For such a young man I also was very impressed how Thomas Dekker portrays John Connor. He portrays him in a very adult way, which he does flawlessly in my opinion. Seeing what this character has endured, it is logical that he does not act like a teenager, but Thomass Dekker really does a great job not acting his part like a teenager. Summer Glau is also very impressive as a terminator, very well cast I have to say, although surprising. I know Brian Austin Green from Beverly Hills 90210, so when I first saw him in this, I was surprised because I’d only seen him in BH90210. I have to say he also made a great impression on me as Derek Reese, became one of my favorite characters! Other important characters in season one are: FBI James Ellison (Richard T. Jones), Terminator Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt) and Charley Dixon (Dean Winters) to whom Sarah was engaged with before she and John had to run again because the tin cans were on to them.

Sarah is engaged to Charley in the year 1999, living relatively peacefully in the same community for 2 years. John goes to school in Red Valley, New Mexico and a girl named Cameron Philips shows an interest in him. When a Terminator shows up to kill John, Cameron reveals herself as a Terminator also but her job is to defend John. It appears that Miles Dyson somehow was not the one who created Skynet but someone else so Sarah thought she stopped it, but it hasn’t. Cameron sends them to 2007 to find out who is the creator/ founder of Skynet. Before John can go outside again, Sarah first must get her hands on new identities. Cameron perhaps knows how to get some but that is a dead end, literally, they were also time travelers from the resistance but they have been killed. A Terminator is at the scene and after a brief fight with Cameron, he runs off. They go back to the apartment of the killed resistance fighters to find money to pay for the identities. The audience sees a man with a tattoo watching them (presumably Derek Reese). An old friend of Sarah’s, Enrique Salceda (Tony Amendola), is able to help, he doesn’t work anymore, but his nephew has taken over the business. His nephew honors the deal but tells to his mates in Spanish that his uncle is a rat. Sarah confronts Enrique Salceda (Tony Amendola), but Cameron kills him before he can be truthful. Later the audience learns that he was ratting on Sarah also.

Cameron tells Sarah that if they hadn’t time jumped to 2007, Sarah would have died in 2005 of cancer. She goes to the doctor for a test. Meanwhile, John cannot take it anymore and flees out of the house. He finds Charley Dixon’s address and breaks in. When Charley comes home from work he sees him, wants to hug him or something, but John’s defense mechanism kicks in and he hurts him and runs away. A man finds a terminator head, when activated, it also activates its body at a dump and they find each other.  Note – Lena Headey is a magnificent actress, so believable, she’s doing a great job playing the overprotecting mother who basically is constantly in survivor mode. Sarah visits Myles Dyson's widow, and Sarah ends up meeting Andy Goode along the way who ends up being an inventor of a chess playing computer named "The Turk." She kind of likes him, instead of killing him, she burns his house down, including “the Turk”. John and Cameron have their first day in school, John tells Cameron she is his sister and should not act like a freak. Elsewhere, Agent Ellison tries to piece together the mysterious mass killing of four unidentified men. Ellison seems to be a joke to his colleagues, but he does not let that bother him. Cromartie the Terminator, (from the severed head) tracks down a scientist to assist him in his regeneration. John gets angry when a girl wants to kill herself by jumping from the roof. He wants to try and save her but Cameron stops him. When his mother agrees with Cameron’s decision he says: If he is supposed to become a hero, why not now!

John has a hard time with the girl the killed herself. While they are searching for some stolen cargo, John gets separated from Sarah and Cameron. He accidentally gets trapped in the back of an armored truck loaded with enough metal to build 500 endoskeletons. When he arrives at this bunker, he finds another Terminator with an unknown mission. The terminator guards this metal because in the future it becomes a rare commodity and here it will remain. Sarah and Cameron come to the rescue but not before he has to take off the key from this terminator’s body! Meanwhile, the murder of a plastic surgeon that Agent Ellison is investigating leads him to a surprising suspect, while Cromartie continues to rebuild his bio image into another person. He picked a former patient of this plastic surgeon because he fits the parameters for himself. When Ellis visits the man, who is an actor, he is actually already Cromartie.

Sarah is troubled to learn that Andy Goode has rebuilt his computer the Turk II and entered it into a chess competition with a military contract as the winning prize. If he wins, Cameron will have to kill him. Fortunately he loses and the Chinese, who were against him in the finale, haven’t been mentioned as the ones who are possibly responsible. However, Andy gets killed afterwards, Sarah sees someone leaving in a hurry. She catches him and fight but he is taken in custody by the police. Apparently he is a Resistance fighter from the future. When Sarah learns he is Derek Reese, she knows he his John’s uncle so breaks him out. Another terminator is after them, Cameron manages to stop him. He loses a hand which Ellison finds. Cromartie, as an FBI agents comes to Charley’s house asking questions. His wife knows that Charley has been lying and he confesses that John was in their home.

Derek Reese is severely injured and John has brought in Charley. He manages to stabilize him but he needs a lot of blood while his blood type is rare, but logically John has the same. Meanwhile we see Reese in the future fighting against the machines and getting captured. There, Billy Wisher tells him he actually is Andy Goode and he explains that he build Skynet. Sarah tells Charley the truth and they show him the exoskeleton of the terminator that was after them. Future John Connor sends Reese and others back in time, Reese did kill Andy. As Derek Reese recovers from his injuries, Sarah attempts to retrieve the severed Terminator hand and Cameron tracks down Dmitri Shipkov. Meanwhile FBI agent James Ellison pays a visit to Dr. Silberman to learn more about Sarah's past. Silberman suspects Ellison to be a Terminator. When he finds out he is human he apologizes after he put a knife in his leg. When Ellison tells him about the hand, Silberman feels he needs Sarah to continue her work and decides that Ellison should not interfere, so he burns the house, intending for Ellison to die. Sarah however is also looking for Silberman. John sees a video of his mum in the asylum, he sees her signing a document which means she no longer has rights to her son. Reese tries to tell him that a place like that can do something to you. Ellison brings Silberman back to that asylum, now he can go behind bars. Reese sees Cameron doing ballet, he is astonished and moved by it.

Derek shows Sarah Vick’s brain chip,  Cameron lied, but she says it was important to see where he has gone to. It appears he was an infiltrator, he was even married to a woman who was project manager of a case which was very important to Skynet. Cromartie is going from school to school pretending to be a FBI agent, looking for John. John is almost found by him but Cameron sends a friend of his as “John Baum” to the principles office. Sarah is still tracking “The Turk”, Derek makes it very clear he doesn’t trust Cameron one bit.

Sarah finds herself in a business transaction with a mysterious business man named Sarkissian, who claims to be in possession of the stolen Turk computer system and wants a huge amount of money for it. It’s John’s birthday and he is sure that him mom has forgotten it. Derek knows it’s his birthday and takes him out for ice cream. They go to a park where they see Kyle and Derek Reese as young boys playing baseball. Happy birthday, Derek says to John, knowing he never saw his father and already new Kyle was his father. Ellison tells Charley that he basically would believe Sarah at this point and that he knows she is still alive. Agent Ellison finally discovers that the terminator Cromartie is impersonating an FBI agent, and makes arrangements to apprehend him. John finds out that Sarkissian was not the guy they were dealing with, it was the guy in the café. He planned a bomb under their car and as Cameron turns the keys it explodes. Note – Great scene at the park when John realizes he is looking at his 5 year old father. Another great scene is when Ellison is trying to apprehend / catch Cromartie but of course he is unsuccessful, they stood eye to eye, Cromartie holding a gun to Ellison’s head but he doesn’t kill him. The scene is accompanied with fantastic Johnny Cash song The Man Comes Around.

Music:

Bear McCreary is responsible for the music which fits really well with this Terminator TV series. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles features incidental music composed by Bear McCreary. For financial reasons, the main theme of the Terminator film series, originally composed by Brad Fiedel, is featured only briefly in the TV series—mainly during the title sequence. McCreary has stated that his score is inspired by the tone of Fiedel's score in the first two Terminator films and since the television series is a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he felt that the tone of the music should be consistent with that of the film as much as possible. (WIKI) His work also includes the scores of Battlestar Galactica; Eureka; Caprica; Defiance; Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a favorite of mine, non SCI-FI show Human Target, and many, many more.

Final Word:

A very short but strong season, nine episodes, mainly due to the writer’s strike from 2007. I believe all episodes I graded an 8 or higher. Every time I rewatch this I am flabbergasted this was cancelled so quickly and for me season two is even stronger.  I decided to not use episode titles because it is a compact story, don’t think I will be able to do that with season two, which is 22 episodes.

Written with help of IMdB & Wiki, screencaps taken from IMdB