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Bronchitis and My own hopefully coherent musings on Sarah Connor Chronicles
Helpful article on what Bronchitis is can be found here:
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/bronchitis/article_em.htm
Feeling better than I was, so the fever must be gone. Also no longer cold. Am also a little less tired and loopy, possibly from the meds I've been taking and the fever that keeps coming and going. Yesterday fever was 103, this morning normal, then back to 100 after I ran a few errands (ie - the pharmacy and the grocery store). Too sapped to do much else. Am hoping can go to work tomorrow - sort of have to, have a meeting on Tuesday, plus training on Wed - can't reschedule the training. After reading above article - fever, body aches, headache, coughing, are all signs of bronchitis and if they last for more than four days - pneumonia. So with any luck I just have bronchitis - in any event - am going to get a doc appointment next week to make sure.
This past week had a Sanctuary and a Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles marathon. Both are cult tv shows, and both a bit on the trippy side. They also feature very bright and tough female leads. Sarah Connor is better written and acted, not to mention produced, but Sanctuary is sort of fun - doesn't require as much thought either, which is good thing when you're sick and the best you can do is tree pretty, fire bad.
Rented the Heath Ledger flick - Ned Kelly - which put me to sleep. So, will most likely be sending it back to whence it came.
Not competely sure I know what's going on in Sarah Connor - which may not bode well for its survival, some people are less tolerant of that than I am. I like shows that I've got to figure out. (Obviously - or I wouldn't have been watching My Own Worste Enemy, which the critics couldn't even follow.)
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles falls within the category of sci-fi/fantasy known as "time-travel" - which is difficult to do without confusing the audience or reader. Also you have to be consistent and adhere to certain rules. There's two ways to go about it - either what you do in the past is necessary to maintain the future you are in or the butterfly effect - going back to create a better one often has dicey and unforeseen consequences. Sarah Connor appears to be doing both, which is a bit risky. The Terminator films only really did one - the character of John Connor was merely sending back people to protect his life and ensure his survival, while Skynet was sending back people to ensure its survival and Connor's demise. Here - John Connor and his allies in the future appear to be doing both - ensuring John's survival and Skynet's demise. Which logically makes more sense. Both, Skynet and John Connor, are having somewhat dicey, butterfly effect results.
As to what is happening regarding the time-travel aspect?
I think three episodes clue us in :
1. The episode where Jesse kidnaps Charles Fisher (acted marvelously by Adam Bush and the guy who used to be Toby on the West Wing) - who she insists tortured Derek Reese in the future that she came from. Derek has no memory of this happening. According to Fisher - he was imprisoned for stealing government secrets, put in solitary confinement for years, and when the nuclear holocaust occurred - survived due to his confinement - which changed him and made him a sadistic monster - he tells all this to himself. Towards the end of the episode - we are shown why Charles Fisher was sent back - it is to steal the secrets, and ensure his own imprisonment - he in effect creates himself - he is the cause of his own downfall. Derek wants to kill the present Charles Fisher - but Jesse kills the future one - stating the present one is still innocent, he has not done these crimes.
The question is whether Jesse and Derek's kidnapping of Fisher and torture of the Fishers - caused Fisher to become the sadistic drone of SKynet or to choose a different path. It's not exactly answered.
Derek claims the future must have changed, because in the one he came from Fisher never tortured him. But, Jesse, appears to have arrived after Derek - which leads me to believe that what they did, may have changed things so that Derek was tortured by
Fisher. OR - perhaps, Derek merely blocked it out - we still don't know what happened to Derek when he was kidnapped by Skynet back in Season 1. It's not clear.
At any rate - the episode does show that Skynet and Connor's allies are locked in a struggle to change the future via time travel. It's their interaction that causes what happens in the future to happen. Much as it did in the First Terminator movie - where Reese was sent back in time to save Sarah Connor from a Terminator and ended up creating John Connor.
2. There's another episode - where Derek saves a girl who in the future saves his life and all of humanity. In the future, the girl's older sister, Lauren, says: "Thank you for saving my sister." Which was before Derek went back in time and did so, something he did not know he was going to do. Similar to Reese going back in time to save Sarah not knowing they'd fall in love and have a son. He dies before she discovers she's pregnant.
3. In the future that Jesse comes from, John Connor is making mistakes and is too trusting of Cameron and the metals. She has traveled back through time with Riley, a girl she picked up on the streets, and with little training, has assigned the task of getting John away from Cameron. Riley is a niaf and a tortured soul. What little we know of Jesse's purpose is conveyed through brief discussions with Derek and Riley. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to trust Jesse or not. But then I'm not completely sure about Cameron.
We've been told that Cameron's purpose was to get close to John Connor and slowly bring him down not to kill him. This was told to us in the episode where Cameron remembers the person in which her cyborg was templated upon. Apparently the cyborgs have human memories that they can access. Cameron has had three conflicting directives programmed into her - kill John Connor, get close to him and destroy him, save John Connor and help him destroy SKynet. And she's been damaged at least twice. So which directive is front and center?
It's not entirely clear. Cameron has demonstrated by her actions both in private and in front of the Connor's that her goal is further their agenda. She goes out of her way in the episode with the crippled Librian to get rid of a time traveler who had been sent back to execute an elected official in 2010. And in that episode, demonstrates an odd sort of empathy - for the cripple, with mixed results. She clearly cares about him - but is unable to show it. For Cameron is also crippled in a way, set apart, and appears to long for the opposite. On the other hand - she clearly has mixed feelings about the Connor's desire to destroy her kind.
And human life - has limited value in her opinion. Which makes sense - after all, they kill cyborgs who pose a danger to them, why should it be any different with humans? Often she's proven right - the three boys who rob them - is just one example. Cameron would have killed all three. Sarah lets one go and it is that boy who tells the Terminator where to find them.
Yet, as John tells Sarah - we aren't murderers. Cameron doesn't look at it as murder.
What doesn't make much sense in regards to the Jesse/Riley Storyline is why Jesse hasn't talked to or approached Sarah Connor? The fact that she hasn't and is being duplicitious, leads me to suspect her actions. Also her treatment of Riley which is brusque and abusive, has apparently backfired - since Riley attempted to commit suicide. Clearly Jesse came up with this plan on her own and not with the guidance of John Connor. And I'm wondering if maybe Jesse's actions may have backfired, triggering the future she's trying to change - a future where John trusts Cameron? Just as her actions with Charles Fisher did? It's unclear - what if any reprecussions Riley's attempt at suicide will cause - will John pull away and blame Cameron for the suicide?
**********
Then there's the story thread with Ellison and Skynet - where Ellison has inadvertently found himself playing parent to the ancestor of the monster that eventually kills all his friends.
He thinks, perhaps arrogantly, that he can change this monster's path - give it conscience or at least a set of rules to live by. And he may or may not be right. I doubt it. Valueing human life is not something the machines quite get - they don't have souls or consciences. In the future, the machines see the humans much the same way that Australians see rabbits or we look upon cockroaches - something we can't quite get rid of. In the present - they see humans as a means to an end. But, whether Ellison's interactions with Skynet change it's moral view of humans - leading to a slightly different future - one in which Skynet doesn't try to exterminate all humans - remains to be seen.
***********
The third story thread - the trippy one - is whatever is going on with Sarah Connor. She's become obsessed with three dots and as far as we can tell is going in the opposite direction of Manson's artificial intelligence experiments. The last episode has her tracking a blogger named Abraham at an UFO convention.
This is a fascinating exploration of Sarah's own mental state. The person she finds, is a man who has become a woman. Her name was Alan Park. Alan Park was a techie who worked in a secret laboratory with exoskeleton's. When Alan Park got suspicious and started blogging about it and asking questions - he had to change his name, appearance and gender to survive - becoming who he really wanted to be - a waitress. He confronts Sarah and asks her how she became so tough. Why she doesn't feel the fear or sorrow of death? That she is more like a man than a woman and living a man's life. He asks who she was before - and she says, a waitress.
In her dream state - she sees two selves, a Sarah spinning a knife on the ground and a Sarah in a waitress uniform. Both are her, yet both aren't.
After Alan is killed, Sarah follows the lead he left her, invades a warehouse, gets shot by a security guard who she manages to kill in a gun-battle, then lies staring up at the sky - where she sees the same image that was in the photographs and drawings on Alan Park's trailers walls. A metal object that had three dots. The object makes me think of a satellite
or one of the walking exoskeletons we see in her nightmares of the future.
So, has Skynet sent these satellite beings back into the past? Is the government further along in its creation of them than Sarah knew? Or did John Connor get hold of one and send it back? Or is it a UFO? Or just part of Sarah's dream?
I'm guessing it's probably part of her dream or that the government is further along than she expected.
Can't wait for the show to start up again - which I'm thinking is either February or March.
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/bronchitis/article_em.htm
Feeling better than I was, so the fever must be gone. Also no longer cold. Am also a little less tired and loopy, possibly from the meds I've been taking and the fever that keeps coming and going. Yesterday fever was 103, this morning normal, then back to 100 after I ran a few errands (ie - the pharmacy and the grocery store). Too sapped to do much else. Am hoping can go to work tomorrow - sort of have to, have a meeting on Tuesday, plus training on Wed - can't reschedule the training. After reading above article - fever, body aches, headache, coughing, are all signs of bronchitis and if they last for more than four days - pneumonia. So with any luck I just have bronchitis - in any event - am going to get a doc appointment next week to make sure.
This past week had a Sanctuary and a Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles marathon. Both are cult tv shows, and both a bit on the trippy side. They also feature very bright and tough female leads. Sarah Connor is better written and acted, not to mention produced, but Sanctuary is sort of fun - doesn't require as much thought either, which is good thing when you're sick and the best you can do is tree pretty, fire bad.
Rented the Heath Ledger flick - Ned Kelly - which put me to sleep. So, will most likely be sending it back to whence it came.
Not competely sure I know what's going on in Sarah Connor - which may not bode well for its survival, some people are less tolerant of that than I am. I like shows that I've got to figure out. (Obviously - or I wouldn't have been watching My Own Worste Enemy, which the critics couldn't even follow.)
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles falls within the category of sci-fi/fantasy known as "time-travel" - which is difficult to do without confusing the audience or reader. Also you have to be consistent and adhere to certain rules. There's two ways to go about it - either what you do in the past is necessary to maintain the future you are in or the butterfly effect - going back to create a better one often has dicey and unforeseen consequences. Sarah Connor appears to be doing both, which is a bit risky. The Terminator films only really did one - the character of John Connor was merely sending back people to protect his life and ensure his survival, while Skynet was sending back people to ensure its survival and Connor's demise. Here - John Connor and his allies in the future appear to be doing both - ensuring John's survival and Skynet's demise. Which logically makes more sense. Both, Skynet and John Connor, are having somewhat dicey, butterfly effect results.
As to what is happening regarding the time-travel aspect?
I think three episodes clue us in :
1. The episode where Jesse kidnaps Charles Fisher (acted marvelously by Adam Bush and the guy who used to be Toby on the West Wing) - who she insists tortured Derek Reese in the future that she came from. Derek has no memory of this happening. According to Fisher - he was imprisoned for stealing government secrets, put in solitary confinement for years, and when the nuclear holocaust occurred - survived due to his confinement - which changed him and made him a sadistic monster - he tells all this to himself. Towards the end of the episode - we are shown why Charles Fisher was sent back - it is to steal the secrets, and ensure his own imprisonment - he in effect creates himself - he is the cause of his own downfall. Derek wants to kill the present Charles Fisher - but Jesse kills the future one - stating the present one is still innocent, he has not done these crimes.
The question is whether Jesse and Derek's kidnapping of Fisher and torture of the Fishers - caused Fisher to become the sadistic drone of SKynet or to choose a different path. It's not exactly answered.
Derek claims the future must have changed, because in the one he came from Fisher never tortured him. But, Jesse, appears to have arrived after Derek - which leads me to believe that what they did, may have changed things so that Derek was tortured by
Fisher. OR - perhaps, Derek merely blocked it out - we still don't know what happened to Derek when he was kidnapped by Skynet back in Season 1. It's not clear.
At any rate - the episode does show that Skynet and Connor's allies are locked in a struggle to change the future via time travel. It's their interaction that causes what happens in the future to happen. Much as it did in the First Terminator movie - where Reese was sent back in time to save Sarah Connor from a Terminator and ended up creating John Connor.
2. There's another episode - where Derek saves a girl who in the future saves his life and all of humanity. In the future, the girl's older sister, Lauren, says: "Thank you for saving my sister." Which was before Derek went back in time and did so, something he did not know he was going to do. Similar to Reese going back in time to save Sarah not knowing they'd fall in love and have a son. He dies before she discovers she's pregnant.
3. In the future that Jesse comes from, John Connor is making mistakes and is too trusting of Cameron and the metals. She has traveled back through time with Riley, a girl she picked up on the streets, and with little training, has assigned the task of getting John away from Cameron. Riley is a niaf and a tortured soul. What little we know of Jesse's purpose is conveyed through brief discussions with Derek and Riley. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to trust Jesse or not. But then I'm not completely sure about Cameron.
We've been told that Cameron's purpose was to get close to John Connor and slowly bring him down not to kill him. This was told to us in the episode where Cameron remembers the person in which her cyborg was templated upon. Apparently the cyborgs have human memories that they can access. Cameron has had three conflicting directives programmed into her - kill John Connor, get close to him and destroy him, save John Connor and help him destroy SKynet. And she's been damaged at least twice. So which directive is front and center?
It's not entirely clear. Cameron has demonstrated by her actions both in private and in front of the Connor's that her goal is further their agenda. She goes out of her way in the episode with the crippled Librian to get rid of a time traveler who had been sent back to execute an elected official in 2010. And in that episode, demonstrates an odd sort of empathy - for the cripple, with mixed results. She clearly cares about him - but is unable to show it. For Cameron is also crippled in a way, set apart, and appears to long for the opposite. On the other hand - she clearly has mixed feelings about the Connor's desire to destroy her kind.
And human life - has limited value in her opinion. Which makes sense - after all, they kill cyborgs who pose a danger to them, why should it be any different with humans? Often she's proven right - the three boys who rob them - is just one example. Cameron would have killed all three. Sarah lets one go and it is that boy who tells the Terminator where to find them.
Yet, as John tells Sarah - we aren't murderers. Cameron doesn't look at it as murder.
What doesn't make much sense in regards to the Jesse/Riley Storyline is why Jesse hasn't talked to or approached Sarah Connor? The fact that she hasn't and is being duplicitious, leads me to suspect her actions. Also her treatment of Riley which is brusque and abusive, has apparently backfired - since Riley attempted to commit suicide. Clearly Jesse came up with this plan on her own and not with the guidance of John Connor. And I'm wondering if maybe Jesse's actions may have backfired, triggering the future she's trying to change - a future where John trusts Cameron? Just as her actions with Charles Fisher did? It's unclear - what if any reprecussions Riley's attempt at suicide will cause - will John pull away and blame Cameron for the suicide?
**********
Then there's the story thread with Ellison and Skynet - where Ellison has inadvertently found himself playing parent to the ancestor of the monster that eventually kills all his friends.
He thinks, perhaps arrogantly, that he can change this monster's path - give it conscience or at least a set of rules to live by. And he may or may not be right. I doubt it. Valueing human life is not something the machines quite get - they don't have souls or consciences. In the future, the machines see the humans much the same way that Australians see rabbits or we look upon cockroaches - something we can't quite get rid of. In the present - they see humans as a means to an end. But, whether Ellison's interactions with Skynet change it's moral view of humans - leading to a slightly different future - one in which Skynet doesn't try to exterminate all humans - remains to be seen.
***********
The third story thread - the trippy one - is whatever is going on with Sarah Connor. She's become obsessed with three dots and as far as we can tell is going in the opposite direction of Manson's artificial intelligence experiments. The last episode has her tracking a blogger named Abraham at an UFO convention.
This is a fascinating exploration of Sarah's own mental state. The person she finds, is a man who has become a woman. Her name was Alan Park. Alan Park was a techie who worked in a secret laboratory with exoskeleton's. When Alan Park got suspicious and started blogging about it and asking questions - he had to change his name, appearance and gender to survive - becoming who he really wanted to be - a waitress. He confronts Sarah and asks her how she became so tough. Why she doesn't feel the fear or sorrow of death? That she is more like a man than a woman and living a man's life. He asks who she was before - and she says, a waitress.
In her dream state - she sees two selves, a Sarah spinning a knife on the ground and a Sarah in a waitress uniform. Both are her, yet both aren't.
After Alan is killed, Sarah follows the lead he left her, invades a warehouse, gets shot by a security guard who she manages to kill in a gun-battle, then lies staring up at the sky - where she sees the same image that was in the photographs and drawings on Alan Park's trailers walls. A metal object that had three dots. The object makes me think of a satellite
or one of the walking exoskeletons we see in her nightmares of the future.
So, has Skynet sent these satellite beings back into the past? Is the government further along in its creation of them than Sarah knew? Or did John Connor get hold of one and send it back? Or is it a UFO? Or just part of Sarah's dream?
I'm guessing it's probably part of her dream or that the government is further along than she expected.
Can't wait for the show to start up again - which I'm thinking is either February or March.
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Good news is I'm feeling better now. Still have a little congestion, but not really coughing any more. And for the first day in about three weeks, actually don't feel that bad.
It seems to be a 3-4 week deal. My doctor also has it.
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it is terrible to have to drag yourself in when you are still feeling sick!
And thanks for the comments about T:SCC, I'm going to reread it all when my own head is clearer... but you always offer interesting insights.
no subject
Hope you are feeling better too...
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Did you see the trippy previews for next season?
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no subject
But each time, I've seen this done - one of the two people doesn't realize "that person" is their father or "that person" is their son - which from my point of view is a) annoying and b) somewhat cliche. [Angel is one of the few shows that did not play that game - well they did, but we got the resolution as opposed to just being teased about it.] So, I find myself wary. From the previews - it looks like Kyle Reese may not know that John is his son - in which case, it's either a Kyle from a different time-line/future or he's traveled back twice and this is before he got Sarah pregnant with Connor - and you're right that's really messing up things.
I'm not sure how this is going to work - without convoluting the story too much. Derek Reese coming back in time is one thing, but Kyle?
Of course there is a third, far grimer, option - Kyle isn't Kyle, but a Terminator version of Kyle. After all Cameron is a copy of a human and they had a Terminator come after Ellison who looked exactly like Ellison. So why not do a version of Kyle? Be an excellent way to mess with the enemy's heads? Since the whole son/daughter meeting his/her father deal is a kink of mine - I'm a little worried that's the option they'll pick - because it will be painful to watch. Doesn't look like it though - because he does say to her - "come with me if you want to live".
Which leaves the who wrinkle in time bit - and I'm not sure how that will work. Time travel is a dicy thing to play with plotwise - too many ways you can screw things up.
no subject
I've mentioned before that it's my guess that John gave Cameron a program structure that effectively allows her to have free will. Another guess is that Catherine Weaver also has free will, but was given it by the machines, who have come to think that if free will is what makes Connor and the humans so tenacious, then they need it too. Except, of course, they aren't really sure just what exactly free will is.
BTW, I don't think it's a coincidence that Weaver is a T-1001, just one binary bit different than a T-1000. Programmers all know what can happen when you "flip a bit".
no subject
I also think Catherine Weaver - has free will. Her mission is too complicated for her not to have it. She has the mission to create Skynet or give birth to her own parent/creator. That requires complex cognitive and analytical reasoning, not to mention the ability to persuade and con - which you can't do without free will.
But, like you say, they may not know what free will really means, anymore than we do. It's a double-edge gift after-all.
Makes people unpredictable. That's what Catherine says humans have that computers don't - their actions are unpredictable, you don't really know what they will do or necessarily why.
While with a computer - there are a limited number of options and it will always do whatever it takes to accomplish it's main objective. A human may deter from the main objective or dismiss the objective entirely for something else unrelated. Part of the conflict between Cameron and John - is Cameron is trying to stick to the "main objective" keeping John safe and John keeps taking weird detours which place him in harms way.
Same thing with Sarah, she keeps detouring from the course, going off and doing things that do not fit the prime objective and if anything conflict with it.
I think that may be one of the central themes of the series - what free will really means and the degree to which it alters things.