Like many beloved film franchises, the Terminator series produced a couple of genre-defining classics before settling into a decades-long regime of ill-advised follow-ups. Every entry has its defenders, but there hasn't been a universally beloved Terminator film in over 30 years. However, Terminator has made some strides in other mediums. The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the first and only Terminator TV series, delivered what fans love about the first two films.
TV was in a very different place in 2008. Options were more limited, but shows were often just as short-lived. 2008 held the end of the last Writers Guild of America strike, which permanently changed the direction of network television. Perhaps more than any other era, it was easy for a network to kill a show.
What is The Sarah Connor Chronicles About?
As fans remember, at the end of T2, Sarah Connor and her son John destroy the T-1000 with the help of a reprogrammed T-800. Both machines are melted down, along with the leftover parts from the 1984 attack, theoretically preventing the invention of Skynet. Against all odds, a new Terminator appears from the future to kill Sarah and John. Sure enough, the resistance fighters of the future have sent back a new reprogrammed Terminator to save them. Cameron, the latest T-900 model, brings Sarah and John into the year 2007 to avoid the threat of other Terminators. Life on the run has always been difficult, but the new era wreaks havoc on John and Sarah's fragile life.
What Made The Sarah Connor Chronicles So Good?
Much of the magic of The Sarah Connor Chronicles is teased by the name. It's a deeper exploration of the life of Sarah Connor, the woman who would birth the savior of humanity. The original pitch behind Terminator imagined the terror of a machine violently hunting a person for something they haven't done yet, a wildly dangerous monster seeking vengeance for something as capricious as fate. The Sarah Connor Chronicles continues that concept by following Sarah and John as they struggle with the idea of destiny. They're very well-realized characters, perhaps more than in the original films, but certainly more than they were in any subsequent outing.
A lot of the success comes from the excellent cast. Game of Thrones star Lena Headey takes on the role of Sarah Connor with incredible skill. Thomas Dekker steps into John Connor's shoes, attempting to deliver a grown-up iteration of Edward Furlong's memorable performance. It's a challenging task, but Dekker outperforms Nick Stahl's similar attempt from Terminator 3. Where the Connor clan goes, a friendly Terminator must follow. This show's reprogrammed killing machine is Cameron, portrayed by Firefly and Arrow star Summer Glau. Cameron is a more complex character than a lot of the other Terminators in the franchise. Fans who loved watching the T-800 learn to understand loss will enjoy Glau's carefully balanced performance, especially when the show introduces the human who inspired the machine. The cast carries much of the weight of the show. Their textured and sincere performances lift the decent sci-fi action series into a realm of real human drama.
Why Was The Sarah Connor Chronicles Canceled?
The short answer is that it was a show on the Fox network. Before Netflix got a nasty reputation for cutting every original series it could get its hands on, Fox earned the same critique. There are long-winded Family Guy bits listing the countless programs Fox laid to rest. Some deserved the axe, while others were killed long before their time. The Sarah Connor Chronicles lasted two seasons, only 31 episodes in total. The first season enjoyed an average of nearly 11 million viewers per episode. The second season suffered a significant decline, only averaging 5.37 million. The network president announced its cancelation less than a month after the second season finale.
There have been several campaigns to bring back The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Fans have gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures for various petitions to create a third season. The series creator Josh Friedman has weighed in on the sparse chances of its return. Most notably, he mentioned the impossibility of crowdfunding a third season due to rights ownership. There have been rumors of pitches at the studio. They briefly considered a film to finish the show's story, but it never came to be. Terminator Salvation came out shortly after The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled, bringing that chapter of the franchise to a close.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles was an excellent continuation of the Terminator franchise after the first two films. It's the most obvious choice for the third-best Terminator project. While there are good parts of the most recent film, its insistence on relying on old material has trapped it in a vicious cycle. The Sarah Connor Chronicles presents a path forward that could have saved this beloved sci-fi concept. It's a shame that fans can't go back in time and save it.