Two years after the events in Terminator 2, Sarah Connor and her son John now find themselves alone in a very dangerous, complicated world. Fugitives from the law, they are confronted with the reality that more enemies from the future, and the present, could attack at any moment...

WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS!

The pilot episode of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles picks up the events shortly after the second Terminator movie. However, I assume, in order to avoid obvious production headache of reproducing pre-2000 technology, cultural references and fashions, by the pilot's end the main characters are thrust into the present day - courtesy of the same time travel procedure we've seen used in the Terminator movies.

Sarah and John find themselves in a very dangerous and complicated world - made all the more strange by the fact that they've missed out on almost ten years of world events and technological breakthroughs. As fugitives from the law, they are confronted with the reality that more enemies from the future, and the present, including Skynet, could attack at any moment.

The two focus all their efforts on stopping the birth of a technological enemy, as they attempt to track down the true source of Skynet’s activation and hopefully change the fate of humanity. In their quest they are aided by a female cyborg assassin from the future. This Terminator is yet another new model, TOK715, that has been sent back from the year 2027 to protect Sarah and John. Her full capabilities have yet to be discovered, but she is capable of blending in much better with humans than any of the previous Terminators we've seen. She can even consume food.

Sarah Conner is played by Lena Headey, John Conner by Thomas Dekker and Cameron Phillips, the new Terminator sent to protect Sarah and John, is played by Summer Glau (Firefly, Serenity). While a lot of fans of the movies have bemoaned the fact that Sarah Connor looks nothing like Linda Hamilton, I really don't see it as a problem - actually more of a blessing. I know it's blasphemous... but I always thought that Hamilton had a tendency to look a little to mannish (cue abusive e-mails by the dozen). Headey is a much more attractive character - you can believe that Kyle Reese would have risked everything to be shot through time in order to rescue her, purely on the basis of seeing her photo.

Pursued by FBI agent James Ellison, who believes that Sarah is still mentally unstable, the trio must stay one step ahead of the other Terminators that are hiding in the shadows, waiting for their moment to stop our heroes quest.

Thankfully, despite the fact there are an unknown number of Terminators in this part of the timeline, the show doesn't descend into the Terminator-of-the-week style show it could have. While we do get to see several different cyborgs, they are all programmed for specific jobs - not all of which include deleting the Connors from history.

This Season One box set contains all nine episodes and, as the story unfolds, Ellison starts to wonder whether Sarah's original crazed claims have any substance to them - especially when, in the course of his investigations, he finds the hand of one of the Terminators. To be honest, this transformation from FBI agent who is after the Connors, to FBI agent who could be a potential ally, was handled a little too quickly. I'm assuming this is because of the fact that the whole season one arc was condensed into a paltry nine episodes.

It was also great to see that characters from the movies make appearances in the series including Tarissa Dyson and Dr. Peter Silberman, as well as the fact we get to see events in the future with Kyle Reese.

Stargate: SG-1 fans will be pleased to see that Master Bra'tac (Tony Amendola) makes an appearance, as does Craig Fairbrass - who played Arkad in SG-1, but we Brits know him better as Dan from Eastenders. And another notable appearance is made by Adam Godley (who did a wonderful job of playing Kenneth Williams in Cor, Blimey!) as a scientist who is given the formula to produce a synthetic skin material.

Extras are a little poor, all we get are a bunch of deleted scenes (4 min, 40 sec on disc one and 2 min on disc two) and that's your lot. Also these nine episodes could have easily been spread across two DVD instead of three, with a more realistic RRP of say £20.

While this is a fantastic series, the lack of any extras, combined with a higher than expected retail price, might mean that some are better advised to wait a while until stores discount this release - or purchase it from the cheapest online store (surely no one pays full the full RRP these days anyway).

Price and content issues aside, this is a promising start to the series.

8

Nick Smithson