Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

I love robots! Killer robots! Nice Robots! Robots who just want to be loved. Robots who subjugate the human race to protect us from ourselves. That’s all just fine with me… at least until it actually happens.

Time travel on the other hand irritates me. It creates so many holes and problems story wise. I don’t even want to get into it. The only film that has done time travel correctly in my opinion was Kate and Leopold. None of this changing the future crap or alternate timelines. The future is what it is BECAUSE of your actions in the past, even if you haven’t done them yet. YET is an inapplicable term when dealing with time travel. That’s why Marty McFly should have looked to his left when escaping the mall parking lot in the delorean and seen himself in a mask and hazmat suit approaching over the knoll. It would not have made sense to us or himself at the moment until we see the same scene from hazmat suit Marty’s perspective later. But see how confusing that is to write!?! That’s why I refuse to get into it.

Terminator is full of paradoxes from day one. But I go into that whole concept in a non-truncated way in the article “Get in, Loser! We’re Time Traveling” which I posted recently at Professor Popinjay’s Compendium of Perspicacity.

To read my incessant babble regarding the futility  of time travel click the link below:

The Sarah Connor Chronicles was pretty good. Kind of a stupid name. “Chronicles” makes it sound like an epic fantasy. What about “files” or “dossier”? Something cool and sleek like a homicidal artificial intelligence would come up with… or like I came up with just now. Don’t read too much into that. I pass the “are you a robot” test all the 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101

Also, I’m not fully sure why it was just the Sarah Connor Chronicles because John Connor was right there and very much a main part of the story. It should have been the “John and His Mommy Files”. Yes, that’s a much better title.

Anywho, the title didn’t affect the story so what do I care? I was pretty fascinated by it. The terminator girl was cool. Shirley Manson, the Scottish boss lady was cool. A lot of cool stuff happened. It was cool. Man, those creative writing classes are really paying off!

Wait, Shirley Manson? The lead singer from the band Garbage? Yes, the same! Wow! I had no idea. She was awesome in this!

¡SLIGHT SPOILER!

There was one terminator named Cromartie. I thought this was a silly sounding name and a bit on the nose. Cromartie? Like Chrome-arty? Really? Why not name him Titanium Aloysius? Sorry for the spoiler but if his name hadn’t been Chrome Arty, I might not have immediately suspected him as a terminator. If your name happens to be Cromartie in real life, my apologies, but you might be a terminator also. I’m not letting my guard down.

¡SPOILER OVER!

I loved the episode where the Terminator girl starts doing research about a terminator who got sent to the wrong time and then disappeared! If you see no other episodes, at least see that one! Season 2, episode 11, titled “Self Made Man” if you’re interested. The ending is… I’ll just say, it’s cool.

I admit I was a bit confused in the beginning. I think John and Sarah went to the future somehow. Not the far future. Like just five years or so. I’m sure there was good reason for it but it was confusing what with terminators also coming to the past and then there were also flashbacks from the terminator girl’s perspective but for the audience they were technically flash forwards. Did I mention I hate time travel?

Sadly this show was a victim of being in production during one of the many writer’s strikes and so season 2 leaves off with a cliffhanger (quite the doozy of a cliffhanger too) and so far we have not seen a season three nor any resolution to that story arc. I did enjoy the show while it lasted though. I’ll say it was better than Terminator: Genesis. Even that preachy Terminator: Dark Fate was better than Genesis and in that one they turned a Schwarzenegger Model T-800 into a bearded family man. Terminate me please!

I refuse to recognize Terminator Genesis as an actual movie. Back in the drawer you go with Highlander Endgame and Superman 4. Also, Alien VS Predator Requiem, while we’re cleaning house.

Turn two of my favorite franchises into a slasher flick! How dare they!?!

Sorry I’m back now. I loaned this dvd set to a friend who actually passed away while he had it. I didn’t know his widow personally and it would have been disrespectful to introduce myself with the sole purpose of asking for my stuff back. I just counted it as an insignificant loss especially when compared to the loss of my friend. We shared a love of MST3K and obviously Terminator… basically awesome and funny stuff in general. He’ll be missed. He was… well, suffice it to say, he was cool.