{ "sometimes they go bad - they just do." }

[delga]

A great deal of this episode was DISTURBING (in a good way!)

Already I have lamented over the state of Kyle Reese. What I failed to mention is how Derek Reese? Is totally Kyle Reese's inspiration. It's all super tragic. Derek is always looking for his brother; future!John and Kyle bust into this place with lots of other humans (ANDREW ROYO ZOMG) and they find the time-travel device. Kyle gets sent to the future. (Um, for some reason Derek and his crew are kidnapped? One of them appears to be the Chess Guy? I DON'T REALLY KNOW. He cops to being one of the creators of SkyNet, anyway.) The flashbackforward is basically a way of telling us (a) Derek's story, (b) how he got sent to where Sarah and John are now, and (c) something TOTALLY CREEPPY about Cameron.

So, Derek knew Cameron in the future; she's one of the cyborgs that John reprograms (Derek is AGAINST 'metal' in the biggest way; unlike John, he thinks every single one is a threat - he's always yelling for her to get away from him, and even Dean Winters tells her to back off; the isolation there. I don't know. Cameron's lack of emotionality is something that needs questioning because I think her motives change somewhere, but I can't work out why). Whilst at the base in Topanga (where the time device is), one of the reprogrammed cyborgs goes rogue, and Cameron has to kill him. "Sometimes they go bad," she says, "they just do." !!!

This is compounded by all the weird energy floating around this episode. John gets Sarah's EMT ex-fiancé (Dean Winters) to help with Derek's wounds, and he comes in on Cameron getting rid of the exoskeleton of the cyborg she killed in episode 5. Remember how she was all weird after she did that? Well: SHE THEN SAVES THE GUYS NEUROCHIP. I-- I DON'T KNOW. !!! This is straight after a conversation in which Sarah, being all aggressive, tells Cameron not to kill Dean Winters. It's all TENSE (mostly because I want Cameron to be trustworthy) and then SHE JUST POCKETS THE DAMN CHIP. I am freaking out! Has Cameron gone rogue? Such is the suggestion. This makes me sad for many a reason. (I'm not certain I can believe it though because it has RED HERRING written all over it.)

AND THEN IT TURNS OUT THAT DEREK REALLY WAS THE ONE TO KILL CHESS!GUY, JUST LIKE SARAH THOUGHT OH MY GOD, BECAUSE HE KNEW. So, you know, DEREK may be rogue (because ultimately he doesn't trust John Connor as much as Kyle; the show seems to imply hat Connor is super secret about everything - even Sarah says he doesn't trust anyone enough to tell them about his father - and so the troops sometimes wonder what his agenda is, and why they're blindly going into battle. Sometimes it sounds like there could be a MUTINY which makes it doubly scary) and ANDREW ROYO was one of the operatives that was dead in the house when Sarah, John and Cameron first come for the safe. WOEFACE.

Anyway, Connor ends up having to tell Derek that Kyle is dead (um, hello, first movie!) and the last voice over (as we watch Derek kill Chess!guy) is Sarah quoting Kyle's words from T1:

Listen and understand. The machine is out there. It can't be bargained with; it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop ever, until you are dead.

Which, in some ways, negates the emotional arc of T2, but so does T3 (and much of this series). So. GOD. SO TRAGIC. And Derek basically comes back and kills one of his own guys (which, um, makes NO SENSE, really, because he would be MUCH OLDER. Future!Connor is much, much older than Kyle) because HE HAS TO. Because he KNOWS what the machines will do. And because if there is no machine, then HIS BROTHER WON'T DIE. This, for Derek, is all about Kyle! Which is so... he doesn't know! HE DOESN'T KNOW.

(There's also a whole subplot involving Sarah and Dean Winters but I kind of don't care so much because of all the other stuff going on. I think she does love him, and he's probably the first person she's felt true affection for since Kyle but... I don't know. There's all this story with Derek this week. Dean Winters' character is a bit of a sap.) (HAHAHAH, except for the MARVELLOUS scene where he encounters Cameron. He's all "YOU'RE PRETTY BUT SUPER CREEPY," with hand motions and everything, and she's all, "Yes. This is truth." And then, I don't know. Sometimes it feels like the calculations in Cameron's head... like, the scene gets genuinely scary. She tells him to leave. Sometimes it seems like she's feeling rage, or anger, or something human, something destructive. At the end of the last episode, that note she was writing? It felt like she was writing it to the terminator, not to the girl who committed suicide; she pulls out the neurochip and it's like she's having to face the reality of her actions. Which negates a lot of the canon, but seriously. In that conversation with ex-fiancé, she looks like she's fuelled by resentment. SO WEIRD. SO CREEPY.) (This is ultimately what makes her conversation with Sarah so unsettling. Because she looks for the left hand, and Sarah is depressingly insistent about getting rid of every last bolt, like Cameron doesn't know that. And I wonder if Cameron's motivations are somehow spurred by Sarah's continuing lack of trust - and John's, too. I often wonder what that relationship was like in the future. THINKY, THINKY.)

This alternate timeline business is head-screwy, though, now that I've seen T1&2. Everyone makes me sad! Everyone is tortured! Sarah is still so fucked up! Cameron may be evil! Derek doesn't know he and John are related! AIE AIE AIE.

I LOVE THIS A LOT, GUYS. LIKE. !!!!! TOO MUCH, POSSIBLY.

Comments

[the-grynne.livejournal.com]

Which, in some ways, negates the emotional arc of T2, but so does T3 (and much of this series). So. GOD. SO TRAGIC.

My interpretation of her voiceover against that scene of Derek killing Andy Goode was that Sarah's words were supposed to be ironic - that the war had turned some men into machines, metaphorically, and meanwhile the machines were developing more and more human qualities.

Cameron, keeping the neural chip when she ought to have destroyed - could be that she has some unknown agenda, probably answerable only to future!John. Or it could be that she has something like a conscience, an internal switch that balks at destroying something like her so completely.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's interesting, because I was reading it as a justification of Derek's actions - that what Kyle told her is a mantra that Derek lived by, too, which is why he felt justified in killing Andy Goode (thanks for the name - I've been calling him "Chess Guy" for forever).

I wondered this, too! Because in 1x04, she pockets one of the bars of coltan, too. I think it's a little too obvious to suggest that she's gone haywire (especially with the anvil dropped in the flash-forward - how superb was Glau's delivery? This role was mad for her). Also, I'm partial to the idea that future!John placed a lot of trust in her, and programming a secondary mission is more than plausible.