The gang are fighting to save a family,
the Fields, from a Terminator. Meanwhile 2027 Derek is trying to
rescue a girl who may be the only hope in finding a cure for the
plague ravaging humanity in the future.
So the previous episode focussed on
Cameron and John while this episode focuses on Sarah and Derek.
‘Alpine Fields’ takes place across three time zones, flashing
between all three to tell the story.
We open with Derek walking into a
warehouse, he has been sent by Sarah to help a pregnant woman and her
teenage daughter, they are the remaining members of the Fields family. We then flash back to the beginning of
their story, several months earlier. Sarah and Cameron arrive at the
Fields' household and have to defend them from a Terminator who is
targeting them. The third time zone is in 2027, with Derek
having to travel into an infected zone to find a girl who has somehow survived
the plague that the machines unleashed on them.
So I really like that this and the
previous episode have focussed so closely on individual characters.
This focussed view on a smaller part of the team allows a lot of
extra character development. Unfortunately this approach also has its
drawbacks. When the storyline focusses on a character so much any
strange characterisation becomes far more apparent. Derek is fine in
this episode but Sarah has a few issues.
When Sarah is protecting the Fields
family she tries to work out which of them the machines is targeting.
She immediately seems to discount the teenage daughter Lauren for no
apparent reason. At first this could make a bit of sense because she
discovers that Lauren’s father, David, is working with a company
who makes cybernetic technology.
However David is ignored by the
Terminator and Sarah turns her attention to the mother, Anne, and
Lauren. At this point Anne admits that she is pregnant and Sarah
automatically assumes that the baby must be the target for the
machines. Now I don’t know why Sarah assumes that the baby is more
important to the future than Lauren, she has no reason to assume the
baby is somehow more special.
Sarah is so sure that the baby is the
target that she tells Lauren to hide in a cupboard, as the Terminator
will ignore her. This behaviour seems far too reckless for Sarah, she
basically flips a mental coin to decide who to protect. To add insult
to injury Sarah manages to help the family temporarily escape and
then gives them her number to ring them if the Terminator ever tracks
them down again. Now Sarah has been cold towards people before but
not when the future depended on them being alive. Sarah just leaves
them to be pursued by a Terminator; this just doesn’t seem like
something she would ever do. Sarah went out of her way to save that alternate Martin Bedell earlier in the series and his life meant nothing to the future.
It’s particularly weird as when
Lauren rings Sarah for help months later, Sarah immediately drops everything to
kill the Terminator. Why didn’t she just kill the Terminator
straight away?
Anyway while Sarah and Cameron are
finally doing their job, Derek is trying to help Anne Fields deliver
her baby, assisted by Lauren. Anne has a bullet wound that is pretty
serious and Lauren and Derek are struggling to keep calm. Upon Derek
meeting Lauren he recognises her, this triggers a flashback to the
future. Derek has volunteered to enter a plague infected area to find
a girl who appears to have a resistance to the plague. While trying
to find the girl, Derek enters a bunker that is filled with dead
bodies including a pregnant mother with her children.
This sets Derek off on a bad path, pushing him to
attempt suicide. He is interrupted however by Jessie, who manages to
stop him. It’s nice to see this scene that was described in an
earlier episode played out. Derek and Jessie manage to find the girl
but they have been infected by the plague. They rush back to the
resistance and are cured using blood from the girl they rescued, the doctor who cures them being Lauren.
One interesting thing about this
episode is how much darker it is than the rest of the series. We get
scene after scene of corpses and noticeably stronger language in this
episode. To be honest these scenes feel weird when surrounded by the
more jokey, light hearted scenes. Hopefully this is not the tone the
show will be taking from now on as it doesn’t completely work.
Back in the present day, Anne dies
during childbirth but the baby, Sydney, survives. Derek rings Sarah,
who has managed to destroy the Terminator. When he returns to look
for Lauren she discovers that she has left with the baby, leaving behind a necklace
that Derek warned earlier in the episode would make her a target.
So ‘Alpine Fields’ had some stuff I
liked and some stuff I didn’t like so much. The part set in the
future was brilliant. We got to see moments that had previously only
been described we also got some subtle exposition for future
episodes worked in carefully. Jessie’s speech about a submarine
commanded by a reprogrammed Terminator is really interesting and
hopefully it will appear in a future episode. The universe of
‘Terminator:TSCC’ is being built up bit by bit in a really
effective way, with information drip fed over weeks.
The rest of the episode had one issue,
but it was a big issue, The Fields themselves. So the family accept
that they are being pursued by robots from the future amazingly
quickly, so quickly that it makes them completely unbelievable.
Lauren in particular becomes best friends with Sarah about ten
minutes after they were aiming guns at each other.
I feel this
episode suffers from trying to do too much. We have to establish the
character of Lauren Fields so quickly because we open the episode on
her in the present day, forcing the flashback to play catch up
immediately. The actors portraying the family do the best they can
with the restrictions the episode has set but they are unable to completely salvage their characters.
The central concepts in 'Alpine
Fields’ of the future virus and protecting the family are strong.
It would have been nice if the family aspect had been given a bit
more room to breathe but the episode manages to remain engaging and
entertained me reasonably, even with its flaws.
No comments:
Post a Comment