Tonight was the premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox in the US and CTV in Canada, and like the movies it is based, it involves time travel. This time the use of a time machine moves the action from 1999, fifteen years after the events of the first Terminator movie to 2007. which allows a teenage rather than adult John Conner to be present in the current day.
Furthermore in a move that may hearten or dismay fans of the films, the series completely ignores the events of the third Terminator movie, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. In The Fresno Bee, Josh Friedman, executive producer of the TV show explains:
"When we first started this, people said, this takes place between 'T2' and 'T3.' I think that was incorrect," says Josh Friedman, executive producer of the TV show. "As far as I'm concerned, this is 'T3.' I mean, this is a continuation of what I would call the Sarah Connor trilogy. So I think anything that happens after 'T2' is fair game for us. "And I think the ending of 'T2,' the exploding Cyberdyne, killing Miles Dyson, sort of changes the timeline for anything in the future."
Among the changes could be the death of Sarah Connor to cancer:
The death of Sarah Connor: It is revealed in "Terminator 3" that Sarah dies in 1997 after a three-year battle with leukemia. Doctors told her in 1994 that she would not live six months. But Sarah fought to stay alive until she saw that Judgment Day did not occur. In the television series, Sarah still is alive in 1999. She is told that her death because of cancer will be in 2005. But Sarah, John and Cameron have leaped ahead in time to 2007. "The decision to leap forward is both an aesthetic one, and, I think, storywise will turn out to be an important one," Friedman says. "There's reasons to come to this specific time, this specific place. It's a show that's about time travel but not a time-travel show.
So far it's looking good. Another episode is on Monday night.