This week on Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles (T:tSCC), 2.5 a Terminator tries to fulfill his mission in life, John is schooled on destiny, Sarah volunteers to read a book with supposedly no moral message, Derek gets Post Traumatic, Cameron watches and Ellison does a little one step with his new boss. All in all it was tense, good fun with a catchy title, "Goodbye to all That." (spoilers)

"Goodbye to All That" is a reference to an autobiographical book by Robert Graves, published in 1929. Like many books coming from the Lost Generation, it's a stark anti-war book that focuses both on Grave's experiences in a boy's preparatory school, his later experiences in the horror of the trenches during WWI, and his post war life. Its title is intended as both a goodbye to England, which he is leaving as he feels that post-war politics will lead to another war, and to his childhood. Note: If you decide to look up a copy, be sure to get the original, not the revised version from the 1950s.

So when I heard that T:tSCC was setting an episode of that same name in a boy's prep school and prominently featuring Derek, who suffers as much Post Traumatic Stress syndrome as any of the people described in Graves' book, I wondered how they were going to play it.

In the book, Graves deals with a "real" apocalyptic landscape, which even nearing a century later still bears the scars of that conflict. With so much popular culture focusing on either WWII (victory) or Vietnam (not-Victory), I was curious to see what a story that riffed off of WWI with all its grind would say. What we get is an episode that focuses on the nature of personal choice, the value we place on the individual, and what it means to fulfill one's mission in life.

As is appropriate, we begin in a wonderfully banal suburban scene with a large wide lawn, beautiful sky and meat being cooked on a barbeque. This version of the Main Street pastoral is soon invaded by a hulking man, clearly a Terminator, who asks the cooker of meat if he's Martin Bedell.

We cut to a discussion between Derek, Sarah and John about Martin's death as reported in the newspaper.

Derek tells Sarah and John that Skynet must be targeting people with the name of Martin Bedell, because one of those Martins will be a major player in pulling the resistance together. That Martin will be someone with real military training, who went to West Point. When Sarah questions the murder as a coincidence, Derek questions how many Sarah Connors died before Skynet locked in on her, referencing the first movie.

As in WWI, where thousands of pounds of metal exploded across the fields of Northern France, Skynet pursues its objectives with a blunt instrument. After all, if the wrong Sarah Connor or Martin Bedell die, it hardly matters. In the long run, Skynet wants them all dead. Also it highlights a certain sense of humans as assembly line products. The run of Martin Bedell shall be removed from the shelves to prevent that one tainted, from Skynet's perspective, product from reaching the future.

Of course, Sarah knows the answer to Derek's question. While in the first movie, the other Sarah Connors may seem to be cannon-fodder-not-real-Sarahs, to Sarah they were women whose deaths in a manner saved Mother-of-Destiny-Sarah's life by virtue of slowing the T800 down. This must be part of the burden that she carries and which helps inform how she perceives the value of human life. She never met those women, but they share the same name.

We also get a wonderful moment where John takes another step toward becoming the person he's going to have to be. Derek is all for fools rushing in, while Sarah pulls for caution. John sits and thinks, and you can see traces of the cool planner, who will become the heart of everything. He figures out that part of the writing on the wall from 2.2, "Automatic for the People" refers to a military prep school where Martin Bedell is a student. Now it's John's turn to seize the moment. It's a boy's school and he's going, with Sarah pulling back and Derek playing mediator between the two.

There's a wonderful power dynamic in this moment, because currently Sarah is the leader of all the resistance that there is, the three of them, plus one power tool. However, for everything to succeed, John must become the person that he needs to be. He needs to make the right choices that will lead to him fulfilling his mission in life. The period of semi-protected apprenticeship must end and he must begin his Journeyman’s work.

That John must become a soldier and leave the protections that he's had up until now is wonderfully emphasized in the next scene, which has no dialog. John and Derek load up the product placement car with guns, while on one side and slightly lower down,  his protecting Terminator watches him and the skyline. Above them, his mother watches with arms crossed. The product placement car pulls away from between the two and away from sorta-safety.

John and Derek plan to protect Martin Bedell at the school, because as Derek put's it, Martin Bedell in a cave is worth the same as Martin Bedell dead. Here, Derek assigns Martin Bedell's life no significant value of it's own. It's value is in what it can do for the Resistance, which means to a certain extent that John's life only has value in what he can do for the Resistance. All the effort in keeping him safe so he can reach the end of the world will only paid off if he actually saves it, and for that matter if the world actually ends.

As an aside, while I watched Derek, a man who spent his life fighting machines, driving a vehicle with GPS, I couldn't help but think of Robert Graves. Years after the war, he wouldn't use a phone, becaues the sound reminded him of the Trench phone, which would call with fatal orders and on one occasion, he used following a lightening strike, and was literally shocked.  Somehow, in the midst of an episode in which Derek is so clearly suffering from shell shock, I wanted to see him do something truly improbable to the product placement car's GPS.

In the Ellison plotline, Catherine sends Ellison to investigate the near meltdown at the nuclear plant from 2.2, in which she coyly says she has an interest. I'm fascinated that she hands Ellison a robotic eye as explanation for why she's sending him there. Eyes are traditionally seen as windows to the soul. Here, Ellison, whose Cross has been put aside and his Book has been buried, is given a soulless eye. It is detached from the body that used it. It is now mere metal that sees nothing.

As John and Derek arrive at the school, Derek sees some cadets and drifts off into the first of several future memories. If the book "Goodbye to All That" is a memoire of the War to End all Wars, so too Derek's memories serve as a reminder of the human face of the struggle in those future trenches. None of the future scenes involve the actual fighting. Instead we see the stress and tension of the tunnels.

Interestingly, Derek advises caution rather that risking the outpost to save other soldiers who have been captured. He references a sort of, "What would John Connor do." In the negative space of how characters talk about Future-John, we're painted an image of someone who focuses on holding the line, the overall strategy, not the individual soldier. Someone who would send his own father and uncle back in time, all unknowing, because that's what has to happen.

Although, I know that Terminator 4 and T:tSCC are following divergent timelines based off comments by the T:tSCC producers, this does make me ever more curious to finally meet Future-John.

In any case, Martin Bedell, the one with the military training, who helped pull it all together, decides to take the risk to save the unknown soldiers.

After Derek leaves his fugue state, he, somewhat improbably, manages to not only enroll John in school, but gets himself a one week job guiding students.

Meanwhile, Sarah's arc is consumed with caring for the other Martin, the one who won't be a hero, who might not even survive the end of the world. He's a little boy playing a war video game, trash talking the other player. For a moment there, I almost wondered if it weren't all an enormous feint and young Martin was the actual Martin Bedell. However, instead we explore the value of the other Martin, the other Sarah, the value of the non-world saving person.

The doorbell rings and it's metal Death outside. Sarah snatches young Martin back as the wolf at the door blows it in. They run for the car and it's a tense few minutes as the T888 tears their car roof up as they're driving. However, in between telling young Martin to put on his seat belt, Mom-ish Sarah shoots the T888 off the car. Other-Martin, who deals with all this far better than I would, then gets a short info dump on cyborgs from the future out to kill him. They don't tell him that this is purely due to his name.

Ellison does his investigating. He goes to the Nuclear Plant, where he sees the wreckage resulting from the Terminator on Terminator battle and talks with the Plant Manager, who wants a full Federal investigation into the strange events of the day. This is quite reversal of his role in 2.2, where he wanted nothing more than to bring the plant online.

It's interesting to see Ellison now as someone in the know, as it were, instead of being confused by the oddities that he sees and hears about. I could practically see the significance of each item clicking into meaning for Ellison. His eyes are not disconnected and they can now see with an understanding of the underlying significance.

We segue from smoking vats to Derek in the sylvan outdoors with a ginormous gun. He touches tar and sees a deer. As with the scene last season, where he stood in the grass, there's a wonderful quiet power to how the scene is played without even a word. However, all idylls end. Ever twitchy, Derek hears gunfire, but it's not in his head.

On another kind of battle field, we meet proto-hero-Martin. John is "learning" how to shoot, which for all his mother protests that he's not a soldier, she's seen to it he knows how to do. He even teaches another cadet a mnemonic for dealing with a jammed firearm. This earns him both an point and a demerit from Martin, who at this stage of his life follows the chain of command and the rhythmic orders of the world he lives in.

They go for a run and come across Derek, doing his pre-T888 preparations. He warns them to stay away from the Le Brea tar. While I realize that the tar is a plot device, the Le Brea tar pits fascinated me as a child when I went on field trips. Mighty animals, saber toothed tigers and Mastodons, were all trapped in the tar and preserved in time.

But enough about tar. As Derek looks at Martin, he flashes back and forth between the present boy and the future scarred man.

With young-Martin, Sarah locks flimsy doors as if this will provide safety. The only safety is being hidden. This is not Sarah's beautiful house. She searches for clothing for Martin. She finds all sorts of items that are too small or not quite right. She is out of sorts with her maternal role. He wants to call his mother, and I was reminded of Sarah calling her mother in the original Terminator movie. Then, her mother was already dead and it meant that T800 was able to track them down. Here, Cameron prevents the call. She picks up Martin and presents his imminent death with one hand and impassively offers a bed-times story with the other. This nicely presents Cameron's dualistic nature in a quippy moment.

As he later sleeps, Cameron says that they should have "engaged" the 888.  Cameron doesn't think Martin is their mission. Sarah rejects this point of view. The other-Martins and Sarah's lives have meaning to her.

Back at the young soldier ranch, Derek is supposed to give a pep talk to the cadets. One of the cadet's is very gung ho about what he wants for his future, kills. Derek's been to that future. He proceeds in an incredibly chilling and heartfelt manner to rip the cadet a new one by describing how a member of his squad was shot in the belly and held his own guts in for the hours it took for him to be carried to an aid station. The story works because while it is a story of the future, it is a story that could be told from practically any war.

Derek has another flash-forward to Martin giving orders, and I thought of soldiers going over the top of the trenches and into the machine gun blast of no-man's land; same apocalypse, different war. Future-Martin holds a mine and he tells the troops, like a mantra. "He sits in the middle of the road and blows up metal. This is his life's ambition, and I intend to help him achieve it." I'll address this point more fully later, but it's fascinating that even things have missions.

However, while Derek sits in this fugue state, the world is going on around him. He sits at lunch at stares at a middle space that only he can see. His eyes, his gaze, is turned inward and fixed upon his past.

We shift perspectives to John and Martin. As John talks about the weight of all Derek represents, we discover that Martin struggles with some of the same underlying issues. Martin is fifth generation amazing, and they all went to school at this school. Martin doesn't see how he can possibly live up to the weight of all that history. Instead, he longs to run, both literally and figuratively. He's fallen in love with a co-ed from Dartmouth. He's planning on leaving the shape of this life behind. Yet, in terms of destiny, surely a Martin Bedell running track at Dartmouth is as good as a dead Martin Bedell. John, who pushed to be on this mission, both rebels against his destiny and attempts to stretch into it.

As he talks with Derek later, John seems to be doing homework, but it becomes clear that he's doing homework of another sort. Derek is concerned about the vulnerability that the woods presents. John tells Derek about Martin, but Derek is certain that Martin will do what he was meant to do. John insists, given that he's really speaking about himself, that Martin has a choice. His future is not written. That's not really in question for Derek. What's important is that John ensure that Martin makes the right choice. John's response is to list all the exits from the property to show that he's playing into the choice that he is expected to make.

Sarah comes into the living room to find young-Martin watching his mother plead with her son's kidnappers to let him go on the tv  In a state of panic over things that he cannot control, young-Martin latches onto something that he can control. He has a book report due on Monday, which didn't seem so important back when killer cyborgs weren't out to kill him. Then he played games. Now, Sarah helps him go through the house's library. This is not her library.

It's an interesting choice to revisit "the Wonderful Wizard of Oz," which we touched on briefly in S1, when we learned that it was John's favorite story as a boy. As they search for a book, Cameron states that it is the favorite book of the man John will become. While there are significant differences, as Sarah comments between the movie and the book, what remains consistent is that each of the characters inherently had the qualities they needed all along. Mind you, in the book, they learn this and then proceed to have another hundred or so pages of adventures.

It's also interesting that Cameron is the one who notices this. She is aware of Martin's sandwich preferences and favorite book. Much of her role in this episode is as a watcher. She watches Martin's parents. Her gaze is engaged with the world around her. She is processing preferences. But we do not yet know what she makes of all the information that is flooding in.

Ellison goes to the bar where Sarah chatted up Greenway in 2.2. There are a number of interesting things going on in this scene. Not the least of which is that while the Bartender immediately pegs him as an investigator, Ellison has already moved so far into his role that he says, without hesitation, that he's private sector. What he finds is unexpected, a photo of Sarah, caught in a reflection. This is some wonderful staging, because it places Sarah at literally three removes from Ellison: in the past, in a photo, and in a mirror. As Ellison mines the elements of a pervious episode, I'm reminded of the tar and the odd things that you find in it. The past may be dead, but it can leave interesting corpses.

As they lay traps for the 888 in the woods, Derek talks weaponry. About one particular bullet, he delivers perhaps the funniest line of the episode, "Make it stop. Reconsider it's life choices." It's funny and yet it fits beautifully with the thematic elements of the episode in which characters are constantly considering their life's choices.

Then John asks the crucial question, if his father was the man who carried the wounded soldier to the aid station in Derek's story. Derek says yes, and then brings them full circle. He tells John about the deer. He tells John about when he and his brother were children. In the short days after the apocalypse, he killed a deer to feed he and his brother, who cried rather than eat it. Now he's back in this sun dappled time, when deer don't fear, yet the Terminator's keep coming.

Thus, we trace John's unknown father through the traces of his life: child, teenager and adult. Somewhere always in the picture, was Derek, who can hardly remember he was a child once too. That, as much as Derek's flash-forwards, is a result of the Metal War End all Wars as anything else.

Ellison has quite the story for Catherine.  He tells her of a battle between two machines, one which sought to destroy and the other which sought to save. He doesn't mention Sarah. Catherine asks him where the machines came from and why they fought, although she must know the answer. Ellison must guess the answer. Neither of them say.

What's also curious is that she seemed genuinely surprised to hear that there were two machines, who fought each other. Putting aside that she's not only capable of anger (2.1) and surprise, but if she were looking for Cameron, I would have expected the idea of two bashing Terminators to be par for the course.

When Ellison tells her about the Plant Manager wanting a Federal Investigation, she posits that Ellison won't want this information to come to light because he's an avenging angel. I'd say it's more likely that in keeping with the title of the episode, he doesn't think this is a battle worth fighting. The last time a federal investigation tracked down one of these machines, twenty people died. As he works for Catherine, he is not only seeking vengeance, as opposed to justice, but he's trying to protect his former co-workers from a something that will only lead to more death. In an analogy to WWI, facing a Terminator is like going over the top. Ellison isn't willing to let that happen again. However, it just goes to prove how far he's come in such a short time.

Later, the plant manager goes to the bar and is approached by a beautiful young woman. What happens is pretty much what you'd expect. She makes out with him out back and then liquid metals him down his throat. Catherine is leaving quite the pile of corpses.

When Derek calls, she mother-lioness threatens to kill Derek if something happens to John, but she's also trying to let go. She doesn't rush over to the school.

Consider just how emotionally unprepared she was, a scene that Headey rocked by the way, for a simple thank you from young-Martin. She and John have been push and pull struggling for so long, that I think she has forgotten the delicate pleasure of being thanked and saying you are welcome (to this help) in return.

Into the woods, the young would-be soldier's go. Their mission is to carry around a dummy, which evokes the story that Derek told earlier. Martin repeats his future self's tag line that being carried is the dummy's mission in life and Martin is there help him fulfill it. This not only connects present and future Martin, but the entire realization of destiny arc of the series. Martin is stating as a mantra, that he desires nothing more than to an enable an object to fulfill its destiny. Destiny is easier on things. They need only blow up or be carried around. The real cost of fulfilling one's mission in life is on the ones that do the carrying.

Derek tells the cadets that the scenario has changed and that they will be looking for an unknown assailant, who they should not engage, merely signal his passage. Then he takes John and Martin off into the woods for the "simulation."

Derek flashes to the results of future choices. Kyle is the field, a tank is on its way to their position and they only have one mine left. We flash back to the present with Derek staring somewhat creepily at Martin.

What follows is a wonderfully surreal scene. The 888 arrives and the young-soldiers make their hand signals at him, signifying his passage, but they do not engage. They are not his target, so he ignores them.

Derek more than engages. He shoots the 888 in the eye, but like the eye that Catherine handed Ellison, the 888 has no soul. He does not re-evaluate his life's choice. He keeps coming as they do. He wants to fulfill his mission in life. Derek leads the machine into the minefield they've laid. The machine blows up, but is not exploded. He rises again.

Young-Martin reads to Sarah a concatenation of some of the creepier sequences in the Wizard of Oz, the attack of first crows as the Scarecrow stands up to face them. The Scarecrow, here, with his scrambled clever brains must surely be Derek.

The 888 locks onto Martin, who stumbles, they always stumble. However, John calls out to the 888. He puts aside the name of Baum and calls out his real name. The 888 discards the lessor target and chases him in the night through that between space of woods, where John's supposed to be playing at warcraft. Instead he engages in the real.

Martin reads about the Wicked witch sending the flying monkeys after Dorothy. He becomes frightened and Sarah reads. Their words continue to slip into the other scene.

John leads the 888 onto a wooden plank over bubbling tar. As the monkey's help Dorothy, Derek shoots the machine into the morass. They torch the tar. As in the story the wicked witch melts, the machine melts into the primordial ooze. The future melting with the past. It's all terribly symbolic and very pretty.

Young-Martin falls asleep in Sarah's lap. Destiny-Martin gets an even heavier burden placed on his shoulders. He sees the thing melting. His monster isn't just a story. Meanwhile in the book, Dorothy runs, "no longer a prisoner in a strange land." Sarah closes the book and it's implied that this is the end of the book, although this isn't where that story end at all.

As the tar burns, Cameron watches silently from the woods. We are left to wonder at Cameron's motivations in all of this and what is her life's mission. Perhaps she's still deciding on it.

While Sarah drops young-Martin off at the bus-stop and offers to help him if he needs it, Destiny-Martin is told that he'll meet John again.

On the ride back, John asks what happened to Martin, and we get the closure of our flash-forwards. Derek questions if he's talking to John Baum or John Connor. Baum, the story with it's wonderful wizard is just a story. John is John Connor.

Martin ran with the mine to stop the machines, but for all his love of running, he couldn't outrun that moment. He saved both Kyle and the captured soldiers, one of whom was John Connor.

Derek tells John, in an interesting reversal of the Christ metaphor that underlies the series, that Martin died for him, that they all die for him. In this strange way, the fate of the war, the reason for the war, becomes a fulcrum on John's back. While on one hand, this has me hoping that they have a long enough lever, Derek's statement isn't precisely true.

Martin didn't know that John was among those prisoners. He died for unknown soldiers, for teenage Kyle, not the famous John. If we think back to Derek's statement in the first fugue, John would not have chosen to have saved those men. That Future-John's choices, as Martin's, would not result in saving himself.

We'll have to see what this John's choices will lead him to do.