Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is set in the time between Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Season One opens in 1999, when Sarah (Lena Headey) and John Connor (Thomas Dekker) are living in Nebraska, where they have been safely hiding from Skynet for a couple of years. Sarah is engaged to a paramedic called Charlie Dixon (Dean Winters) and John, despite the fact that he is the future leader of the free world, is trying to be as normal a teenager as he could, but he is frustrated with their life on the run.
In the pilot, John is found by a terminator (Cromartie) who shows up to kill him and Cameron (Summer Glau), a second terminator sent back in time—by future John—to protect him. After an attempt at school, Cameron gives the Connors a chance to disappear completely, via a time jump eight years into the future, thereby making it appear that they were killed in a bank robbery attempt. In the jump, Cameron reveals that they jumped over Sarah’s death of cancer.
In the course of the short 9-episode season, Sarah, John, and Cameron are found by an FBI agent named Ellison (Richard T. Jones) who was working their case before the time jump. They track down the original computer (The TURK) that is the basis of Skynet (this is the central goal and source of their motivation); they discover that other terminators have been sent back in time to fulfill other missions; and that future John Connor has sent back Derek Reese, (Brian Austin Green), to protect him from future attempts on his life.
Both Lena Headey and Thomas Dekker give dark, brooding performances that further the connection that the audience may have already had from Terminator 2. The unfolding storyline keeps you interested and makes you want to keep watching, one episode after another. And Summer Glau does a good job at the mechanics of being a cyborg and her character throws some interesting curve balls, like a ballet dancing cyborg with a lot of grace.
[Also read our review of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – The Complete Second Season.]
