Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2:3: Mousetrap

[electricland]

Hmmm. The growing disconnect between the show I want to watch and the show they want to give me is worrying me.

Dear show and everyone in it: please be smarter.

(I really need an icon for this show, incidentally.)

- What a very convoluted Rube Goldberg plot Cromartie came up with, to be sure. And why the pier? Surely you could foresee the problems inherent in trying to pick John out of the crowd?

- Yeah, right, show, you are totally going to kill Sarah. Or Derek. Or even Charlie. Which leaves... the pouty wife!

- This being the case, did you have to make her so goddamn unsympathetic? In fact, would it have killed you to set her up with a personality in previous episodes?

- Charlie. You are a paramedic. When your wife is bleeding out, you have a golden opportunity granted to few men in your situation to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. That being the case, would you mind doing something instead of sitting around moaning and looking anguished and helpless? Likewise, having demanded that Sarah stop the damn truck, PLEASE USE YOUR TIME WISELY.

- John. I'm pretty sure terminators are really, really good at spotting sudden jerky movements that stand out from the crowd. Cromartie is, like, 5 feet away. STOP BEING CONSPICUOUS.

For contrast, what I did like:

- The Rube Goldberg plot worked, sorta, mostly, at least insofar as it allowed Cromartie to decoy Sarah and get the team's recognition codes. This was a good thing. I still think it depended on an awful lot of dominoes, but it allowed Sarah to be Sarah and this was a good thing.

- Terminators don't float. This makes sense. Happy echoes of Windle Poons in the Ankh.

- Laszlo's movie was kind of rockin'.

I will discuss my other major beef in a later post. In preparation, here is an exercise for the class. We are designing a mass-produced humanoid infiltration/combat robot. As an optional extra, it can be covered with living tissue to simulate human life. Leaving aside the software for now, and keeping in mind cost and time constraints, what hardware do we include? (Yes, Anakin, we will have access to a foundry this semester.)

Comments

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

No, Anakin! Jesus, stay away from the foundry. Remember last time? Yes? Right.

[pretentiousgit.livejournal.com]

You mean last time, where much-vaunted continuity was mangled in service of POD RACING?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Yay, midichlorians!

[nellisir.livejournal.com]

Can you define hardware a little better? night vision? false stomach?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Well, everything. Starting with the hyperalloy combat chassis, internal power source, processor, and memory, and moving on from there.

[nellisir.livejournal.com]

OK, that's gonna be a bit too ... detailed for me to participate in. ;) School has left me very, very little time to be fanboyish. I only caught Terminator this week because I didn't realize Heros was premiering (and as a result, I watched an entire 3 hours of tv for the first time in a month, and didn't do homework that was due today, but which I have fortunately gained an extension on and should probably start. now.)

;)

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Feel free to critique from the sidelines. ;)

How is school, anyway?

[nellisir.livejournal.com]

Good. Very good. Monstrously busy. Can't wait to get into our new house (Friday!!) and actually settle in; living in a short-term rental just makes one feel...short-term.

[ice-fighter.livejournal.com]

As long as the robot has the ballet dancing function, the rest is just icing,

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Especially if that's what allows it to detect movement of 0.93 mm/year! (That's 0.0001 mm/hr, or 0.29 Angstroms/s, for those playing at home.) That's some fine, fine instrumentation there.

[nellisir.livejournal.com]

I wonder if some of it couldn't be done not via direct observation, but multiple (ie, multiple per second) GPS/satellite locational queries & triangulation. angstroms are probably a little finer than even government satellites get, though, but there may be other ways to shift much of the burden from instrumentation/observation to calculation.