Sarah Connor Chronicles

So last month, after reading some of the SDCC coverage of Sarah Connor Chronicles, I discovered I have no fears that Sarah's role might be reduced in the new season of SCC.

Here's why: I've always seen the central relationship of the series as Sarah and John's. She has devoted her life to protecting her son, and they are incredibly close, and it's part of why I love the show. And I don't see how John continuing to mature into the leader we saw glimpses of in "Vick's Chip" can possibly be lead to the story becoming The John Connor Chronicles, and not the The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The relationships—Sarah and John, John and Cameron, Sarah and Derek, Derek and John, even Derek and Cameron—are what drew me to the show. You can examine the story from so many different angles. Derek and Cameron come from a future that ceased to exist the second the they jumped back to the past, and the John Connor they know now may never grow up into the man they knew then. They share first-hand knowledge of the post-Judgement Day future, something Sarah and John can imagine but never truly understand, having never experienced it.

Derek and Sarah have a unique relationship because for the first time since Kyle Reese, Sarah has someone who knows her story, is a part of her story, and she does not have to lie to him, or hide any part of herself from him, or hurt him (unlike Charlie). He is under her command, he is her trusted right hand, and they are both trying to protect her son, who is her entire world. And they fight, and they work side by side, and in the end, Derek is very much Sarah's trained attack dog. You can tell she doesn't completely trust him (nor should she. Derek has a lot of issues that put them all in danger) but they have Kyle in common—and John is the only part of Kyle either of them can hold onto. So they will.

Sarah views Cameron as a tool. She is able to set aside her pathological hatred of the machines only so much, but she'll use any tool at her disposal. And Cameron is a thing to her. I think that Cameron's existence frightens her, because it means in the future, John trusts a machine (something she can never bring herself to do). But she is not going to waste the best opportunity she has to fight Skynet with its own weapons. And I love that it has been consistent—from the first film, through the entire series—that while John in the future sends machines back to protect, Sarah always chooses to fight to try and keep Skynet from being born. She is the one who gets Kyle to attack Cyberdine. She is the only true threat to Skynet, because without her, there would be no resistance. Not because she trained John to fight, but because she instilled in him the mission to fight to win, instead of just fighting to survive.

Everyone one else fights defensively. But Sarah has always gone on the offensive. She is the one who raises John to become the man Skynet fears. Skynet thinks it can stop it all by killing her to keep John from being born, and in doing so, it creates its greatest enemy: Sarah. I love that it's always been Sarah because John is her weapon. And it's all because she loves him and wants to keep him safe, which is what makes it awesome. He's not a weapon of hate. But he's still a weapon.

John Connor fascinates me because he's developing an existence beyond his mother's hopes and fears. I love that they argue, but are always there for each other. That he may hate following orders, but he still does it in the end. That he chafes under her iron-fist, but that doesn't mean he can't recognise when she's right, and it all has a larger purpose. But I also love that the rock-solid belief he had is starting to be tempered with reality. That he's capable of looking past what he's been told, and learning to make his own mind up. Learning to put all that strategy and training to work to think for himself. Because that's what will make him the John Connor who saves mankind. And it doesn't mean leaving Sarah behind. Not ever.

I also love the relationship John has with Cameron. Before Derek, Cameron mostly worked with Sarah. But once the grown-ups pair off, we really get to see John and Cameron's relationship start to develop. I love the grey areas of it. How he can view her as a tool without a soul, yet still feel compassion and curiosity and allow himself to be fooled by the skin she wears. I love the brother-sister vibe. I love how spooked he gets when she thinks and says things he didn't realise she was capable of thinking or saying. I love that he's still 16, and can't help the effect a pretty girl has on him, even if he knows in his head that she's got an endoskeleton under there and can squish him like a bug. I love that he trusts her. I love that he knows how dangerous that trust is. I love that he has a different relationship with her than his "parents" (Sarah and Derek, filling in for Kyle). I love that he has a flexible mind, and is capable of problem-solving by approaching obstacles like puzzles that no-one else in the Connor-Reese clan has. I love the puppy-dog like desperation with which he clings to both Charlie and Derek, because as completely awesome and hardcore as his mum is, boys still miss their fathers (even if it's only the idea of a father, and not the man himself), even if his died before he was born, and that's real to me.

I love that Cameron has an agenda and a past we know nothing about. And I love how she interacts with the world around her, and the people. I love that she offers Jordan eyeshadow because the first friendly gesture she knew to copy was that of the unnamed chola in Carlos' gang. I love that she adapts. I love that she is the most sophisticated learning computer on the planet, and constantly expands her knowledge of people and their interactions, yet the series never falls into the Lt Comdr. Data trap of trying to make her Pinocchio—wanting to be a real girl. She is who she is. She is what she is. The other characters are forced to deal with the reality of her on a daily basis, rather than their ideas of her.

But I look at the first season of SCC, and I look at the interviews from SDCC with Friedman and the cast, and I look at the promo poster—and I still have no doubt that Sarah is the lens through which we see this story. Sarah is the character around whom all the others orbit, and on whom the plot turns. That doesn't mean they do not have important roles. That does not mean she will always have the most screen time, or the most lines. But I don't see any of their individual stories growing more complex as a threat to her position or standing. SCC is still Sarah's story, the same way Terminator is Sarah's story. But it has always been John's story too (even if he exists only in the abstract in the first film), and it's not wrong for the series to address that SCC is all about how we get from here to there, in terms of the man John will become.

And it does not diminish the mother, in my eyes as a viewer, to show the son's journey.

Okay, remember how a few months back, I spent a day in geeky abandon, obsessing over the logo used in the main title sequence of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles? This is what I ended up doing with it:



This was probably the last graphic I made for fun and not profit before my beloved laptop, Synergy, died a death. Hence a lot of the radio silence from me, as I waited until I could a) afford a new PC and b) get it set up at home. The new PC is, possibly ironically, named Mr Smith, thus continuing my habit since the late 1980s of naming my computers after fictional AIs. I still have a lot of tricking out I still need to do (like remembering to transfer all my Custom Shapes and PhotoShop brushes from work to home), but the last week I've started on the massive backlog that built up while I was offline nights and week-ends.

I will say, however, that suddenly finding myself with time in the evenings, a friend got me hooked on Bones and I marathonned the first three seasons, prior to the finale a fortnight ago. Mainlining that much story in so brief a period of time, right now it's like a mad summer fling. By the time I hit the s1 Christmas episode "The Man in the Fallout Shelter", I was hooked. By the time I reached "Two Aliens in a Spaceship" I went from "God, this is fun" to "OMG this is really brilliantly done" due to the writing and stellar performances. I will say that while I enjoy the Old Skool sexual tension between Booth and Brennan (I did grow up with Scarecrow & Mrs King, Remington Steele, and Moonlighting after all) it's Hodgins and Angela in whom I've invested massively. I just am totally charmed by them, and hope series 4 does well by the Squint Squad. TJ Thyne and Michaela Conlin just light up the screen, and I've come to really love Tamara Taylor as well (though I do miss Dr Goodman, I recognise the story came first, and Cam was a smart story choice). And I really hope we see Zack as recurring, so his storyline could get closure too.

But overall, I really do love the character-driven stories, organic character development, and just the care taken with the relationships, particularly in the first two years (season 2 is so far my all-time fave, for consistantly solid storytelling). A lot of the things I have issues with the most recent episodes I think may be pacing and structure related to the WGA Strike. But it's so amazing to see a hit drama with such strong female characters who act like real women. I'm not just talking about Bechdel's Rule. It's amazing seeing female friendships portrayed so strongly, and consistantly. And also, how much do I love that the chicks in the Anthropology Unit all have the kickass offices with sofas, while the boys have workstations? Tiny, tiny workstations?

Sorry. Just had a moment of total geek girl glee.

I've also spent the last few months at my day job, attempting to if not master, then at least learn the basics of laying out websites using CSS. Hence the revolving (and hopefully ever increasing) styles you can load to view my homepage. Like many people gone crusty and curmudgeon-y before their time, having to learn new things makes me cranky. Like most people, I am slow to change because I like knowing what I'm doing, and doing things well, and being able to present myself at my best. And no-one does things well when they are still learning. And dude, it sucks. It's a basic human thing: we all love doing things we're good at, and want to be good at new things immediately. It's also reality that it takes months if not years to master new tools and rewire our brains to use them as effectively as possible. Being Old Skool, I code by hand. And CSS Layouts are a tough new thing to master when you're a Homebrewer, and need to know what every line of code does and why, which you obviously never learn if you use a WYSIWYG and only ever look at the front end design. It would be like an Engineer never getting out of the simulator to get her hands on an actual internal combustion engine. Building things means knowing how exactly things work together, so you can pull it apart and put it back together better stronger faster. And also, in the corporate world, as quickly and efficiently as possible, on a client's whim.

So it's a really steep climb. I picked up HTML instinctively, and worked with it for over 10 years, learning and assimilating new developments as I went. I've have been laying out sites using tables for so long, it's second nature. I can still look at a flat graphic, and tell you exactly how to cut it apart, and lay it out in HTML, before ever even sitting down to write a line of code. I've never used an algorithm to slice and dice a site; it feels alien and wrong to me. But layout using CSS doesn't work the way HTML does. And not all browsers render the same code the same way--so there are elaborate fixes and patches and tricks you have to learn, akin to what you had to deal with back in the late 1990s, coding for both Netscape and IE. So there's a time warp element too, of living in the future, yet experiencing frustrations I haven't had to deal with nearly a decade. But I'm determined to get there.

Speaking of time warps.... next blog entry, I promise, Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers nostalgia.

Like many geeks, what I do every day at work also involves a lot of the same skills as my hobbies I do for fun. Which means after a long day writing raw HTML code, re-drawing client logos in Illustrator, and creating proofs of web designs in PhotoShop to send to clients, I unwind by... well... creating wallpaper and icons and headers, re-creating vector versions of logos, and writing HTML code. (Yes, I am aware of the irony.)

Anyway, one of the geeky things about being a web designer is you go through life consciously or unconsciously identifying fonts, and identifying what has been altered in existing typefaces to create custom logos. And lately, I've been driven crackjack insane by the inconsistent Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles logos.

Some of this has to do with who has which assets. Now, me, if I'm in charge of the Terminator franchise as a brand, I'm making sure there is ONE consistent piece of vector art per property. The Terminator, T2, T3, SCC, T4, the video games, theme park attraction, etc. That art goes out from a central source, and has extensive branding guidelines that go along with it—along with the RGB and Pantone names for the colours, a corporate supplied 3-d metal-skinned version, one for dark backgrounds, one for light, etc. And they are unchanging, and immutable, and set in goddam stone. Particularly when it comes to typefaces. Because the different As and Rs and Ms? Are going to drive me MAD.

However, I am not in charge of the Terminator brand. I am but a lowly fangirl, with a yen to design wallpaper to make her computers at work and home look pretty and advertise to the planet her new obsession.

So, being a geek and slightly obsessive (stop laughing!) I've been playing with typefaces all week, trying to recreate the logo used in the main title sequence.



The closest commercial typeface to the typeface being used in nearly all the various versions of the SCC logos is Mark Simonson's Changeling (which is the only one out there to contain all 3 different types of As and both Ms). But that typeface was created by taking a 1970s font called "China" and modifying it to match the original 1984 The Terminator main title sequence built by Pac Title. I'm not sure if it was a commission, or the foundry creator is just a geek. Either way, I don't think there can be any other explanation. TLai Enterprise's Steelwolf Medium is another modified version of China specifically made to recreate the Terminator titles, but it's blocky. It's also been pirated as "Terminator 2" and is one of the three fonts you most often find on free font sites (the others being Terminator and Terminator Real).

However all the fonts have slight differences, most noticeably in the width of the letters, spacing, font weight, the shape of the M and the R, and which "A" they use and where.

Anyway, so far, this is what I've got:





It's still not right, mind you—I had to alter the shape of the Rs manually in illustrator, and the subhead is the wrong weight. But Changeling Bold is too blocky, and Changeling Regular is too spindly. I ended up adding a 1px stroke around the outlined letters, and then tweaking it to the right width, but that's inefficient. I need to figure out what semibold face they're using that I can't find commercially available. I think it's much more likely that there is a Pac Titles created version of China specifically for the Terminator franchise that isn't commercially available to little web designers like me.

But it's a start. And I've still no idea what I plan to do with it, other than more fan-made wallpapers and maybe some poster designs for fun, to blow off steam. But I am addicted to the challenge of re-creating logos, and my soul hungers for nice clean vector art to play with.