Something new today, as our first recording is the pilot episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
It opens with a dream sequence where Sarah Connor (played by a pre-Game of Thrones Lena Header) and her son John (Thomas Dekker) are caught by the police, who still think she’s deluded and a killer. Then a Terminator appears, shoots up all the cops, and also shoots John before she wakes up.
Her current boyfriend Charly is played by Dean Winters, who was Liz Lemon’s awful boyfriend in 30 Rock, so it’s probably a good idea that she leaves him. At least he doesn’t call her Dummy.
Charly goes to the police, and is questioned by James Ellison (Richard T Jones), an FBI agent who knows all about Sarah’s background, and is the one looking for her.
In a new town, John goes to school. I truly don’t understand what the point of this is. Speaking as a home educator, I really wonder why he has to attend school. But he does, and there he meets Cameron Phillips, played by Firefly’s Summer Glau.
He doesn’t last long at the school, though, as a new teacher (played by The Mentalist’s Owain Yeoman) takes attendance, and as soon as John identifies himself (under the totally unguessable pseudonym John Reese) the teacher (Cromarty) pulls a gun out of a gash in his robot leg and starts shooting. Poor Cameron is shot several times, but John gets away.
He’s almost killed by the Terminator but a car comes racing in from left of frame and knocks him down. My least favourite stunt in movies and TV because it’s used all the time.
The car backs up, the door opens, and it’s Cameron. “Come with me if you want to live” she says, of course. And she’s also a Terminator, but a good one.
There’s lots of cyborg punching and fights which involve throwing each other through walls – this seems to happen a lot in this series judging by the first episode. But Cameron has a plan, which involves walking into a bank with a gun and demanding access to the vault.
Once they’re locked in the vault, she gets them to open various deposit boxes, in which are the pieces of a big gun. These were all put here by more time travellers much longer ago.
The rest of the stuff hidden in the vault fires up a time machine, and as it’s firing up the Cromarty terminator smashes into the vault, and Sarah uses the big gun to blow him up just as they transport.
They arrive in 2007, naked, as is usual for Terminator time travelling. Just their luck to arrive in the middle of a busy road where someone in a car has a phone to capture a photo of them which makes it on to the news. Both Agent Ellison and Sarah’s old boyfriend Charly see the photo on the news.
Media Centre Description: Premiere of the explosive, gritty new action series based on the blockbuster Terminator films. Sarah Connor battles to protect her son John, a future leader in the war between humans and machines.
Recorded from Virgin1 on Saturday 8th March 2008 19:58
The next recording is the second episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – Gnothi Seauton which I had to search for to find out it means “Know Thyself”.
The head of the Cromarty terminator, which came through the time bubble with them in the last episode (seemingly breaking the rule that only living people can time travel – I’m sure there’s an explanation for this) is discovered by someone clearing litter from the sides of the road.
Sarah and Cameron need to get identity documents. Cameron knows that there’s a group of resistance fighters from the future living in the city. But it looks like they’re all dead, and there’s a terminator there pretending to be dead so he can fight Cameron and they can crash through a few more walls before he runs off.
Cameron catches up with him after Sarah has ridden a motorbike into him, but then, Cameron gets hit by a car – the second use of my least favourite stunt in as many episodes. “Please remain calm” she says to the people in the car that hit her, which is at least funny.
Having failed with the resistance group, Sarah visits Enrique, who helped her train in Mexico, and who should be able to supply new IDs. He’s played by Tony Amendola. He tells them he no longer does fake IDs but his nephew does.
John is told to stay at home, but he can’t obey orders, so he visits a local computer store and does some web searching on one of their display models, without having realised that the screen is being mirrored on a big display behind him. But he does find out that Sarah’s boyfriend from the first episode, Charly, is still around and living in LA.
Elsewhere we see the terminator head in the house of the man who found it, and the eyes light up. Somewhere else, in a junkyard, a terminator hand breaks through a lot of scrap metal, and a worker at the scrapyard is killed.
John goes to visit Charly, who’s surprised to see him. John freaks out when Charly won’t keep his distance and knocks him down.
Enrique’s nephew wants $20K for the IDs so they go back to the resistance hideout, as they will definitely have money there. They find a safe but it’s boobytrapped, and Cameron gets zapped, which attracts the attention of the terminator who was there before. John, on the other hand, just guesses that the combination is the date of Judgement Day and gets what’s in the safe. It will take two minutes for Cameron to reboot so there’s a scramble to get out before the terminator can catch them, but they manage.
The man who found the terminator head gets a visit from the rest of its body (with a dead man’s head on the shoulders). It kills him and takes the head.
Sarah picks up the IDs from Carlos, and as she’s leaving she hears them talking in Spanish about their uncle. This makes her visit Enrique. “He was speaking Spanish to his crew. He referred to you as a rat. Slang for snitch, isn’t it?” “You must have heard him wrong.” “Rat. Rat. Denunciante. Informer. Certain words I know and don’t forget. Are you selling people out? Are you selling me out, Enrique?” Enrique tries to tell her that he must have meant a time he spent in prison where he informed on his cellmate, just once, but Cameron is there and shoots him because she thought he was lying.
Media Centre Description: Explosive, gritty new action series based on the blockbuster Terminator films. Sarah finds that even old friends can’t be trusted, and gets some devastating news from Cameron.
Recorded from Virgin1 on Saturday 8th March 2008 21:00
There’s one more episode of this on the next recording. It’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – The Turk.
This episode starts off with another dream which starts with her imagining murdering all the scientists who helped build the atomic bombs, who then turn into terminators.
Sarah visits Terissa Dyson again, and asks if she can identify photos of people who might have worked for Cyberdyne. She’s looking for whoever it is who’s still working on Skynet. Terissa identifies one of them. “His name is Andrew Goode. Andy. He was an intern at Cyberdyne one summer. Miles liked him. Is he going to die too? Is that what happens now? He dies?” “I don’t know. I hope not.”
The Cromarty terminator visits a hospital and steals blood products.
Sarah visits the man Terissa identified, working at a mobile phone store. She buys three phones there and as she’s leaving, her phone rings – it’s him. “I was just following up to make sure everything’s okay with the phones.” “Well, I just left the store.” “I know. Okay. Okay. Do you want a dinner with me tonight?” He might as well be waving a huge red flag. That’s so creepy. But since she wants to know if he’s anything to do with Cyberdyne, she agrees.
Elsewhere, the Cromarty terminator finds a scientist, writes a lot of sciencey looking stuff on his whiteboard, which tells him how to solve a scientific problem he’s been working on do do with cell growth. The terminator (still wearing goggles and a face mask) asks “Can you do it?” Well, I… I have to go to my lab. There’s a whole mix of growth rates. TGF-beta, PDGF, EGF. I’d need… You know, there’s a lot of equipment. Oh, and blood. We’d need at least 20 units, preferably with tissues comprised.” “I brought my own. Can you do it?” “Yes. Yes, I can.” The scientist is played by Adam Godley, who I always know as the teacher from Love Actually.
Sarah has dinner at Andrew’s house. He shows her his invention, a chess playing computer he calls The Turk, after the Mechanical Turk.
At the scientist’s lab, he’s set up the experiment, and the Terminator disrobes so he can sit in a bath full of blood.
Sarah visits a doctor to get checked for cancer, because Cameron told her that in her timeline, Sarah Connor died of cancer before 2007. She gets the all clear.
John is at school (again, why?). Someone has painted graffiti of a door with the name Dan on it, and what looks like a bra hanging from the door handle. A girl is very upset by this, so I presume it’s an instance of bullying by someone. Cameron talks to the girl but can’t understand what it’s all about.
Later there’s a commotion, and people go outside to see. It’s the same girl who’s standing on the roof at the edge. Of course, some boys are yelling “Jump”. John wants to help somehow. Cameron stops him. And rather shockingly, the girl does jump to her death.
Sarah deals with the Turk by burning Andrew’s house down while he’s out. I guess she’s not ready to start killing people.
The bloodbath scientist isn’t so lucky. He’s found dead. Ellison is there investigating. “It took his eyes, James They took his freaking eyes”
Then the last scene is slightly confusing, since it’s from before the scientist died, as the terminator comes out of the blood bath, now with a gloopy skin on him.
Media Centre Description: Explosive, gritty new action series based on the blockbuster Terminator films. In her search for the creator of Skynet Sarah is led to a man building a chess-playing computer called ‘the Turk’.
Recorded from Virgin1 on Saturday 8th March 2008 22:00
After this, the recording continues with the start of a programme called Sexcetera. It’s a bit porny.
The final recording today starts with the end of an episode of Have I Got News For You. Guest presented by Ronni Ancona, with Stewart Lee and Andy Hamilton.
There’s a trail for White Girl, part of the White season.
Plus a trail for I’d Do Anything and for Gavin and Stacey.
Then, it’s a documentary, Gagging For It: TV’s Hunger for Radio Comedy.
This is a really interesting documentary, looking at the way radio and tv comedy have interacted, and covers some of my very favourite things.
It feels like it exists as a promo for That Mitchell and Webb Look at first, as we get a glimpse of them in rehearsal for the current series, and David Mitchell talks about the changes needed to move their work to TV. “When we were making the first series of the TV show, we realised that a lot of the radio material isn’t really usable for television because it’s very wordy. One of the great things about radio is that radio listeners will listen to someone talking. So, you can do lots of long speeches and wordy jokes, which Rob and I love, but when you’re suddenly looking at a picture of someone doing all that talking, it’s somehow more… It’s less interesting. It’s less funny.”
It’s always good to see Dick Fiddy on these programmes. Here he’s talking about Educating Archie, a huge radio comedy featuring (of all things) a ventriloquist’s dummy called Archie Andrews, and his operator Peter Brough.
Stephen Armstrong: “It seems completely insane now to look back and say, well, how could anyone think of putting on radio somewhere where the point of the show is the skill of the person’s lips in appearing not to talk?”
Barry Cryer: “A ventriloquist doll is a ventriloquist doll. And to see it relax in a chair with its arms moving. All the magic’s gone somehow. It’s weird. It shouldn’t be like that. You’d think, oh, that’s amazing. They’ve solved it for television, but there again, pure radio, it didn’t work.”
Indeed, seeing the doll, sitting with its arms moving is just weird. And it didn’t help that Peter Brough was not the greatest ventriloquist in the world, so you could just see his lips moving.
Marcus Brigstocke talks about The Goon Show.
The great Dick Mills of the Radiophonic Workshop talks about the effects they’d make for the Goons, particularly the sound of Major Bloodnok’s stomach. “Oh it brings tears to your eyes.”
The Goons had various TV versions, some with puppets. It’s not quite Thunderbirds, is it?
Jon Culshaw: “Listening to The Goons on the radio, you could see the expressions on the faces of Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine and so on. You could see that. And on the TV, you would want to see that too, rather than puppets.”
A more successful transfer from radio to TV was Tony Hancock, helped by his very expressive face.
The programme talks about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, something regular readers will know is very close to my heart, and a huge influence on my life in several ways.
Ian Greaves talks about the modern recording techniques they brought to the radio series.
There’s a brilliant clip of Peter Jones, reading out a reader’s letter about how a TV series would be a bad idea. I only saw this clip a few months ago for the first time (unless I’d seen it as a DVD extra and forgotten about it). It was recorded to be shown to a studio audience who were watching the TV show, as part of the warm-up.
There’s some archive footage of Douglas, recorded in the year he died. He’s a little derogatory about some of the visual effects.
Clive Anderson was a close friend of Douglas. “Now on television, I thought it was a lot of hard work because as he used to note, there’d be a throwaway line about somebody having an extra head, which was just a sort of joke on the page or a joke on radio. On television, a film, you have to build something out, and somebody has to work for weeks and months creating new technology. And it still only looks weird rather than looking hip and cool.”
Paul Schlesinger talks about the failed attempt to turn I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue into a TV format. The pilot now apparently doesn’t exist anywhere.
There is footage of a TV version of Just a Minute.
The programme moves to the 90s, with Whose Line is it Anyway, and Armando Iannucci’s work as a radio producer which gave us On The Hour on radio and The Day Today on TV. There’s a clip of him from Arena.
Jon Culshaw talks about Dead Ringers.
Yves Barre, the costume designer for The League of Gentlemen talks about developing the many costumes, for around 60 different characters in the show.
Bringing it back to the beginning, Robert Webb. “We still do our radio show, and I wouldn’t want to say it’s a great place to try out material, because that does make radio sound like poor relations. But it’s a great place to try out material.”
Here’s the whole episode with a couple of clips cut for copyright.
Media Centre Description: Since its earliest days, television has looked to radio comedy for the ‘next big thing’. Radio hits from Hancock’s Half-Hour to Little Britain have become TV classics. But other long-running radio favourites have died a death on the screen. So what makes for a sure-fire transfer? Time Shift investigates, with the help of favourite clips from the archive and insights offered by Jon Culshaw, Clive Anderson, Barry Cryer, Marcus Brigstocke, and Mitchell and Webb.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Saturday 8th March 2008 22:28
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Saturday 8th March 2008 22:30
After this, there’s an iPlayer promo. And a trail for Panorama on Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Then the recording stops with the start of Tin Men.
Here’s all the ad breaks on the three Terminator recordings.
Adverts:
- T-Mobile
- Neutrogena Visibly Clear – Kristin Kreuk
- trail: Death Defying Rescues
- trail: American Inventor
- Teletext Holidays
- McCain Home Fries
- McDonalds
- Churchill Insurance
- Meet the Spartans in cinemas
- Hastings Direct
- Kwik Fit
- Creme Eggs
- Horton Hears a Who! in cinemas
- trail: American Inventor
- Coca Cola
- Renault Clio
- Garnier Body Sensitive
- Subway
- Mail on Sunday
- The Cottage in cinemas
- Bully – Scolarship Edition
- Tesco Compare Car Insurance
- Coke Zone
- British Gas
- trail: Star Trek on Virgin One
- trail: The Unit
- Skoda Fabia
- Morrisons – Nick Hancock
- Meet the Spartans in cinemas
- Teletext Holidays
- Mail on Sunday
- ladbrokesbingo.com
- Save The Children
- Morrisons
- Trident Soft
- trail: American Inventor
- trail: American Inventor
- trail: Star Trek on Virgin One
- Harpic 3in1
- PartyCasino.com
- Use a Condom
- KFC
- McVities Yog Fruit Digestives
- Abbey
- Use a Condom
- Guinness – Dominos
- trail: The Kill Point
- trail: The Unit
- Mail on Sunday
- Shell
- PG Tips – Johnny Vegas
- Alton towers
- Air Wick
- Tesco
- Abbey
- National Lottery Bingo
- Mitsubishi
- trail: Moonlight
- trail: American Inventor
- PartyCasino.com
- Land Rover Freelander
- L’Oreal Excellence Creme – Andie McDowell
- Guinness – Dominos
- Tropicana
- Disneyland Paris
- Strepsils
- Horton Hears a Who! in cinemas
- Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain
- trail: The Unit
- trail: American Inventor
- trail: Star Trek on Virgin One
- PC World
- McDonalds
- McCain Home Fries
- Kelloggs Optivita
- Harpic 3in1
- Think! It’s 30 for a reason
- Sainsbury’s – Jamie Oliver
- Mail on Sunday
- trail: The Kill Point
- trail: American Inventor
- trail: The Unit
- Use a Condom
- Citroen
- McVities Yog Fruit Digestives
- iPhone
- PartyCasino.com
- Co-op
- Use a Condom
- trail: Moonlight
- trail: American Inventor
- trail: Star Trek on Virgin One
- Trident Soft
- British Gas
- Morrisons – Nick Hancock
- Alton Towers
- Pizza Hut
- McVities Yog Fruit Digestives
- Morrisons
- Vauxhall Zafira and Meriva
- trail: The Unit
- trail: American Inventor