While shopping
with John, Cameron begins to seemingly have flashbacks to her life as
a human. Soon she has fully reverted to this old human self. Did
‘Allison from Palmdale’ really exist? And if so, will she be
willing to go back to being Cameron again?
So this is a pretty weird episode, both
in theme and execution. We keep jumping from Cameron in the present
to Allison in the past. Cameron has forgotten that she is a
Terminator but remembers moments from her previous life as a
resistance fighter. The episode is structured in terms of
interrogation sequences. The amnesiac Cameron is talking to a
counsellor, while in the past Allison is being interrogated by the
machine that intends to take her place, Cameron.
Now firstly in terms of the theme being
weird this episode raises a big question which challenges the entire
established lore of the franchise. How can Cameron remember her life
as a human? Is she a human/Terminator hybrid or does she have
digitised memories? This question is not answered, at least not in
this episode. I don’t entirely know how I feel about Cameron being
partially human, if that is the case.
The series has so far flirted
with the idea that Cameron is gaining some understanding of emotions
and to just give them to her would completely undermine her Pinocchio
quality.
Clues have previously been given that
Cameron was not entirely what she seemed however. In the pilot she
seems to sadly mention that John has many friends in the future, was
she referencing Allison? Also when she was begging to not be switched
off she said that she loved John, was this also Allison talking about
the future John?
As much as I have reservations about
this concept I can also see a huge amount of potential in it. At one
point in the episode John manages to track down Cameron/Allison and
says he can fix her, make her a machine again. Allison sensibly
points out that she doesn’t want to be a machine, that there is
nothing to be fixed. This concept of a human ghost being trapped in
the Terminator machine is really interesting and it would certainly
lead to some interesting scenes with the Connor gang. We also have
the suggestion that Cameron may represent a group of Terminators who
want peace with humanity. This concept is even bigger and raises all
manner of questions about the intentions of Terminators the gang may
meet. Is Catherine Weaver really evil for example?
This episode is pretty strange in its
ideas but the execution is far stranger. The direction of this
episode is very abstract and dreamlike in nature. A lot of shots seem to have been framed in a deliberately strange way. I appreciate
that this is to heighten the sense of unease caused by the Cameron
revelation but it is just tiring after a while. The editing is also
strange, constantly jumping around in time to replicate Cameron’s
shattered grasp of reality. However this editing also takes away
quite a lot from the grounded nature of the series.
There is only so far you can push dream
imagery and timing before the audience begins to question what they
are seeing too much. A good TV show or film should make you forget
you are watching it because you are enthralled by the story. I don’t
want to criticise the show for being experimental but I think the
point they were trying to make could have been made just as easily if
they had reined the weirdness of the production back a tad.
While Cameron is having her crises of
identity, Sarah rushes their neighbour, Kacy Cotton, to the hospital
as she fears she is about to give birth. This plot line mainly exists
to introduce the baby’s father Trevor, an inquisitive cop who may
end up living next to the Connors. The second that a pregnant lady
showed up near Cameron I began to fear that the obvious might happen:
the sequence where Cameron has to help her give birth and experiences
the miracle of life. I’m still suspecting this might happen but
hopefully ‘Terminator:TSCC’ will avoid this massive cliché.
In terms of the larger cast, Ellison
accepts the job with Catherine Weaver. I have previously criticised
the idea of Ellison being tricked into working for a Terminator but
now there is a chance that some Terminators want peace this plot line
potentially became a lot more interesting. Hopefully the question of
good Terminators will be left open for a while as it makes the show a
lot less predictable.
‘Allison from Palmdale’ was
certainly very interesting but I feel it came on a bit strong. We
have had 12 episodes drip feeding us information on Cameron and
suddenly we have a huge amount of backstory all at once. It’s a lot
to take in and the overtly artistic nature of the production made the
huge dump of information far harder to consume.
I have voiced my
concerns that ‘Terminator: TSCC’ might become too formulaic and I
certainly can’t make that complaint when the show produces episodes
like this. If I had to choose formulaic but consumable or crazy but
memorable I would certainly choose the latter. I just hope that a
middle ground can be found for the next time ‘Allison from
Palmdale’ shows her face.
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