Series / Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

aka: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Will you join us?

"In the future, my son will lead mankind in a war against SkyNet, the computer system programmed to destroy the world. It has sent machines back through time, some to kill him, one to protect him. Today we fight to stop SkyNet from ever being created, to change our future, to change his fate. The war to save mankind begins now."

— Sarah Connor

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a Science Fiction series set in the Terminator universe that aired in 2008-2009. It's set after the first two films, and although it acknowledges some plot elements of the third movie, it goes in a different direction. Sarah and John are still on the run from the FBI, a new Terminator, and their own sorry social lives—that is until Cameron (Summer Glau) shows up to bring them from 1999 to 2007 in order to stop SkyNet from being built.

The first season deals with Sarah (Lena Headey), John, and friendly machine Cameron on the run from the killer cyborgs. They are soon joined by Derek Reese, John's uncle, who introduces himself by murdering a man who may have helped contribute to the design of his future's SkyNet. This marks the start of the show's headlong dive into murky morality. The foursome set up shop in Los Angeles, where they try to stop the future war and hide from FBI Agent Ellison.

The show then takes a quick swerve with Ellison's growing awareness of the machines and the introduction of a love interest for John. The Terminator Cromartie, who has been hunting the Connors since the first episode, is re-appropriated for another, possibly sinister use. The second season starts with a Terminator of the Week style but soon grows more philosophical and starts to develop its own Myth Arc. The series was canceled after its second season.

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This show provides examples of:

• AB Negative: In "Dungeons & Dragons", we find out Sarah is Type O- but can't give blood to Derek, yet John has the same blood type and can, a case of Artistic License. While O- are universal donors, that only applies once the plasma has been filtered out, so that part was correct. However, someone whose blood is Type O can't have a child whose blood is Type AB; children of a pairing between Type O and Type AB would have a 50% chance of being either Type A or Type B.
• Aborted Arc:
  • Thanks to the writers' strike, most of the plot lines opened up in Season 1 were left hanging. We never got to find out what happened with Jordon, the girl who committed suicide over the graffiti (though it's implied she was sleeping with the guidance counselor), or what happened at Cheri Weston's old school and why her father was keeping her under lock and key. And poor Morris never got to go to the prom with Cameron. The producers explained that they never found the "normal life" storylines very satisfying, and decided they were just cluttering up the show.
  • Also, "Dungeons & Dragons" contains strong hints that something mysterious and ominous was done to Derek while he was a prisoner of the Machines, possibly to turn him into some kind of living booby-trap or Manchurian Agent. This is never followed up.
• Action Girl: In fact, the tagline of the series should be Girls Gone Wild.
  Derek: Remind me again, why are the boys out here and the girls in there?
  John: Because one of the girls is harder than nuclear nails.
  Derek: And the other one's a cyborg.
• All Just a Dream: Sarah has frequent nightmares. The most notable one is the opener of the pilot, although there's an entire episode about them in season 2.
• Alternate Timeline:
  • The pilot sets one up in bringing John Connor forward in time, thus invalidating Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. But the events that led up to it are still valid, and e.g. Sarah is told that she would have died from cancer.
  • Season 2 features multiple divergent timelines as the protagonists change the future. Someone who travels back in time "after" someone else remembers future events differently if the first person changes anything. (Probably they always change something just by being there.)
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version has "Ghost" by GACKT as its opening theme.
• And I Must Scream: John Henry gets turned off after being controlled remotely by a rival AI and feels himself powering down, slowly and painfully. Furthermore, when "he" is brought back online, it's without access to networking or his cyborg body out of an excess of caution, leaving him with extremely limited input/output capability, which is very clearly traumatic.
• Anti Heroes: Definitely. The whole cast pushing the envelope as far as they possibly can without quite making the show about Villain Protagonists. Sarah Connor even tells somebody at one point, "Yes we are some kind of terrorist group." For fans of the Dark and the Edgy this show was far, far too good to last.
• Anyone Can Die, and die, and die, and die. Sometimes they die with zero foreshadowing and breathtaking speed. No one is safe. Except John, of course.
• Arc Symbol: deconstructed with the three dots in that their significance almost drives Sarah mad. Its in the final episode we find out that they represent the 3 lights of the Turk when it's attached to Weaver's time machine.
• Arc Words:
  • "Will you join us?"
  • Carried over into season 2 was Kyle's quote "I'd die for John Connor" and its variations.
  • "I'll stop it. I'll stop it." Also creates Book Ends between the Pilot and the finale.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: Coltan is not a tantalum-niobium alloy, it's an ore containing niobium and tantalum.
• As You Know : Auldridge gives a good rundown of Sarah's crimes in the finale.
  Ten years ago, you murdered one Miles Dyson, employee of Cyberdyne. Long time gone, but the man's still dead, so we've got that. Eight years ago, you and your son and a high school friend of his blew up a bank vault and died in the explosion. Of course, you're still alive, which is inconvenient for many, but the bank's still blown, so we've got that. More recently, and by that I mean Monday, you participated in a firefight, leaving five dead and kidnapping Savannah Weaver, daughter of Catherine Weaver, and citizen of Scotland, making this an incident both federal and international. Two of the dead were off duty law enforcement officers, and that usually gets you the needle, but in that I do digress.
• Ate His Gun: It almost happened to Derek. This allowed him to meet Jesse.
• Ballistic Discount: Subverted, where we get to see how advanced a T-888 is due to its less violent handling of the intricate world of human finances.
• Battle Discretion Shot: The fight between the FBI and Cromartie at the end of Season 1.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
  • Both justified and averted; Cameron routinely gets banged up, but her skin goes back to normal due to her epidermal layer's Healing Factor. Lampshaded occasionally.
  John: You're healing quickly.
  Cameron: Faster than you.
  • Allison Young, however, has some nasty, untreated cuts and scapes on her face.
• Becoming the Mask: Cameron briefly adopts Allison Young's personality in "Allison from Palmdale".
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't threaten John around Derek or Sarah. And while we're at it, never lie to Cameron.
  • And don't take Cameron's jacket without permission.
  • Don't badmouth Cameron around John.
  • Don't even HINT to Sarah that you're playing with technology.
• Big Bad:
  • Cromartie assumed this role for season one and much of season two, though SkyNet is obviously an ever-present threat.
  • Subverted with Catherine Weaver, who seems to be set up as an evil, ruthless force sent back to create SkyNet, but she's actually creating an equivalent AI to stop it.
  • The faceless, shady Kaliba, parent company to ZeiraCorp; it's heavily implied to be some sort of front for SkyNet.
• Bloodstained Glass Windows: A couple of episodes in the second season, complete with booby-trapped baptismal fonts, crossfire (no pun intended) ambushes in front of the altar, and crucified villain shots.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Cameron's concept of morality begins and ends with John Connor.
• Book Ends : In the Pilot and finale, we get a long list of Sarah's crimes. In the Pilot, Ellison is interviewing Charlie and researches Sarah. In the finale, we catch up with what she's done since.
• Bond One-Liner: Weaver making a Bond One-Liner after killing an inconvenient employee is the first sign that she's very different from the usual Terminator.
• Boot Camp Episode: "Goodbye To All That" has John enroll in military school and Derek sign up as a teacher while Sarah and Cameron protect a little boy wrongfully targeted for termination..
• Break the Cutie:
  • Allison Young comes pre-broken, and Cameron's brief time as Allison shows her breaking down too.
  • Riley also breaks over the course of the second season, although that's because she's a resistance fighter from the future, and the stress of everything going on around her rapidly wrecks her already fragile psyche.
• Broad Strokes:
  • The dates of the Back Story involving the events of the first two movies are changed a little. The year is stated in T1 as 1984. T2 establishes that John was born in February 1985, T2 itself takes place when John is about 10, and Judgment Day would occur in August 1997. TSSC changes it so that T1 took place in early 1983, with John being born in November of that year, T2 taking place in 1997 when John is 13, and Judgment Day having been expected to occur some time after T2 but before September 1999. In addition, the year Kyle Reese was sent back in time is changed from 2029 to 2027.
  • The series is deliberately vague about whether the third film is part of its canon, with the whole setup of John and Sarah time-travelling to the present from 1999 appearing to be done entirely so the crew wouldn't have to deal with it. Though it did end up incorporating Sarah's death from cancer.
• Cassandra Truth: Practically everything Ellison says is dismissed by the FBI but is completely true.
• Casting Gag:
  • Shirley Manson's interview comments about a certain fetish are well-known. It can't be a coincidence that her character morphs into a urinal.
  • Shirley Manson also played an android (or rather, a gynoid) in the music video for the 1999 song "The World is Not Enough".
• Cat Fight:
  • Averted with great force in the truly brutal, and emotionally wrenching, fight to the death between Jesse and Riley.
  • Played straight between Cameron and that other terminator whom she twisted up like a pretzel.
• Catchphrase: Several characters.
  • Cameron and Cromartie: "Thank you for explaining."
  • Cameron: "That's tight."
  • Cromartie: "Thank you for your time."
  • Various Terminators: "Thank you for your service." (Terminators are very polite.)
  • Any Terminator: "I never sleep."
  • Bad Terminators: "We'll see."
  • Sarah : "I'll make pancakes."
  • Derek: "(Killing) It's what they (the machines) do."
  • Several "catch" phrases used by the simple AI psychotherapist computer program ELIZA (such as "How does ____ make you feel?") are parroted back by Cameron when she is sent to talk to the high school shrink.
• Celebrity Paradox: Averted in the episode "Self Made Man" in the second season, when a Terminator is sent back targeting the Governor of California. What little we see of him makes it clear that it's not Arnold.
• Character Development:
  • Sarah becomes noticeably more humanized in the second season, though at the same time becoming much, much more erratic and psychotic as the stress starts to weigh on her psyche.
  • John is slowly — very slowly — edging away from his whiny teenager phase and into a real leader, especially after Riley is killed.
  • Cameron is also showing interesting character development, particularly with relation to matters of trust and suicide, especially after she goes berserk at the beginning of the second season.
  • John Henry, subtly. Even Weaver, with regard to Savannah.
  • Ellison, but not entirely for the better. Most notably, he thinks Sarah's an utter lunatic, but amusingly harmless, in the pilot. His demeanour gets graver and graver as the events of the series take place and the bodies pile up. He's a broken man by the end.
• Chekhov's Gun: In "Goodbye to All That," Weaver shows Ellison an eye that was recovered from the Terminator that had impersonated Greenway in "Automatic For The People." This is the same eye that is used to repair the one Cromartie's endoskeleton loses in "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today" when it is used to give John Henry a body.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The priest in "Samson and Delilah," the Chola from the first season, and Allison Young are all minor characters who return in the season finale.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Anytime a Terminator smiles.
• The Chosen One: Subverted in the series finale. John Connor travels to the future, where not only has no one ever heard of him, but the resistance is still alive and well without his leadership. Although an alternate interpretation of the finale is that the original John Connor was erased by all the time travel, and John's leap forward in the finale cemented his future role as leader of the resistance. They hadn't heard of him yet, but on his arrival they learn much more about the machines and how to stop them, from John.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Cameron's out-of-the-blue comments early in the series, and her even more out-of-the-blue commentary after her chip was damaged.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Cameron's eyes, HUD and 'internal brain lights' are blue; while those of the Terminators of the Week are red. In the Season 2 finale Cameron's eye is red. According to Josh Friedman's commentary track on the episode this is deliberate and reflects a change in her software, but he doesn't go into any more detail than that. It's possible that her eyes have been red since her Face–Heel Turn, since she overcomes her compulsion to kill John rather than actually being repaired.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: Cameron does this in the first episode, unsurprisingly.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Justified. Early on a Terminator attacks their home and Sarah uses a recliner as cover. Later the police are examining the scene, and note that it had been filled with Kevlar.
• Contemplative Boss: As noted above, Catherine Weaver has a propensity for staring out her office window and philosophizing to whomever is present.
• Contortionist: Rosie is played by one, specifically one performing rag doll to make a terminator look more lifeless.
• Convection Shmonvection: Sarah and John standing three feet from a thermite fire hot enough to melt a metal described as having more heat resistance than titanium? Right. Setting said fire indoors and not burning down the house in the process? Priceless.
• Cool Car: No matter what Cromartie drives, it's always a nice ride.
• Cool Shades: In "The Demon Hand," Cameron finally dons a pair of motorcycle cop sunglasses. Very large ones.
• Conspicuous Gloves: Cameron finds a way to include fingerless gloves in just about all of her outfits, which is a nod to the pair that the T-800 wore in the original movie. They come in handy to hide her skin regenerating from flaying her forearm to conduct repairs.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Sarah's narrative diary monologues at the opening and closing of each episode, presumably her "chronicles". These are largely absent in the second season. Catherine Weaver, aka the T-1001, is also unusually fond of long monologues with biblical overtones.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Weaver appears to be, then turns out to be a Terminator, then turns out to be on John Connor's side.
• Cranial Plate Ability: Invoked: John explains that his "sister" Cameron has a steel plate in her head from a childhood accident, which is why she sets off the school's metal detector.
• Crazy-Prepared: The Connors as a whole, including the shotgun in the umbrella stand and the recliner filled with Kevlar.
• Creepy Monotone:
  • Summer Glau plays both its use and its absence to chilling effect.
  • Cromartie, especially when he becomes part of the Turk/John Henry.
• Cruel Mercy: It's our heroes of all people who actually leave a mook stranded in the middle of a minefield.
• Cuckoo Nest: The show plays this perfectly straight when Sarah's disturbing dreams of being kidnapped and tortured send her to a sleep clinic, with scenes shifting between Sarah's stay in the clinic and her frightening dreams. As she begins to gain control in her "dreams" and the world of the clinic spirals into paranoia and horror, viewers may come to suspect the presence of the trope, at which the show hints from the very beginning by starting the episode in the "dream".
• Dance Battler: Cameron, of course. She even takes dancing lessons.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: It all starts when John is reaching 16.
• Darker and Edgier: Wins bonus points for making Terminator darker and edgier.
• Deadpan Snarker: Cameron and Derek seem to take turns at this, though John and Sarah have been known to get a few in too.
• Dead Person Impersonation / Kill and Replace: Cameron impersonating Allison, and the machines impersonating Vick, Greenway and Weaver.
• Death Glare:
  • "It's not safe for you here." Cameron's death glare is good for intimidating fellow students as well, though one nerdish boy on Pizza Day seemed rather turned on by the experience. "Hectic!"
  • When Sarah dumps washing on her, then gets John to do it when he snarks and he hands the basket to her, Cameron's reaction is all, "You wouldn't...you would, I'm gonna burn these fucking clothes."
• Death Is Dramatic: Totally, completely, and absolutely averted.
• Decontamination Chamber: During one episode, Sarah and Cameron go to work at a nuclear plant. When Sarah is exposed to radiation, she gets the Silkwood treatment.
• Determinator: Well, yeah. Any of the Terminators fit.
• Do Androids Dream?: A recurring theme in the series, particularly pertaining to Cameron and John Henry. The episode "Allison From Palmdale" is pretty much asks nothing but the question of whether a Terminator can have a soul. We also have Cromartie saving Ellison from a future Terminator duplicate against Skynet's wishes, commenting "We'll see" when Ellison tells him he won't lead him to Sarah Connor, a virtual speech in Terminator terms.
• Doppelgänger: Cameron impersonating Allison, the unnamed Terminator impersonating Ellison. Cromartie, as well.
• Dramatic Wind: Happens to Cameron in "Vick's Chip" during the Death Glare scene. It's very brief but so awesome.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Riley Except, maybe not. It may have been a Batman Gambit.
  • Cameron suggests this is the cause of John's gun "accident."
  • Derek also contemplates suicide.
  • As does Cameron, in "Self Made Man."
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Derek Reese encounters a hostile Terminator at close range with only a pistol. Guess what happens.
• Dysfunction Junction: Find someone in the main cast who isn't screwed up.
• Emotionless Girl: Cameron, again. Sometimes juxtaposed with brief flashes of her "regular girl" performance, switched on and off to creepy effect.
• Enemy Civil War: An apparent rebel faction of machines opposing SkyNet in the future that wants peace with humanity.
• Erotic Eating: Cameron deliberately does this to both John and Derek. in the former's case, she does it with a potato chip to help show that she's not like other Terminators. In the latter case, she seems to do it just to antagonize Derek.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted in the season 1 finale when they hold Sarkissian's daughter hostage. Turns out he's not Sarkissian. And it's not his daughter.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In one Season 1 episode, Cameron engages in a fight against another female Terminator which takes them into an elevator. When a non-combatant enters the elevator, the two cease hostilities until that person leaves. Although it makes sense for Cameron to break off in order to not involve the civilian, it's unexpected for the enemy to do the same.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: All dogs hate Terminators, even the robot dog in "Queen's Gambit" barks at Cameron.
• Evil Brit: The guy who impersonates Sarkissian.
• Eye Scream:
  • The end of "Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep."
  • And earlier, in "The Turk": "It took his eyes, James. It took his freakin' eyes."
  • Cameron killing a terminator by twisting its body like a pretzel and stabbing its eye with the heel of its own boot.
• Face–Heel Turn: Enrique, a bit character from Judgment Day who helped Sarah, tries to snitch her out to the feds.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The characters can try to keep casualties to a minimum (it doesn't work) and/or delay Judgment Day as long as possible, but "winning" much of anything would end the series.
• Fantastic Racism: From the resistance fighters toward machines, and a mild form from Weaver toward humans, whom she feels "will disappoint you."
• Fantastic Slurs: The use of the word "metal" has now become frequent enough to qualify.
• Fish out of Temporal Water:
  • The pilot episode sees the heroes jump from 1999 to 2007. Sometimes it's played for laughs (the group getting cell phones) and sometimes... not so much (Sarah having 9/11 explained to her).
  • Surprisingly, the humans from the future tend to function quite well, but every now and then the transition from apocalyptic battlefields to suburban comfort is problematic.
• Flashback: Monkeywrenched: Derek has a flashback, but since he comes from the future — or one possible future — it's hard to know what to call it.
• Food Porn: All the fighters from the future eat and eat when they come back, particularly Riley and Jessie, who "can't stop eating" Chinese food from the food court at the mall. According to the DVD commentary, this is also Author Appeal, as the writer who wrote the line also loves food court Chinese food. Inverted with Sarah, as the only food she seems to be able to make is pancakes and PB&J.
• Foreshadowing: "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today" is filled up to the gills with little clues as to Riley's origin from the future.
• "Friends" Rent Control : Sort of handwaved in the series that they found money and diamonds at one of the "safe houses," but it's not addressed how the family can afford house rental and a different vehicle every week. Also how Jessie is paying for a five star hotel room.
• Full-Frontal Assault: In the pilot, Cameron obtains clothes for her, Sarah and John by walking up to a car full of men and beating the crap out of them while Sarah and John cower nearby (probably rather more closely together than they would prefer, all things considered).
• Future Badass:
  • John Connor. Deconstructed, actually, in that John knows he's going to become one of these and is shown throughout the series gradually growing into the role, learning the lessons and suffering the traumas that would make someone into this. Some characters like Derek are even shown expressing frustration that John's not one already. Sometimes when faced with a problem, he asks characters who've met his future self what he would do in the situation. Answers vary from the snarky ("Future John has bigger things to worry about.") to the heartwarming ("Future John doesn't live here. You do."). He's even been known to compare himself negatively to himself. When Cameron asks him about his grieving over Derek, he replies "There's no use crying about it, is there? I'm sure future me would beat my ass if I did."
  • Other characters from the future also see it as their responsibility to shape John to be the hero they need. Part of Cameron's mission seems to be to ensure John has certain skills, at once point telling him he's "ahead of schedule". Jessie has her own concerns about how John turns out. In general, the series pushes beyond the original films' question of "will John Connor survive to be a future badass" to "what KIND of future badass will John turn out to be?"
• Gainax Ending: John jumps into the future with Catherine Weaver in pursuit of John Henry (in possession of Cameron's chip), where he encounters the Reese brothers and Allison Young in a timeline where John Connor never rose up to lead the resistance as a result of his time travel. Then it got canceled.
• Gambit Pileup: What with the Machines, the other Machines, the Connor family, Cameron possibly having her own agenda, and various other human Wild Cards all trying to change the future in the way that they want it to go, it's no surprise that the plot is so complicated by the latter part of the second season.
• Gangland Drive-By: Sarah and a witness to suspicious events are fired on by a motorcycle pillion passenger with an assault rifle.
• Get into Jail Free: Vick finds one of his targets has been thrown into jail, so he follows suit by the simple method of walking up to a group of police officers and punching one of them. Of course being a Terminator he can get out at any time just by knocking the cell door off its hinges.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: It's a series about Terminators, so their red eyes appear when required.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Doctor Silberman, who ends up locked in the same padded cell that Sarah used to be in, ranting about the machines.
• Graying Morality: This is a common theme throughout the series. It starts out with Skynet being clearly evil and the Connors being clearly good, but the Connors' efforts to stop Judgment Day quickly make them no different from the robots they're fighting, to the point that they openly admit to being terrorists. Their Graying Morality is really driven home in "Dungeons and Dragons", when Sarah repeats Kyle Reese's warning about the Terminators from the first movie... but this time it applies to Derek murdering Andy Goode in cold blood.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: An undercurrent is that the ongoing attempts by Skynet to make better infiltrators on longer missions and the Resistance to reprogram them is leading to more individual, self-aware Terminators.
• Guns Akimbo: Cromartie on a couple of occasions, once with M-16s. Cameron does it on occasion too. Justified by both of them being cyborg killing machines with computerized targeting and superhuman strength.
• Healing Factor: The living tissue covering on the new Terminators gradually grows back after sustaining damage. Cromartie/John Henry even regenerates from having half his face blown off.
• Heel–Face Turn: Cromartie's transformation to John Henry, although whether a different mind using the same body is truly an example is up for debate.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Cameron seems really attached to her leather jacket.
• Heroic BSoD: Cameron goes through several of these in "Allison from Palmdale."
• Heroic Sacrifice: In "Goodbye to All That," Derek tells John that one of the targets they saved from a T-888, Martin Bedell, was the runner who saved John and other prisoners at the cost of his own life in the future.
• Hollywood Density: Charley still has trouble believing Cameron is a "big scary robot", until she casually picks up a corpse for disposal. As a paramedic, he'd know just how much a body weighed.
• Hollywood Encryption: Of course John can break the encryption of Sarkissian's hard drive.
• Hot Sub-on-Sub Action: The USS Jimmy Carter vs. the SkyNet Kraken, mostly consisting of the Carter spotting the Kraken and then running like Hell.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Cameron gives John a kill-switch for a bomb in her head at the end of "Ourselves Alone".
• Idiot Ball: Heroes suffer from these from time to time in order to lead to development of additional plot arcs. Particularly, in ep. 208 the protagonists decide to bury Cromartie’s body instead of taking it with them right away, giving it a chance to disappear, and in ep. 213 Sarah decides to check and “infiltrate” a secret military front without any additional backup.
• I'm Not Hungry: Allison Young refuses to eat while being held prisoner by SkyNet.
• Implacable Man:
  • Cromartie is a T-888, slightly more advanced than the original T-800, and unrelated to the Made of Explodium T-850 from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
  • Cameron also shows just how unstoppable she is in the second season premiere.
• Immortality Immorality: Based on an incident with John Henry, this is is what motivates Skynet. To a machine, getting turned off is like dying.
• Important Haircut: John cuts off his mop in the second season to show how he's growing up into the leader he needs to be ... and, for that matter, that the actor has established himself in the role and doesn't need hair and makeup tricks to maintain continuity with the performance in Terminator 2: Judgment Day any more.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Played with as Cameron is not innocent, she just doesn't care.
• Insomnia Episode:
  • In one episode, Sarah is put in a sleep ward when she has been unable to sleep for two straight weeks. Subverted when at the end of the episode we find out that the sleep ward plotline was All Just a Dream, which she was having while being held captive by a man she had shot earlier in the series, although it is hinted that she was still having sleep problems before this.
  • Cameron doesn't sleep. One episode revolves around following her one night.
• Inspector Javert: Monkeywrenched - FBI Agent Ellison chases Sarah and John but gradually starts to believe them.
• Ironic Echo:
  • On their first day of school, John tells Cameron: "Don't be a freak," explaining that she needs to blend in. Later on, when Jordan commits suicide by jumping off a roof, Cameron says the exact same thing to him while physically restraining him in order to prevent him from rescuing her, since doing so would call attention to him as well.
  • In "Ourselves Alone", Cameron says the line: "What am I going to do with you?" a total of three times. The first time she says it, she's addressing a bird that she accidentally kills when her hand malfunctions. The next two times, she says it to Riley.
  • "Don't confuse close with happy" from "Alpine Fields".
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Sarah nearly always refers to Cameron as It, or Tin Man. Derek's the same.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • Played with a twist in "Complications," where Derek tortures Charles Fischer's younger self to get the older version to talk.
  • In "Heavy Metal", Sarah is unable to get a guy to divulge info so she lets him go, but he has to get past Cameron. Next scene shows him nervously driving them to where they need to go.
• Just a Machine: "It's just a machine" is pretty much a mantra among the characters who have harsher views on robots and AI. When they started going down the What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? Christian symbolism route during season 2, there is an FBI agent who frequently reminds people of this, and that they "don't have souls" and as such "can't feel". Sarah Connor and Derek Reese are both quick to remind John that Cameron, the resident Terminator, is exactly this. John, however, feels differently about machines in general and Cameron in particular, due to his experiences with "Uncle Bob". It doesn't help that Cameron is a Robot Girl who repeatedly saves his life and that he feels indebted to and ends up developing a sort of attraction towards.
• Karma Houdini: The Guidance Counsellor in Series 1, who is heavily implied to have been sleeping with Jordan, thus being responsible for her deciding to commit suicide afterwards. In fact, most of his interaction with the other girls at the school has a very sinister vibe to it, so she might not have been the only one. Due to it being an Aborted Arc, we never know if he got found out or not.
• Killer Robots: Subverted, in some cases. While the Terminators of the films were designated assassins, many Terminators of the series have other missions, and avoid combat if they can.
• Kill It with Fire: With a twist. They don't actually kill Terminators with fire, but when they do manage to take one out with other methods, they have to burn and melt the endoskeleton with thermite to prevent bits of future-tech falling into the wrong hands and being used to reverse-engineer SkyNet.
• Kiss of Death: A liquid-metal terminator disguised as a beautiful woman seduces a man...then sends a liquid-metal tongue/tentacle down his throat to strangle his heart through his esophagus to kill him in a way that mimics a heart attack.
• Kung-Shui: When two terminators fight, punches and kicks don't do much, since they are almost literally Made of Iron. So they tend to try and pick each other up and throw each other through walls...out windows...even through floors and ceilings. Much property damage ensues.
• Lady of War:
  • Cameron and Sarah. One was programmed that way, the other developed herself into this.
  • Weaver, with her tailored suits, perfect hair and deadly blades.
• Lock and Load: In the 'months earlier' part of "Alpine Fields", Sarah proves to the family she wants to protect that she can defend them all effectively by showing them she knows how to use guns despite not having a license.
• Look Both Ways: Terminators show utterly no ability to do this. The first episode of second season, Catherine Weaver lampshades this a bit with a scary monologue about humans "crossing against the light" and getting run over, and that it's looking for a computer that can "cross against the light". Guess it eventually found one.
• Mama Bear: Sarah again. She just wants to ensure John survives.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Cromartie's change from Owain Yeoman to Garret Dillahunt. Actually semi-justified in dialogue: it's a robot that can't feel pain or suffer any complications on the table, making a more complete job possible. The artificially grown flesh is also implied in dialogue to have unique properties that presumably make it easier to work with and to heal. It's later revealed that SkyNet can literally whip up a Terminator of ANYONE that they have an image of.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Riley is presented as one of these at first— a deliberate pose, as it turns out. Oh, how very wrong that impression turns out to be.
• Manipulative Bitch: Jesse, who deliberately introduced Riley to John so that Cameron would feel threatened by Riley and thus be forced to kill her.
• Meaningful Funeral:
  • Charley Dixon's wife's funeral was heaped with symbolism.
  • Derek Reese's funeral, was just his "John Doe" ashes being buried in an unmarked pauper's grave, with no one in attendance — the same graveyard as his brother's, which they visited earlier in the episode. (Foreshadowing much?)
• Meaningful Name:
  • John Henry, a reference to the legendary railroad worker famous for fighting and beating a steam powered tunneler, and Cameron, whose name is a direct Shout-Out to James Cameron, and even minor character Billy Wisher, named after one of the screenwriters of the original movie.
  • Agent James Ellison: "James" may or may not be a reference to James Cameron, but "Ellison" definitely refers to Harlan Ellison, who famously sued Orion Pictures claiming that Terminator was based on his The Outer Limits (1963) episode, "Soldier."
  • Similarly, "The Demon Hand," which focuses on Agent Ellison, may refer to Ellison's other Outer Limits episode, "The Demon with a Glass Hand." (For a while it was unclear which episode Harlan was claiming James Cameron plagiarized in his lawsuit.)
• Mid-Season Twist: "Brothers of Nablus" in season 2 ends with Cromartie finding out where the Connors live.
• Mirroring Factions: A recurring theme is how the tactics of the humans have come to closely resemble those of SkyNet. One particularly chilling example is the last scene of "Dungeons and Dragons," wherein Sarah repeats Kyle's warning about how the machines will never stop, while the events playing out onscreen show Derek murdering Andy Goode in cold blood. The next episode makes note of how the machines are getting more and more similar to humans in their quest to infiltrate them. Sarah muses that if the machines ever learn to create art or appreciate human emotions, then "they won't need to destroy us. They'll be us." Meanwhile, we see Cameron doing ballet for no readily apparent reason, while Derek watches, dumbstruck.
• Morality Chip: Deconstructed, for John Henry. The only way to make him a moral character seems to be through teaching.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • The pilot does, indeed, have Cameron kicking ass while in the buff.
  • There's plenty of fanservice in the series, mostly around Cameron, including a rather blatant piece of it in "Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep" where Cameron walks by John in a bright red bra and pair of panties. This turns out to just be a dream by Sarah, made up of her worries and perceptions.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • The crime boss who goes after the Connors, unaware that all of them can fight and one is a killer robot.
  • The 'water delivery guy' Terminator, who was apparently unaware that his target was a T-1001 liquid metal Terminator (who proceeds to effortlessly dispatch him).
• Mundane Utility: Cameron's superhuman strength is equally useful for fighting killer robots from the future, ripping car doors off, manhandling hostile humans, breaking down walls, and....putting heavy loads in the back of the truck while out shopping. Sarah also uses the sophisticated machinery (and the fact that she doesn't sleep) for guard duty and such chores as laundry. And John gets her do to his math homework for him.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Cameron advocates this theory, which is only natural, as she is a Terminator.
• Mythology Gag
  • Sarah's assault on the Dyson residence with an M4 in T2 is mirrored by Cromartie's with an M16.
  • Cameron dressed as a motorcycle cop in one episode, complete with Cool Shades, is a ref to the fake cop T-1000 in the second movie.
  • Also, from the second season premiere, Cameron's use of "Call to him", a reference to a scene in T2.
  • In "Automatic for the People," Riley says that John's English teacher is "Mr. Henricksen," a reference to Lance Henricksen's role in the first film (and to the fact that Lance Henricksen was James Cameron's first choice for the role of the T-800).
  • When Cameron's "switch is flipped" to Terminate instead of Protect in the season 2 premiere, when she is chasing them it has a limp not unlike T-800 in first film.
  • In "Goodbye To All That", the terminator of the week begins killing people with the name Martin Bedell, of which there are exactly 3 in the area, just like the 3 women named Sarah Connor in the first film. As with the film, the intended target is the last one on the list. And the terminator is using the same ".45 Long Slide with Laser Sighting" gun prop from the first film (the production also took some promotional pictures of it with Summer Glau before they returned it).
  • The T-1001 uses the same finger-wagging motion to taunt Jesse that the T-1000 did to Sarah in T2.
  • Born to Run has a Terminator buying from a gun shop, and a terminator attacking a police station, presumably as continuity nods to T1
  • In the finale of season two, Cameron says "Hasta luego." to the gangster girlfriend from season one.
  • Andy Goode's future alias, Billy Wisher, is a nod to William Wisher, the screenwriter for T2.
  • The first shot in the pilot episode shows a stretch of road while Sarah narrates, which mirrors the ending of the second movie.
  • Cameron's love of fingerless gloves is a nod to the pair the T-800 wore in the first movie.
  • Self Made Man, the episode which featured a Terminator sent back to kill the Governor of California.
  • When Cromartie goes on a rampage in Mexico, Derek assures a wounded cop that he won't be back.
  • "The Good Wound". Sarah describes John to the nurse she kidnapped in almost word for word how Reese described John to her.
    "He looks like his father but he has my eyes. You trust him. He has a strength about him. I'd die for my son".
• No Social Skills
  • Cameron. Most of the time she has limited ability to interact with others, at least in a nuanced way, often coming off as weird or awkward or emotionally insensitive. However, when she's had time to prepare (i.e. when she meets John for the first time, or when she's seducing the nuclear power plant guards to scan their badges), she can actually be surprisingly effective, and when she activates the "Allison" personality she is completely indistinguishable from an actual human. Spontaneous social interaction seems to be the hard thing for her to pull off.
  • Catherine Weaver. This terminator has clumsy and discordant interactions with the little girl in her care — who knows something is deeply wrong with her "mummy."
  You have a son, right? What do you do with it?
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Terminators are almost always referred to as "machines" or "metal." Justified; "machine" is shorter and simpler to say, and "metal" is a short, derogatory term used by the resistance for all machines. Anyone who's been around soldiers knows that they come up with nicknames for any enemy they fight.
• Now I Know What to Name Him: "Allison From Palmdale" where Cameron (thinking she's Allison) called a woman named Claire who is probably Allison's mother.
• The Nth Doctor: Cromartie is played in the pilot by Owain Yeoman, gets his flesh covering incinerated, and then gets a new one in the first season that looks like Garret Dillahunt.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Catherine Weaver seems to do this a lot. With some Stealth Hi/Bye thrown in for good measure.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Out of universe: Catherine Weaver says she isn't much of a singer while her actress, Shirley Manson, is the lead singer of Garbage.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Sadly, we never got to see how Cameron got her clothes when she first traveled back to the past. Fortunately, we get around this by seeing her get them the second time she time-travels.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Notably averted; several episodes focus on SkyNet securing the limited supplies it will need to wage its conventional war on humanity after the nuclear war.
• Omniglot: Cameron: English, Armenian, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese as of the end of the second season.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: The bridge scenes in "The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter" could easily be mistaken for scenes from a Darker and Edgier version of SeaQuest DSV.
• Parental Substitute: Both Charlie Dixon and Derek Reese act as father-figures to John.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Most of the unarmed noncombatants murdered by Cameron or Derek — for being witnesses, liabilities, building apocalyptic genocidal computer networks, etc. — are assholes or petty criminals of one form or another. Presumably this was the only way they could put a show about Well Intentioned Extremists on broadcast TV without turning them into full-fledged Villain Protagonists.
• Pet the Dog:
  • John Henry playing with his toys and wondering why God didn't create humans with more ball-and-socket joints.
  • Cameron gets a similar moment when she explains that Terminators aren't inherently cruel, and demonstrates this by rolling a battered Ellison (whom she herself had beaten up) off of a bunch of broken glass.
  • Visually referenced at the very end of the series when Allison Young, who John initially recognizes as Cameron, is literally petting a dog. A twisted version of this trope since it's used to distinguish a human from a heartless character rather than demonstrate humanity in a heartless character.
• The Plan:
  • Cromartie pulls off a nice one in "The Mousetrap." It only fails because he can't swim; not to mention the psuedo-complex nuclear power plant plot of Automatic for the People.
  • In "Complications," Charles Fischer arranges for his younger self to be sent to prison so he can survive Judgment Day and assist SkyNet.
  • Jesse's plan to turn John against Cameron by inducing her to kill Riley. It only fails because Cameron has an unexpected moment of indecision.
  • It seems that nearly every time traveler has their own secret agenda that may or may not be for the Human Resistance, the Machines, the Other Machines, or themselves. Series has been canceled in the middle of a Gambit Pileup.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: A minor one in the pilot, when Cameron is sitting topless and pulling bullets out of herself. When she is finished, Sarah tells her she should "put those back in the holster". Cameron then puts her bra back on.
• Post-9/11 Terrorism Movie: After the time skip Sarah seeks fake ID from Enrique's nephew, who charges an exorbitant price on account of terrorism and September 11. When Sarah asks what they are talking about he and his gang explain the terrorist attacks, and she is freaked, comparing the three thousand killed in the real attacks to the three billion that would be killed on judgement day, and sure that if she had seen it she would believe they had lost.
• The Power of Trust: John trusts Cameron absolutely, to the point that he tells Jesse that even if he did believe Riley's death was caused by Cameron, it would not have broken his trust for her.
• Product Placement: John Henry playing with BIONICLE figures and even acknowledging the storyline behind them.
• Properly Paranoid: Just because Sarah is an escaped mental patient who blew up Cyberdyne, disappeared from a bank vault, hijacked a prison transport, tried to introduce a virus into the L.A. traffic program, nearly beat a man to death because she was going crazy over symbolism involving three dots, and flat out admitted that, "Yes, we are some kind of terrorist organization," doesn't mean that killer cyborgs from the future aren't out to kill her son.
• The Psycho Rangers: Catherine Weaver, Savannah Weaver, Agent Ellison and John Henry mirror the quartet of Sarah, John, Derek and Cameron.
• Psycho Sidekick: Derek and Cameron as the ruthlessly pragmatic half of the team, with Sarah and John as the more highly moral one. it's possible that Weaver might have ended up as one to John Connor and/or John Henry in the future if there had been a third season.
  Sarah: What did you do?!
  Cameron: What you couldn't.
• Punch a Wall: Sarah tries taking out her frustration on a computer in "Heavy Metal" when they lose the signal on John's phone.
  Cameron: Breaking the computer won't help.
• Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: Subverted by Derek Reese, who simply shoots.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Quite a few viewers complained that the scene with Derek Reese destroying a Terminator with an anti-materiel rifle is unrealistic because he fired his Barrett M82 from the shoulder. Since then, many "guntubers" demonstrated that this feat is entirely possible, and most proficent shooters can actually perform rapid firing and still hit the target.
• Reluctant Warrior: John Connor. He's clearly tired of having to live up to his role as the future's Messiah.
• Ridiculously Human Robots:
  • Cameron demonstrates in the first episode that she can eat food, something no other Terminator before could do. She has stated that she can feel physical sensations. She also displays the ability to cry and show emotions, most notably in her "Allison" persona, and she has showed glimpses of genuine personality at times.
  • Catherine Weaver's body can, in addition to taking any shape, apparently impersonate human touch well enough to pass a full body makeout session. In a very... non-Terminator way, "Weaver" engages in this, complete with sound effects for a considerable period of time before literally going down the mark's throat and choking his vital organs to death. Weaver's Deadpan Snarker nature and personal amusement from a Pre-Mortem One-Liner that no one living will hear, in fact, hint that she is sentient.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Catherine Weaver isn't trying to kill John Connor or create SkyNet, she's trying to create an AI that can fight SkyNet or something. A great deal of running around, fear and lies in the second season could have been averted had that been discovered earlier.
• Robo Cam:
  • In "Allison from Palmdale," when Cameron adopts Allison's identity, the "Termovision" disappears, apparently reinforcing her belief that she is human. At the end of the episode, when Cameron reasserts herself, the HUD reappears.
• Robosexual: Shown pretty clear cut with Vick and his "wife" Barbra (Vick was a T-888 who replaced Barbra's real husband, but was shown to have been intimate with her). Hinted at with Cameron and Future John, and regularly foreshadowed with John and Cameron in the present.
• Robot Girl: Cameron. A very scary one, too.
• Robotic Reveal: Inverted. In "Dungeons & Dragons," while Charley Dixon has been made aware of the existence of Terminators, and that Cameron is one, he still finds it hard to believe until Cameron begins incinerating the T-888's exoskeleton with thermite. The bright light generated is so intense that Charley can see Cameron's metal skull and blue eyes through her skin.
• Room Full of Crazy: The basement in season 2 had names, numbers, and dates written on the walls in blood.
• Running Gag:
  • A little bit of reality is at play with the very petite Summer Glau playing a hyperstrong Terminator. Multiple times, people who don't know her express surprise that she's so strong for being so small.
  • Cameron wants to kill birds. No less than three times she's portrayed as wanting to do this, and are we really expected to believe the one she did was was an accident?
• Scannable Man:
  • Derek Reese and his fellow future resistance fighters who spent time in SkyNet work camps have barcode tattoos. We even get to see Derek's being applied in a Flash Forward.
  • "Allison From Palmdale" shows Allison getting a bar code burned onto her skin as well.
• The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction:
  • You just know the plant manager is toast in "Goodbye to All That."
  • Also, when Jessie talks up a "brownshoe" in the bar. She's really just looking to pick a fight to account for the bruises from her fight with Riley.
• Screw Destiny: As per norm in a Terminator franchise. Training John to be the leader of the resistance is plan B. Stopping Skynet from ever existing is plan A.
  • In many ways, the show could count as a Deconstruction of this theme. The heroes are looking to prevent the rise of Skynet and the machines, but the machines are similarly working to ensure that Skynet is built and possibly even enhance it. The humans are trying to change their fate, and Skynet is also trying to change its fate, and as a result the characters sometimes wonder if it might actually have been better if "fate" wasn't tampered with, since Skynet was ultimately destined to be defeated in the original timeline. By trying to change the past so much, they might actually be giving Skynet a chance to avoid its defeat.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • The fate of the Terminator that Cameron seals in the fallout shelter, having stolen the key that would allow him to escape. Presumably, he'll remain trapped there until after Judgement Day.
  • Cameron spends one episode painstakingly teasing out a historical mystery about a terminator that accidentally time traveled to the 1920s, became a successful businessman, ensured that a building called Pico Tower was successfully constructed... and disappeared. She goes to Pico Tower in 2008, breaks down a wall that has been there for the better part of a century— and the terminator is standing there with a tommy gun, waiting to carry out an assassination at an upcoming event that it's been waiting for all those years.
• Series Continuity Error: The episode "Alpine Fields" seems to conflict with just about everything else in the series' timeline. The episode has two separate time-frames, one featuring Derek attempting to deliver a wounded pregnant woman's baby in what is implied to be the episode's "present", and the other with Sarah trying to protect the same woman and her family from Terminators during an earlier stage of her pregnancy. The problem is that the woman isn't visibly pregnant at all in the earlier time-frame, suggesting that months have passed between the two sets of scenes. However, the events of the entire two seasons of the show don't seem to last that length of time, and a scene in the later episode "Ourselves Alone", involving the question of whether Sarah has a firearms license, suggests that the entire show up to that point has taken place in a time period of less than thirty days!
• Series Mascot: Cameron is practically the only character who ever got to appear on publicity images or DVD covers.
• Ship Tease: The series is constantly teasing at John/Cameron, and there are hints of Future John and Allison Young.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Sarah and Derek both have shades of this, to the point of Derek crying when triggered by a piece of music. Dr. Boyd Sherman comments that John also shows signs of PTSD— justified, as it's after he kills Sarkissian in the season 2 premiere.
• Shoot the Dog:
  • Derek does a lot of extremely ruthless stuff: killing Andy Goode and possibly Jesse, torturing the younger Fischer to break the elder one, killing a Terminator in front of Martin Bethell in order to set him on a timeline that he knows will lead to Bethell's heroic death... and those are just the most memorable.
  • Cameron, on the other hand, doesn't shoot the dogs; she nukes them (although this is sometimes Played for Laughs).
  • After the T-1001 is "revealed" to have been one of the good guys all along, or so it says, its multiple murders seem to fall here too.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the promotional posters features Cameron's body from her disembodied upper torso up being suspended by wires. Visually, this resembles the Puppet Master's iconic pose from Ghost in the Shell.
  • Detective Ellison is named after sci-fi author Harlan Ellison, whose stories inspired the first Terminator film. The episode "The Demon Hand" is even named after one of Ellison's The Outer Limits (1963) episodes, "Demon With A Glass Hand." His first name, James, is also an obvious Shout-Out to James Cameron.
  • Someone who watched way too much anime might argue that Cromartie is a shout out to Cromartie High School.
  • Cameron is a Shout-Out to James Cameron himself.
  • Savannah telling her mother: "You can't sing." The mother is played by Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson.
  • You can't help but think of the sci-fi classic A Boy and His Dog upon seeing that last shot of Allison Young in the future with an Evil-Detecting Dog at the end of "Born to Run".
  • Sarah spots a tortoise on its back and flips it right side up. She and Cameron then have a discussion about whether artificial beings can feel empathy.
  • Cromartie, the main Terminator villain in the first season, stole the identity of an actor who previously starred in a movie about a barbarian.
  • The weird-looking UFOs featured during the second season were inspired by, and their design was based upon, a well-publicized UFO called the "dragonfly drone" that received a lot of exposure in the UFO community a few years ago. They're even referred to as drones in the series.
  • There are many references to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, such as Sarah calling Cameron "Tin Man" in the second episode as well as adopting the surname Baum (after L. Frank Baum, the author of the books), and Gale in another episode. In "Goodbye to All That" (itself a Literary Allusion Title to a line from one of the books), one scene has Sarah and a boy she rescued reading a passage from the original book. The family's cover story is they moved from Kansas after a tornado. During "Self Made Man," Cameron compares the Terminator killing people at a speakeasy fire to Dorothy's house falling on the witch. And the entire Fish out of Temporal Water theme of the family jumping into the future has shades of Dorothy jumping to a strange land, in order to set things right.
  • There's a student at the military academy in "Goodbye To All That" who wants to fight in a war. Derek Reese berates him for this, having seen action himself. The student's name? Pyle, of course.
  • John Henry frequently plays with BIONICLE toys while trying to develop his imagination.
  • John Henry discovering another AI, stating simply "There Is Another".
  • The titles of a couple of episodes in Season 2 are also the titles of Bruce Springsteen songs. The series writers are fans.
  • The character of Queeg in season 2's "Today is the Day Pt 1 and 2" might be a reference to the character Queequeg, in Moby-Dick. It's definitely a nod to Mutiny on the Bounty. It could also be a reference to the Humphrey Bogart character in The Caine Mutiny, a navy captain who goes mad.
  • The swing set in the Connors' yard in the first season is a Shout-Out to the opening credits and Sarah's dream sequence from T2.
  • Cameron's ability to cry in the second season premiere. While at first it seems to set her apart from other Terminators, if you look closely at the scene in the first film when the T-800 repairs its eye, you can see a Single Tear. In the second film, Arnie asks about crying and tells John he knows why it happens, but he can't. Technically, he can, he just doesn't know how or why.
• The Shrink: Both Dr. Silberman, who's lost his mind after the events of the first two movies, and Dr. Boyd Sherman. The latter is an Awesome shrink, which is enough of a rarity in fiction that he has to die.
  Sarah Connor: I've had some bad luck with shrinks.
  Dr. Boyd Sherman: Well, you could stop calling them shrinks, that might help.
• The Singularity: John mentions it and points out that it's not the Machines, but instead this is the real enemy that they are fighting. When it comes, humanity can simply kiss its ass goodbye!
• Sixth Ranger:
  • Derek Reese, who starts off a mysterious guy from the future.
  • Jessie is more this than Derek, as she shows up last and ultimately betrays the group.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Sarah and Cameron, on a regular basis. Jessie, when she blows away Queeg.
• Smart People Play Chess: A flashback scene shows Sarah Connor entering a South American guerrilla camp; sitting in a jungle clearing is her son playing chess with their commander. And, of course, computer whiz Andy Good who not only invents a computer that plays chess better than any human, his invention starts Skynet and sets off the apocalypse.
• Sociopathic Hero: All of the Terminators count here. Catherine Weaver coldly dispatches a factory full of people, and murders a guy who called her a bitch, and plans to murder Ellison (see You Have Outlived Your Usefulness). Yet she's attempting to build something to counter Skynet. Cameron frequently kills people (such as Enrique) who threaten the mission, without so much as a blink at the ramifications. Derek is also an example, when he kills Andy Good without showing much emotion, and shoots the fellow in the alley without a second thought. He doesn't appear to have so much as a bad dream about it, despite being a Shell-Shocked Veteran. Perhaps all the violence he's seen have fried his empathy circuits.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Cromartie slaughters an entire FBI HRT unit to the upbeat but lyrically disturbing Johnny Cash song "When the Man Comes Around".
  • In the season two episode after Derek's death, when a little girl singing a Scottish comedy song is played over the burial of his ashes in an anonymous grave.
• Softer and Slower Cover: John Henry and Savannah Weaver singing a slow a capella version of the Scottish-kitsch comedy song "Donald, Whaur's Yer Troosers" over a tragic montage at the end of the penultimate episode.
• Stable Time Loop:
  • Averted. The first Terminator film implied a Stable Time Loop, in this series that's clearly not how things work. Cameron comes from a future where Sarah Connor doesn't even live to see 2007, Derek and Jesse come from different futures, the date of Judgment Day changes all the time.
  • Apparently played straight, however, in the case of Charles Fischer. Him being sent back to 2007 by the machines led to his younger self being imprisoned, which is where the machines found him after Judgment Day.
• Stacy's Mom: Sarah Connor is an unfeasibly hot older woman with a penchant for wearing tight fitting tops whilst wielding powerful weapons.
• Start of Darkness: Jesse wasn't always the controlling bitch she eventually became. In fact, she actually had no problems working under the command of a reprogrammed terminator, and defended Queeg's decisions against the crew. All that changed when they brought a T-1000 onboard, and Queeg ordered them to act like it never happened. She almost got raped by a suspicious crewmember (who got executed by Queeg because of it), and then found out that Queeg's orders overrode her authority. She then murdered Queeg and ordered everybody to abandon ship, sending the sub to crush depth. Then when she got back, she found out that the rapid change in pressure caused her to miscarry the baby she was pregnant with. Kinda hard to blame her after that, huh?
• Stealth Pun: In "Adam Raised a Cain," Savannah teaches John Henry to sing the old Scottish comedy song, "Donald, Where's Your Trousers?" Meanwhile, our heroes get caught with their pants down.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Derek encounters an armed Terminator at close range. With no Plot Armor, there is no Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy here. The killer robot with superhuman aiming does not manage to miss every single shot. There is no dramatic struggle or shootout. You get exactly what you'd expect: an anticlimatic instantaneous headshot, and a very dead person.
• Take a Third Option: In "The Turk," Sarah has trouble bringing herself to murder Andy Good, an unassuming cell phone salesman who built the chess-playing supercomputer referred to in the episode's title. At the end, it appears that she's going to go through with it, but she decides to burn down his house instead, thus destroying the Turk.
• Teacher/Student Romance: In an early episode a girl at the high school that Cameron and John are attending under assumed identities is exposed as having carried on a relationship with one of her teachers, and kills herself when this is made public.
• Team Power Walk : Our main cast gets one in the opening credits, complete with guns.
• That's What I Would Do: Cameron predicts the actions of enemy Terminators this way, in a possible Call-Back to T2.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The end of season 2 really gets into this, and does a good job. In TSCC you can change the future and it stays changed. Paradoxes will not rip the universe apart or erase important characters from the present.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: The series starts off with John and Sarah like this. Derek and Cameron, not so much. Sarah frequently orders either or both of them not to kill (they tend to take it under advisement). The first season features Sarah's reluctance to kill a man she believes will one day create Skynet, and is shown dwelling on it. A common theme throughout the series is the importance of human life. However, Sarah ends up being forced to kill a man midway through season two and John even earlier.
• Took a Level in Badass: John, during the season 2 premiere. And he's taken another level in the episode "Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter" where it's revealed John learned of Riley's true origin, and he tracked her back to Jesse. His speech to her is a Moment of Awesome for him.
• Trigger-Happy: The main cast seem quite fond of their guns, particularly Sarah. Cameron fits the more classic definition of the term.
• Unflinching Walk: "Weaver," after destroying the warehouse in the desert. Complete with an Out of the Inferno moment.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension:
  • John and Cameron make the thermite they use to melt down the enemy look like a bucket of ice water. Which John, more than a few times, certainly looks like he could use.
  • On a more disturbing note, it's impossible to ignore the existence of sexual tension between the actors playing Sarah and John. Fortunately, the writers chose not to go there...
• Unusual Euphemism: From the pilot: "You might want to put those back in the holster." Cameron is initially confused.
• Very Special Episode: "The Good Wound" obliquely dealt with domestic violence.
• The Voiceless: The Unnamed chola girl employed as a lookout by Carlos never speaks a word on screen. Cameron appears to identify with this, because she lets her live in "What He Beheld". Subverted when they bring her back to deliver a speech in the finale.
• Waif-Fu: Cameron, albeit justified by the fact that she's a superstrong cyborg assassin.
• Wall of Weapons: Sarah keeps concealed weapons scattered around the house, such as a shotgun hidden behind wallpaper, and a huge trunk of rifles and shotguns under everyone's respective beds. And the furniture is lined with kevlar.
• War Is Hell: Judgment Day has not happened yet but it's already taken its toll on the main characters by season 2.
• Warrior Poet: Sarah has shades of this, making biblical and mythological allusions in her narration.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Zig-zagged with Cromartie and John Henry. First, Cromartie goes through a lengthy process to repair himself. Then, without the CPU, he becomes John Henry. The tech finds out that the AI requires identical software and hardware to be restored.
• Wham Episode:
  • "To the Lighthouse". There's another machine intelligence out there, trying to take out both John Henry and the Connors. All signs point to it being the actual SkyNet Not to mention, they killed Charley.
  • Let's just say the last several episodes of Season Two. The cast are dropping like flies, there's another machine intelligence out there, John Henry is learning to lie, Sarah is under arrest in very public fashion, and everything is going straight to hell.
  • "Born to Run." Cameron gives John Henry her chip. John himself ends up transported to the future (with the T-1001 along for the ride), where he meets future Derek and Kyle Reese, and Allison Young..
• Wham Line: >Identification: John Connor. >Mission: TERMINATE.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In "The Turk", John really gives his mother hell for her apparent indifference and refusal to let him save people.
  John: Isn't that what I'm supposed to be? A hero? Isn't that who I am? If it's just going to sit inside me, if it's just going to sit in in my gut, then what are we doing? What is the point? Why not give it to them, if we're going to act like them?!
  • Several people pointed out how much John's decision to keep seeing Riley was endangering her. They were right.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: In "Desert Cantos", Sarah meets the distraught wife of the security guard who shot her a couple episodes past.
• When She Smiles: Inverted - when Cameron smiles, you should be absolutely on your guard.
• World of Badass: There's no shortage of people who can stand on their own in a fight.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Doctor Silberman initially believes that Ellison is one of the Terminators.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The series implies that they can't stop Skynet being created, although not necessarily because it's fated, but because technological progress makes the creation of a sentient AI an inevitable step so that a handful of people blowing up prototype computers isn't going to stop. On the other hand, John's supposedly inevitable fate as The Leader of the resistance turns out to be entirely avoidable.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In "The Demon Hand", Cameron protects a man and his sister from gangsters then abandons them to be killed when the man tells her who he sold The Turk to. In this case it's less of a conscious decision to kill them than simple, pure apathy. She's gotten what she needs from them, so now she's got no reason to care about them anymore.

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