Spoilers. This was the first episode of season 2 where my eyes glazed over and it became a real struggle to watch, or care about anything that was happening. Annoyingly, the core idea behind this episode (particularly the way it fractured the narrative into past, present and future storylines) was a cool idea, and should have provided epic, clever, dramatic sci-fi. On the contrary, this was a sluggish mess, primarily because of duff characterization.In the present, Derek (Brian Austin Green) has been asked by Sarah (Lena Headey) to help a teenager called Lauren (Samantha Krutzfeldt) and her heavily-pregnant mother, following an attack by a T-888. Lauren is fine, but her mom is in labour and needs urgent medical attention if she's to deliver her baby…
Six months prior, Sarah and Cameron (Summer Glau) had arrived to protect Lauren's family from another Terminator, following a lead from the Connors' plot-device blood wall. Leaving Cameron to battle the marauding T-888 in the woods outside the family's cabin, Sarah tries to work out which of them Skynet has targeted -- mother, father David (Carlos Jacott) or teen daughter. Matters are complicated by the arrival of next-door neighbour Roger (Johnny Sneed), who it's revealed has been having an affair with Gail.
In the future of 2027 A.D, Skynet is deploying a new biological weapon against the human resistance, already killing 200 people stationed at one outpost. Future Derek volunteers to rescue the sole survivor, a young girl called Sydney (Haley Hudson), whose immunity can be used to develop a vaccine. Along the way, we're also treated to Derek's first meeting of future-girlfriend Jesse (Stephanie Jacobsen), who remains as prickly and intentionally dislikeable as ever.
Boiled down to quick summations, "Alpine Fields" doesn't sound half bad. Trouble is, the execution was awful. Two directors worked on this episode (Charles Beeson and Bryan Spicer), which can mean only one of two things: the episode was particularly demanding and required co-direction (perhaps because of time constraints?), or a second director was brought in to fix a mess at the last-minute.
Whatever the reason, John Enbom's script was actually the root cause of the problem. It had noble intentions and a few good ideas, but more drafts were clearly required. One problem was how, by virtue of seeing events in the present-day story, we knew Gail and Lauren would survive the cabin siege in the past. The mystery over who the T-888 wanted to terminate held mild interest -- but became obvious once Gail revealed her pregnancy. The ouroboros tail to the future (yep, immune Sydney was the baby born in the present-day story) was good, but the episode wasn't proficient enough to reveal that information in a surprising or clever way.
The numbing effect of the family melodrama in the cabin (a bored housewife, married to a banker involved in illegal work, gets knocked up by their neighbour while he's away on business) also chipped away at my tenacity to keep watching. T:TSCC struggles whenever it tries to show genuine human relationships, really -- handling emotionless robots and stoical heroes are about its limit. This was like a very, very bad soap. Even the cyborg scraps between the Triple-8 and Cameron were played out off-screen, which was disappointing. And what was John doing while all this was going on, hm? Over at Riley's? Ultimately, beyond seeing Derek meet Jesse, the latter of whom is given the episode's one good scene (talking about rabbits in Australia), this was a big waste of time.
8 December 2008
Fox, 9/8c
Writer: John Enbom
Directors: Charles Beeson & Bryan Spicer
Cast: Brian Austin Green (Derek), Summer Glau (Cameron), Lena Headey (Sarah), Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen (Jesse), Fay Wolf (Lila), Jullian Dulce Vide (Cop), Rebecca Creskoff (Anne), Samantha Krutzfeldt (Lauren), Carlos Jacott (David), Yolanda Lloyd Delgado (Gail Silver), Oren Dayan (Mike), Johnny Sneed (Roger), Peter Mensah (General Perry) & Haley Hudson (Sydney)
