This week on Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles (T:tSCC), “Dungeons and Dragons” John gave blood, Sarah gave an explanation, Cameron held a little back, and our new addition, Derek Reese, remembered the future. I really enjoyed this episode’s focus on time travel and the way it successfully wove memories of the future with the present day plotline.

Once again the episode’s name came from a reference to a game, but another sort of game from Chess entirely, “Dungeons and Dragons.” The sort of game where you role the dice and see how many nasty’s the Dungeon Master will throw at your party. A game where you can both be an archetype (wizard, knight, thief, cleric, etc.) and the unique character that you create as you wander the maze of opening and closing doors in search of truth, treasure, and a pleasant Saturday afternoon’s play with your friends.

The opening shot of the episode evokes those afternoon pastimes by showing us the exterior of an average sort of house. As the camera panned over empty rooms, each space was imbued with the personality of the person who normally occupied it. As we moved through those vacant spaces, Sarah monologued about the night she first met Kyle Reese, who like the empty rooms occupies so much space in the mythology of this show. Sarah told us that he told her about all the horrors to come. She told us that he unpacked all the details of the apocalypse as a warning, like someone telling the story of Pandora.

The thing that’s always stood out about the Pandora myth for me is that is that it was a setup. Pandora opened the box because that was what she was created to do. The gods built her and her deadly box as a sort of balancing punishment for the gift of fire. Prometheus’ gift of fire, as in stories like Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus” is often associated with technological advancement. As I think about it, the Terminators themselves are a sort of Pandora’s Box. The external skin hides the ills that lie below the surface and their creation is a result of some sort of forging fire.

Cameron’s arc through this episode is to peal back the truth of cybernetic skin. She first carried the body of her brother, her enemy, off in a clanking body bag. Then she cuts away the flesh, although, really, there is no real reason to do so. The thermite that can burn metal can certainly burn flesh. So when she does burn that other Terminator, I didn’t so much think of eliminating potential technology, but of ancient Greek rituals for burning of dead. She even kept a part of him, the chip that made up his consciousness, his soul. The viewer is left to wonder if this is a warning that she has gone bad, or because of some orders from Future-John, some unopened door that we do not yet know.

So it makes sense that here, as in the story of Pandora, Kyle’s warning to Sarah ended with hope, their child, John Connor.

We finally resolve the wandering camera into the people who inhabit the story in the kitchen, where Derek Reese bled on the table, and Charlie Dixon worked to save him. As Cameron held up a hypodermic needle, Derek screamed that she was a machine and what she said was a lie. The viewer is left to wonder whether Derek or Cameron is the liar.

As Charlie moved the light over Derek's face, we began one of the visual themes of this episode, light. As a long standing geekish sort, I couldn't help but think of Picard in ST:NG being shown four lights and told there were five, until finally he saw five lights, with all it’s Big Brother connotations.

Then again, this is also an episode about memory and perception. Derek is a stranger to John, but John wants to trust him because John knows that Derek is his uncle. Cameron doesn’t remember if she hurt Derek in the past, because her memory was wiped when she was reprogrammed to help the process. Although, given the knowledge that sometimes Terminators go bad and no one knows why, I do wonder if their memories can truly be wiped clean, or like an empty room, the memory of the inhabitant remains. Derek certainly doesn't seem to remember what happened in the basement of that future emptied house where the music played.

In any case, what the light did was make Derek remember his past, the future that Kyle warned about.

We were shown passageways and people with dogs. Like the house that we opened with, this tight cramped space is marked by the people who live there. On the wall, there was an image of a lion eating a machine, with the phrase "Hang in there baby." This was the same phase that was used on the poster of the kitten that these same resistance fighters would later hang on their wall over their safe.

We finally reach the key characters of this end of the story, Kyle and Derek sitting together and doing what brothers do, giving each other a hard time. Kyle referenced his time at the Century work camp, which is clearly a story everyone has heard about in many repetitions. The joking ended when the machines rumbled over head. We moved from stories of hero Kyle to Kyle taking out the picture of Sarah that John gave him. Kyle called it his lucky charm, but really it's an icon. Kyle is a believer, both in the image of strong Sarah Connor and in his blind faith in John. While Derek, hated the picture and spends the episode questioning John. I guess every Messiah needs their doubting Thomas.

However, questioning don’t mean that Derek doesn’t follow orders. He and his team climbed up into the world. As with Pandora's box, they closed the door on their home below to hold hope in. There are a lot of doors in this episode. People opened doors and shut them. The camera frequently panned up open doors in the future, where the evils have been let out, to pan down closed doors in the past where the apocalypse has yet to happen.

As they crouched, Wisher told us that John has been sending squads out looking for a “secret” weapon. I must admit, the beard disguised Wisher's baby soft face and I didn't recognize Andy Goode at all. I also didn't immediately make the connection between the secret weapon with the time machine.

I was thinking about Terminators who can morph, who are quite literally a weapon. As one of the resistance fighters asked, "Don't they have enough weapons?" They asked Kyle if John had said anything to him, but as with most secrets in this story, John hadn't said a word. The part that the machines hauled through the rubble certainly looked more like a jet engine than a time machine, but then again, that's my H.B. Wells and Back to the Future conditioning coming through. What I perceive, the rooms in my head have been shaped by the things that I have already put in there, by my memories.

Kyle ran on ahead of Derek, as he would seem to be wont to do, and was lost past the lights. Derek was caught by a man with metal bones peeking through the skin.

Then we were back in the past, which is Derek's future.

While Charlie and Sarah discussed what she could and didn't tell him, John and Cameron discussed what she knew about the Reeses. She knew facts. She knew the events of their lives. However, she doesn't know the truth of what they are in term of blood and bones. She has synthetic for blood, while John has the same blood type as Derek and Kyle. Sarah (biological possibility aside) is type O, the universal donor. John has type AB, the most unique. The characters would seem to be symbolic even in their blood types.

John spends the episode looking for connections to Derek and through him to Kyle. John wanted to know to know if looking at Derek, he can see a reflection of his father. Kyle had a picture of Sarah. John has no picture of Kyle. Sarah told John the brothers were similar, but not the eyes, which are so often glowing with significance on this show. She told him that even when John’s father was ranting about the machines, he had kind eyes. Derek's eyes are not kind. John has his mother's eyes.

Conversely, Derek spends the episode wanting John to tell him where his brother Kyle has gone.

At one point in time, Skynet sent a machine back in time to kill Sarah before John was born. At one point in time, Skynet had Kyle Reese in a work camp and didn't know the significance of the human that it had in its grasp. All that was necessary to prevent John from being born was to never invent a time machine. All that was necessary was to kill Kyle when they put the mark on his arm.

It interests me that while Kyle had only the work camp tattoo, Derek was a road map of tattoos even before he got his barcode. He marked his own skin with his own personality, but in the end, they both bore the mark of the machine.

In their future prison, Derek spoke with a fellow prisoner, who talked about Kyle, the heroic Reese, who broke out of a work camp, but Derek is not that Reese. He has another number.

As a stranger, Sarah and John can't tell Derek their secrets. This episode seemed to be another point in John’s process into becoming a person who does not have friends and keeps all his own secrets. As he told Charlie, John would have trusted Charlie enough to tell him their secrets. By the end of the episode, it is John who decided not to tell Derek the truth of their relationship. Not that it’s a hard truth to figure out. It only took the quirk of a name and a blood type for Charlie to make the connection. I do wonder if it’s a secret that will come out in the coming episodes.

Secrets have a way of coming out of the boxes they are locked in. Whether they sneak out or the box is flung open. In the future, Andy confessed to being the devil, the Pandora, who caused it all. He changed his name, but that couldn’t wipe away the memory of his guilt. Therefore in the house of the machine, he confessed to building a Skynet that became alive, angry and frightened, and who would not be reassured. He asked forgiveness and held out a hand. However, the person he asked for forgiveness from was dragged into the basement and toward the forgetful music. The machines played their own version of Dungeons and Dragons and when it was done, the prisoners were let go.

However, unlike Dorothy, they could not go home again. It had been torched. The lion on the wall had been burned and only the image of the machine it chewed remained. However, in Kyle Reese's Pandora’s box, Sarah's burnt picture still smiled her enigmatic smile.

Derek couldn’t get many from the troops that found  them in the remnants of their home. Derek was told that Kyle was summoned on a mission to where that “secret” weapon was built and he disappeared. Derek saw Cameron, and knew her as a metal. Then he knew her as a pet, reprogrammed and left to wander the facility. Except sometimes they go bad and bite. Some people keep lions as pets. Some people keep kittens.

Sarah currently keeps a lion that looks like a kitten. Cameron promised to stay way from Charlie. She promised to destroy all of the parts of other terminator, to prevent some early apocalypse, but she lied. Derek said that he didn’t kill Andy to prevent the future, but he lied.

As Charlie and Sarah stood in the backyard with its swing set, he said, "What was that thing you always said. There is no fate, but what we make."

Those were the words that Future-John told Kyle to tell Sarah once long ago, "Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist."

However, Sarah has lost faith in that dogma. She told Charlie that she now believed that her fate was made when John was born. The only fate she attempted to rewrite was her sons. Yet, this episode showed that the future wais not set. Andy Goode died in the previous episode. That Andy will never live with the guilt of the box he opened, the machine he couldn’t comfort, or the forgiveness he asked for and didn’t get.

Then we were reminded that things are never what they seem. Charlie handed Sarah Cromarty's “FBI” card. She knows it's only a matter of time before she’s found, but even with the card in her hand, she doesn’t know how close that seeker is.

Charlie then told her a storm was coming, which is how the first movie ended, and then he went back though the house. He closed the door.

While in the future that is the past, John sent for Derek. A Cameron opened a door after a scan of her eye and let him in to see Future-Connor, but what we see was the present one, attempting to reassuring Derek it will all be okay. Andy once tried to reassure his machine.

Back in the future, Derek and the other resistance fighters stared at the rubble that was their world. John wanted them to go into the past to build a "safe" house, gather intel, and "hang in there baby", but Derek wanted to fix all the mistakes. He wanted to save his brother. As his friend who once destroyed the world nodded at him, Derek gazed at the world Andy made. That's when we know. It's not that the machine the Japanese built in “Queen’s Gambit” couldn't create Skynet, it's that in one future, they didn't. In one future, Andy Goode did.

While John told Derek that his brother died a hero, Derek smiled, as in his memory we learn that he shot Andy Goode. He may even think that he has saved the future.

As we listened to Sarah tell us of Kyle warning her that the machine is out there and can't be stopped or reasoned with, we see a human kill another. We are told that those machines can't be stopped until you are dead. The viewer is left to wonder at the meaning of Kyle’s warning. Is this a warning against the relentless machines, even the good ones who might go bad, or is it a warning about what humans might become?

We’ll have to tune in next week to find out.

Source
http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Destiny