More Terminator Surprises!

[Brian Damage]

Josh Friedman, the creator and executive producer of Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, told SCI FI Wire to expect more visitors from the future--as well as more scenes set in the post-apocalyptic future. And the show will visit one of the locations from the original Terminator movie and re-use an iconic prop as well.

Speaking in an interview on the show's set at the Warner Brothers studio lot in Burbank, Calif., on Sept. 9, Friedman said that there are more people who will be taking that trip through the time machine.

"There are some people who [ask], 'Why do people keep coming back?'" Friedman acknowledged. "Well, first of all, I think, ... there's not a lot of people that come back from the future. We've had really only one person, one group of ... four people, [who] came back, but only one of them ... survived [Brian Austin Green's Derek Reese]. That was only one event, one timeable event. I know that originally in the mythology, it was all, like, it's very difficult for people to come back. ...

"Well, it requires a lot of energy, and it's not an easy thing to do. And there aren't that many ... devices to do it with, and the ones that are constantly hunted, I think. But I'm not opposed to people coming back."

Fans of the original 1984 Terminator movie recall that the original Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) told Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen) that after he and the original Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) came through the "time displacement equipment," it was destroyed: "Nobody goes home. Nobody else comes through."

That quickly changed, though, in the franchise's two sequels and, now, in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.


"I think when I pitched the show originally to Warner Brothers and to Fox, I always said that, to me, the guest star is the future," Friedman said. "And that's not necessarily that someone comes back every week, because that's not what we do. But just the abstract idea of the future and how it affects the present is always part of the show. And, I think, you have to keep it alive in a number of ways."

Following is the rest of the edited interview with Friedman.

Friedman: One, is people can sit around and talk about it. Two, you can see future war stuff, and three, you can bring people back. ... Last season, for a lot of people, I think, it really took off when Brian [as Derek Reese] came back. I think that's, one, due to the fact that Brian was fantastic when he came back. ... Two, the character that he's playing, in terms of being a Reese and that kind of thing. But I also think that what he represents is he's an embodiment of Judgment Day, of the war. And I think he comes back kind of traumatized in a way that really brings the future to the present in a really visceral way, makes people care about the stakes.

I think you see it on somebody. He's a war veteran; you see it. So I think that it's an important part of the show to bring people back sometimes, whether it's another person or a Terminator. ... You have to get used to the fact. It's not a revolving door, but it definitely ... opens more often than people are used to in the movies. But the movie only got to send two people back, and they were rolling around for two hours. I think our per-minute sending people back is actually much lower than the movies.

One of the most interesting episodes last year was when you had the flash-forward to the future.

Friedman: Yeah.

Are you going to do that again, you think?

Friedman: Yeah. We've done it. [The production is currently shooting the 10th episode, though only the first of the second season's episodes has aired so far.]

So we're going to see more of the future?

Friedman: Yes, yes.





Will we see an older John Connor?

Friedman: That's a tough one, you know? It's a tough one. Is that Thomas Dekker [who plays young John]? Is that a different actor? ... There's just the practicalities of it. ... I mean, it was dangerous enough, I think, when we decided to cast a Kyle Reese, you know? That was something that was very nerve-wracking. It was one of the last things that I did before I went on strike. It was, like, two days before the [writers'] strike, and I'm in casting, and I'm like, "Oh, my God, I've got to pick a Kyle Reese? I'm going on strike in like 24 hours, I have to live with this, and I won't be here." I don't know. It's a hard one, you know? Unless Christian Bale is going to come [by] [laughs]. [Bale plays the older Connor in the upcoming feature film Terminator Salvation.] ...

The show has featured many homages to the films.

Friedman: Yeah, it's funny. I think that we don't do it as much as [and] we don't do it in an homage way as [you might think]. We usually do it as, like, there is stuff, we have people who are fans of movies, and we say, "Oh, we should do blah, blah, blah, like in T2 or whatever." And it's just stuff that we really enjoy. I think there is stuff that's purely homage-y, you know? ...

There's a really cool thing. There's an episode coming up where we use a set that's been redressed--I won't say [what]--but it's a really famous set from the first movie and a very famous location from the first movie, [which] we use as a very significant location in one of the next few episodes. I won't say what it is, just because it's more fun that way. ... Our location scout called us up and said, "You're not going to believe where we can shoot." It's like, yeah! We're shooting there. We definitely do stuff. We have Arnie's original gun from the first movie in our show this year. The actual prop, yeah.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index...ory=1&id=59830