I'm enjoying the new Terminator series

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles takes place immediately after the events of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Lena Headey plays Sarah Connor, Thomas Dekker is her son John, the soon-to-be saviour of humankind.

In the pilot episode, John's laying low in a school in New Mexico, in 1999, when a new teacher reveals himself to be a terminator sent back in time to kill him.

Luckily the weird girl in his class also reveals herself to be a terminator (they're all over the place in this series) sent to replace the T-Arnie model destroyed at the end of the 2nd movie. This terminator, Cameron, is played straightfaced, by the awesome Summer Glau (NB: this photo is absolutely not from the series).

Forget Terminator 3: The Terminatrix (or whatever it was called), that didn't happen. Because what the T-Summer does, is transport Sarah & John 7 years into the future (thus, avoiding for the time being, Sarah's death from cancer that was reported in T3), to 2006.

The game's still the same, protect John from a legion of robots sent back to eliminate him, and try to find the origins of Skynet (now a prototype chess playing computer called The Turk).

It's violent, it's funny & it captures the same atmosphere as T2 - plenty of juxtaposing the petite Ms Glau with all manner of mechanical objects, and the same sort of humour is derived as the benign terminator learns to pass as human. It's worth watching the series just for the magnificently perfunctory "grief counselling" Cameron suffers after being the last "person" to speak (surreally) to a suicidal student. Emo, she's not.

There are also some nice nods to the earlier films, for instance, Cameron patrols LA in police uniform, rayban aviators (in the dead of night) and a motorbike. Sarah quips "Somewhere there's a naked policeman bleeding in an alley".

Oh, and that guy that always stuck me as a martian in Beverly Hills 90210 - Brian Austin Green, is also in it - he's Kyle Reese's brother (John's uncle).

Glau's a trained ballerina & one episode has her undercover at a ballet school. Later, a character muses that once machines learn to appreciate art, they may not feel the need to wipe out humanity - and cut to: Cameron alone in her room practising her ballet moves in the mirror.

Smart, violent, funny, and not unimportantly, a talented & attractive cast.

Series 2 has just been commissioned. Yay.

More Summer Glau photos (SFW) for your entertainment.

summer glau terminator - Google Image Search