With Terminator: Genisys in theaters and an all new set of actors stepping into the iconic roles of Sarah Connor, John Connor, and Kyle Reese, we thought we'd take a quick look back at the truly excellent (though short-lived) FOX series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Terminator: Genisys Review

Summer Glau, Thomas Dekker, and Lena Headey in Terminator: TSCC.

The Connors

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Crossed Wires

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Josh Friedman's sci-fi series may have only lasted two seasons - 31 episodes - but it holds the distinction of being the absolute best entry into the Terminator saga following the first two movies. With Game of Thrones' Lena Headey as Sarah Connor (yes, now only the first GoT actress to step into Sarah's sizable boots), the show gave us an alternate route for John Connor's story following T2, as our perpetually on-the-run heroes -- thanks to Summer Glau's Terminator, Cameron -- time travel forward from 1999 to 2007, essentially skipping over the events that would have happened in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, including Sarah's death from leukemia.From there, the trio try to take the fight directly to Skynet, which they know will still cause Judgment Day (it's been bumped up to 2011) but is now hiding in the shadows with origins so clouded that not even Cameron knows how the system came online. And the rest is glorious, engrossing sic-fi history. Yeah, the show got cancelled on a cliffhanger (dammit!) and there were a lot of loose threads that never got the chance to get snipped, but what is there, within the two seasons, is freakin' great. Here are five reasons why Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles still holds up and is way more awesome than the last three movies.Lena Headey was fantastic as Sarah. Filling Linda Hamilton's shoes after T2 seemed near impossible, but Headey gave us a complex, battle-worn Sarah who, like Nolan's Bruce Wayne, was protective while also looking for a successor. On borrowed time, Sarah knew John would eventually need more than her and the tough love the exuded to survive and so when a new "good" Terminator comes along, she's swarmed with mixed feelings of mistrust, resentment, relief, and hope. All perfectly displayed by Headey's more sorrowful take on a badass resistance solider fighting a losing war that, basically, is still years away.Likewise, Thomas Dekker's John really helped ground and humanize a teenage boy who'd lived his life like precious cargo, with everyone around him risking their lives to protect him. Specifically, John Connor in Season 2 is the more fully realized version. In Season 1, John got some flak for his "emo" hair and his penchant for complaining, as teenage characters on TV continue to be one of the hardest things to pull off. But by Season 2, the show had John figured out and provided us with a much more proactive future leader."What model are you? Are you new? You seem...different."No longer was John being protected by a massive, muscular Austrian man. His new cybernetic shield came in the form of a petite butt-kicking Terminator played by Summer Glau - a cyborg whose model remained unknown, and who actually came with her own deep backstory (future-story?) before eventually being re-deployed by John in 2027 and sent back through time to protect him.And so imagine you're a 15-year-old John and your new Terminator is not only a hot female, but one who secretly introduced herself into your life by pretending to be a high school classmate who was interested in you. There's going to be some complicated feelings going on. Not only for John, but Sarah a well, as the protective mother. Cameron may be a robot, but she's able to show glimpses of humor, pride, resentment, and even love. Which was fascinating taboo-ish territory that the show just seemed to be getting into before it got axed. Including a cool, demented take on John's "first time."

More reasons TSCC rocked on Page 2