Definitely recommended for fans of the Terminator series.

The images are clear/clean for it being 10 yrs old, great story and effects. Lots of extras: deleted scenes, featurettes, gag reel. Terminator fans, young and old, will like this show. It's got action, ties to events after T2... can't give away too much plot. The 4 star rating is because of the menu structure. Disc 1 has the pilot, and 2 or 3 episodes in a 2+ hour option which has no way to access the episodes separately. You have to skip consecutively (credits too) to get to other episodes. I hope this was fixed in Disc 2 and above. I'm going to start Disc 2 today

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is an excellent series that is many ways improves on Terminator 2: Judgement Day, of which the series is a direct continuation (give or take a couple of hiccups time travel). The acting is universally great, with Summer Glau an interesting, even occasionally sensitive terminator, Cameron (cute).. Lena Headey makes a great Sarah Conner (just as good a Linda Hamilton from first two movies), and Thomas Dekker is a more interesting (and less irritating) John Connor than Edward Furlong in T2: Judgement Day. The special effect are are good (or very nearly so) as the movies. Didn't hardly miss Ah-nold. The Blu Ray DVD set is well worth having.

Terminator has been conquering the film world since James Cameron made his fever inspired dream a movie back in 1984. Twenty some years later it's attacked the small screen. This is a nice re-branding and keeps alive the independent film feel of the first movie. Getting Summer Glau, (Firefly, The Unit, 4400, Serenity) cast as a Terminator was genius. Best Buy has this at sale prices quite often making it a bargain, Best Buy has this at sale prices most of the time so it's also an outstanding bargain.

Season 1 brought us more of what we've seen before which was Terminator on Terminator fights. Season 2 delved into a deeper background and history of the machine. How long have they been around? Who did create them if not Skynet? And did Aliens have something to do with this war? This season was interesting in giving a broader insight on the mythology of a Terminator. Only negative that came from this series was that it was cancelled after this season. The ending left you desiring more. Wish they had a better ending and not a huge cliff hanger.

The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves. this is a nice "filer to the missing years between terminator movies, and pretty good for a TV shows budget restrictions, it keeps the same original storyline, but as the quote says the futures not set, so these storylines do alter the 'terminator universe, however the last terminator movie pretty much terminated the whole terminator franchise timeline anyways, great series...