Writer: John Wirth
Director: Paul Edwards
Cast: Lena Headey (Sarah Connor), Summer Glau (Cameron Phillips), Richard T. Jones (Agent James Ellison), Thomas Dekker (John Connor), Aaron Cash (Cromartie), Brendan Hines (Andy Goode), Charlayne Woodard (Tessa Dyson), Josue Aguirre (Boy), Alessandro Toreson (Jordan), John DeVito (Young John Connor), Kristin Apgar (Cheri Westin) & Neil Hopkins (Mr Harris)
Cast: Lena Headey (Sarah Connor), Summer Glau (Cameron Phillips), Richard T. Jones (Agent James Ellison), Thomas Dekker (John Connor), Aaron Cash (Cromartie), Brendan Hines (Andy Goode), Charlayne Woodard (Tessa Dyson), Josue Aguirre (Boy), Alessandro Toreson (Jordan), John DeVito (Young John Connor), Kristin Apgar (Cheri Westin) & Neil Hopkins (Mr Harris)
Sarah finds the inventor of a chess-playing computer that could evolve into Skynet, John and Cameron go to school, Cromartie tries to regain his flesh, and Agent Ellison continues his investigation...Sarah: Nobody dies until I say so. (looks at John) Tell her.
Cameron: People die all the time. They won't wait for her.
Cameron: People die all the time. They won't wait for her.
I knew it was too good to last. After a surprisingly enjoyable start, episode 3 is unfocused and irritating, with boring subplots that only flicker into life when developing an aspect of the Terminator mythology...
The main cause for concern is Lena Headey as Sarah Connor, who has maternal empathy and a brooding vibe, but isn't yet a plausible action heroine. It's obvious that the writers have decided to tone down the vaguely-psychotic character from T2, which is understandable, but unfortunately it's left Sarah looking like a Marie Claire cover girl. She's yet to demonstrate anything but a prickly attitude towards Cameron (Summer Glau) and an overprotective streak. It's about time she showed some punch.
It doesn't help that The Turk is a story where Sarah goes "undercover" by dating a geeky phone salesman called Andy Goode (Brendan Hines), because the chess-playing computer* he's working on might evolve into megalomaniacal AI Skynet. There's the inference that Sarah might just kill Andy, but you never really believe Sarah would ever make such a judgement call, and scenes of supposed tension and romance between them are terribly flaccid.
After the fun partnership of Sarah and Cameron last week, John Connor (Thomas Dekker) gets to hang out with Terminator protector Cameron here, as they both attend school as brother and sister. This subplot is particularly annoying, as even Summer Glau's comic timing can't improve on the scripts witless "emotionless robot at school"-style dialogue. There's also something curiously wrong about the show having a light-hearted Buffy vibe -- not to mention the goof that Cameron was a perfectly able to blend into a high school with no problems in the Pilot, just two episodes ago!
Rather bizarrely, Cameron gets involved in a story with a teenage girl being tormented by graffiti (that seemingly reveals an affair with a teacher, but it's not very clear), and she later turns suicidal. The sudden shift into this life-or-death drama is badly handled and, despite the surprise that Cameron prevents John from talking her down from the rooftop, and the suicidal girl is killed. It was an effective sting to show how John is being forced, against his nature, to be cowardly -- in case he draws attention to himself -- but the subplot was badly developed.
More interesting is Cromartie, the skinless Terminator who followed Sarah through time from 1999. Here, he has a plan to re-grow his flesh: by stealing blood from a hospital and showing a scientist how to create human tissue, and force him to re-skin his endoskeleton. It's mostly interesting for fans – who get to hear what a skinless Terminator's voice sounds like, how their skin is grown, and what particular body-part they apparently need to steal. It's just a shame the acting when Cromartie reveals his skeletal form was so utterly, utterly unrealistic! If a man in a ski-mask disrobed in my bathroom and revealed himself as a robot... I'd run!
Elsewhere, Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) is hot on Sarah's tail, interviewing Carlos (the man who gave Sarah and John their fake IDs last week), and now convinced the murder of an apartment full of drug-dealers is in some way connected. The best moment arrives when fingerprints of the dealers are shown to be an exact match for young children – as the dealers were actually human resistance fighters from the future, sent back in time.
The Turk is guilty of very on-the-nose storytelling, with a particularly annoying voiceover from Sarah, which is returned to throughout the episode – gabbing on about the "fathers of our destruction"; nuclear scientists back in the 1940s. An opening dream sequence, with Sarah shooting the scientists dead, before they come back to life as Terminators, was particularly silly. Mind you, I have to commend the quality of the CGI, as these skinless Terminators are infinitely better than the "toasters" from Battlestar Galactica.
Ultimately, The Turk is pretty drab. Sarah is adrift in a boring storyline that doesn't work on any level, John and Cameron's subplot at school is limp and confused, and Ellison's is only bearable – which leaves Cromartie's re-skinning the only memorable element. I just hope the re-skinning doesn't necessitate the return of the underwhelming Owain Yeoman from the Pilot, as this series could do with a villain to equal Arnold Schwarzenegger or Robert Patrick right about now... and a Sarah Connor who's less mommy and more macho.
21 January 2008
FOX, 9/8c pm
* For more information on the real-life basis for this episode, click here.
