| The Turk Recap
Episode Information January 23rd, 2008Episode 3, The Turk, of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles aired last Monday. The show seems to be on a decline in viewership, this time fetching #3 for the timslot (one rank lower than last week) and #4 for the night (same as last week). There were over 8.6 million people who watched it, so even though it’s less than last week, the show is still going strong.
Everything below this may contain episode spoilers. If you have not seen the episode yet, you can download it here.
In this episode, Sarah tries to track down the future creators of Skynet, which leads her to Andy Goode, a cell phone sales man, who works on a computer named “The Turk” in his spare time. Sarah does not want to kill Andy, though Cameron thinks he should die; instead, Sarah sets fire to his house in an attempt to destroy The Turk. In the meantime, John and Cameron visit their new school. For reasons I’m unsure of, a girl is pressed to commit suicide; John wants to save her, but Cameron insists he does not. While all this happens, Cromartie is rebuilding himself with a new formula for synthetic skin, making him more humanoid.
After watching the episode, I was confused on a few things. What was it in the door that the girl at the school found so devastating that she killed herself? Is it relevant to the plot at all? In previous episodes, how did Cromartie’s head travel through time - or, for that matter, how did Cameron? Perhaps this is obvious, but why did Cromartie take the doctor’s eyes? It appeared to me that his terminator eyes could do the job based on the screencap at the end.
That’s the brief summary. For a more in-depth review of episode 3, read it here. Download the episode here if you missed it. And, as always, feel free to leave a comment.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:54 am
The pic in the door is that girl kissing a man, maybe a teacher or a married man.
Cromartie doesn’t travel inside the ‘travel bubble’, but out side that(or only head inside)… He hold the ‘bubble’. Out of the bubble is more instable to travel(he lost the human skin in head or in buble high temp), but the head could travel over time too.
Maybe the other part of body doesn’t travel over the time, it was on ‘recycle bin’ for years when it feels that your head is near, like a radar.
Cromartie take the doctors eyes only because he needs an iris.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:59 am
How does he travel outside the time bubble? And what about Cameron?
Why does he need an iris? To complete his “disguise?”
January 24th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Hi. Like movies, robots can travel time only inside skin so Cameron can travel like Arnorld S. did came back in time in T1 and T2. About the head, it was missing skin so I don’t understand how.
Cromatie’s body may had been put with junk in recycle for years and it wake up when head came from time travel. How it stay unnoticed, that’s weird, they were for sure looking for body’s…
About iris, i suppose it’s to complete his “disguise” but it’s weird like many things.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:07 am
My interpretation was that when Sarah shot Cromartie at the moment they executed the time jump, Cromartie’s head popped off and came with them through the bubble, bouncing into the construction area at the time jump destination. The head “rebooted” or came back online while in the possession of the construction worker that took it home with him. The head then was able to remotely activate it’s body which had apparently been sitting in a garbage dump all the years since the bank time jump incident (I guess the implication is that the body was thrown out with the garbage whenever the bank was repaired following the incident).
As for the eyes, I think the implication was that eyes could not be “grown” like the rest of the skin and tissue, so real human eyes were needed to finish the job.
As for the door at the school, I think the implication was that the girl had been involved with a teacher and she was being exposed…
January 24th, 2008 at 6:07 am
half his body didnt travel at all, it was just in the rubbish for several years, only his head travelled in time. He just needed the eyes to cover up his robotic eyes. I am pretty sure this is correct.
January 24th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Actually, what puzzles me is how Cromartie found his head when there was no CPU in his body.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I didn’t get a good glimpse of what was on the crying-girl’s locker. I was a little confused by the graffiti going on around the school as well and why any of it would cause the girl to jump. I assume that the third piece- the one on the classroom door of a man and woman kissing might be what her “parents would kill” her over… That whole issue was kinda out of place for me.
I think in essence the situation served to to do only 2 things: watch Cameron (Summer Glau) attempt to interact “normally” with other girls, and emphasize the struggle Connor has with being forced to not help people because he can’t afford to be “noticed” by people or media in a way that would lead the evil terminator to him…
As Brandon pointed out Cromartie’s head traveled to the future with the Connors while his body was left behind in the rubble. But when his head reappeared, the processor in the head was able to activate the body. He needs the eyes to continue to reassemble his human looking shell.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Brandon thinks like me about ‘doctor eyes’: he need to cover up his eyes to be ‘more human’. Ow guy, With that ‘Mad Max’ style is very easy to know he is a machine.
to admin:
What about Cameron? She travels inside the bubble, like ‘Model 101′, T-1000 and others.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Cameron travels inside the bubble, like all the terminators (including her) have done so before.
As for Cromartie’s head, I didn’t think that anything not wrapped in living tissue could travel in the bubble. Hopefully this will be explained in a near future episode.
I agree with others stating that he needed the eyes to complete his disguise.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
The eyes were to complete the disguise… not that it mattes… the scientist was dead the second the Terminator found him.
The head through the time vortex is a huge plot hole, however, the same thing was said about the T-1000 in T2, since the poly-memetic (?) alloy is not living tissue either. The whole premise of the time displacement machine is that no (exposed) non-living tissue can travel through time because it depends on a bio-electric field created by living tissue. But it is also a rule that has been bent or broken several times before.
A good idea on the suicide girl was suggested on the Fox.com S:TCC forum. Someone there said that the “A”, then “DAN”, then “IDAN” could perhaps eventually spell out “GUIDANCE”, so that the suicide girl had a sexual encounter with the guidance counselor.
Another minor quibble with the Turk, which really speaks to lower production values than fans might prefer, is when Cromartie reveals himself to the scientist. Did anyone else notice that when he was in disguise, he was about 6 inches shorter than when he was revealed as all-machine? Look at the window behind his head before and then after he undresses.
This is something that the show’s SPFX/CGI guys SHOULD have caught. Perhaps they thought that making the terminator appear slightly larger, it might make a more menacing image?
Nevertheless, its someting I noticed as an instantaneous distraction.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Hi,
You know I have really enjoyed the Sarah Connor aspects of the show. The narration has been consistent with the films, the fill in about how in the mental hospital she read all about scientists and her apparent obsession with Oppenheimer. She even mentions Moe Berg, the former Major League shortstop that would have assassinated Werner Heisenberg had he felt the German’s where close to “the bomb” All of that is played very well, including her decision to burn down Andy’s house rather than kill him. I’m that poster of the Terminator looking hand playing chess nearly sent chills up her spine. Unfortunately that is where the goodness of TSCC ends. Cromartie is nothing more than a bad plot vehicle. He has to keep showing his endo-skeleton lest we forget we are watching a show about Terminators. I like some of the interaction between Sarah and John, and Sarah and Cameron, but basically, if Sarah isn’t in the scene, the scene isn’t as good. I think this show could have been just as good without Cameron, Cromartie, or the Tech-Com troops that keep showing up. It’s as if the creators, and not just the TSCC creators, but the T3 ones as well, act as though future John Connor and Skynet are playing some temporal chess game. Its as if they have some Wicked Witch of the West style crystal ball and can see everything that transpires. “Well, Skynet, I’ll see your T1000 with a protagonist protector.” All the while forgetting the Kyle Reese said “I went through and then they blew the place.” You’d assume they at least pulled the plug on Skynet. I do enjoy most of it, but some of it is very contrived, and I wish it wasn’t.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:48 am
I kinda liked this episode; it was way better than the first and second. From the overall tone, it seems like nobody liked it. What are you guys’ thoughts?
January 25th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
To be complete, I should note that it is Kyle Reese in the original Terminator film that says nothing non-living will time travel… Sarah asks him how the terminator got through since it is a robot and he says it is flesh over metal; she asks him to explain further and he says he is not a tech and doesn’t really know the answer. Just as skynet knows better about making synthetic skin (as we see in this episode) perhaps Skynet knows better about time travel and how to make its terminators go through anyway..
January 26th, 2008 at 2:50 am
Kyle was talking to Dr. Silberman in the interrogation room of the Police Station just before the Terminator arrived. His answer was a pretty straight to the point. “I didn’t build the f***’ing thing!” It’s a bit of plot hole in even in the original. One would think an object would be broken down to the atomic level to be transported through time, thus, the Terminator’s skin would go, but the endo-skeleton would not, but that wouldn’t be much fun, would it? Maybe the bubble it encapsulates the person in would be interrupted if anything non organic was exposed, sort of like a microwave. That being the case, why not just send some weapons back in time covered in said living tissue.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Wow, i had seen the pilot a few months back, but only now i got to see the second and third episodes. I have to say that i like it a lot, and there is a lot of room for improvement.
One my pet peeves is how Cameron on the pilot episode got to fool John so well, but now she acts like a dumbo in school!!
I do like the fact that Cameron is tought “whore bitch”
Btw, thanks for the preview of #4
January 27th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
This series has a lot of problems with the plot. The episodes are poorly written. I’m ashamed to admit I watch it.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
My thoughts:
(a) The head didn’t travel through time. It stayed right where it was, at the bank (thus it flying through the air at the end of the episode), only to be found many years later when the bank site became a construction site. In fact, I don’t think any part of him travelled through time … thus his body is also found buried in a scrap heap. (That leaves all kinds of questions - such as, who disposed of him and weren’t the worried about Sky Net finding an entire body to replicate technology from? If they could destroy a world with just the info they got from a hand, image what they could have done with an entire body.)
(b) Why can’t there be a CPU inside the body? The bigger question is how the body could move so well wthout eyes.
(c) Cameron is living tissue on the outside. Of course she can travel through time … however, isn’t hair dead tissue?
(d) The doctor’s eyes are just dressing. No practical application at all. Consider that he didn’t need skin to function either, but he certainly did need it to blend in better.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
To FadV:
I noticed that about Cameron too… the only way I could think to explain it was that the future John taught her about himself in the past, and programmed her with what would work in getting 1999 John’s attention.
The whole part about the head coming through the vortex irks me though… aside from that I can look over other little holes.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
First off let me tell you how much I appreciate you amking this sight. It helps me so much. And in “The Turk” He took the eyeballs to have human eyes, instead of red, robotic ones
January 28th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
They’ve always been pretty lax about the living tissue/time travel question in the Terminator stories. The terminator body being so independent of the head, though, is kind of a new mark in narrative rule-bending. The body and head would have to have some kind of transmitter/receiver datalink– with enough bandwidth the body could get visual and other CPU data. But the headless body acting completely by itself and finding its way to the head, when the head has no visual contact with it? I guess that’s why they call it “suspension of disbelief”, but geez. Just send another one back, fer cryin’ out loud; *they’re identical*.
And don’t get me started on the hoops you have to invent, then jump through, to explain why the older John Connor didn’t send some extra robots to help, or why those boneheaded terminators didn’t just go further back and start taking over in 1066. Fun series anyway, though.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:17 am
lets all be honest the reason we watch is because the girls are hot looking …thats why fox has Cameron walking around in the first 3 shows either naked or in something sexy and thats ok it is tv and they want ratings.the show is fun to watch who really cares about the holes in the story line..just sit back and enjoy it.the only question is does Cameron crawl into bed with John to learn about other human emotions??? or does she bang the repair man from the geek squad. any way if this show gets through a season or two Cameron is gonna be a big star in the same line as jessca alba ..shes hot and she kicks ass and most of us like her lol
January 29th, 2008 at 7:38 am
i think cameron might be a upgraded terminator able to have kids….seeing as shes able to:
eat
mimic emotions better
and at one point in a episode, i think episode 3
she clearly gets distracted by the mention of machines able to give (life, birth, creation) to the next gen of new machines.
lets just hope john connor does have some sort of romantic if not one off relationship with cameron.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Was Sarah’s old friend, the guy who used to fake identity papers, supplying info to the FBI man about any of his old customers who come to see him after he retired… is that why he let him go (free of charge after the crime he committed)??
January 30th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
In the second episode, who are these resistance guys… who sent them and why?? and when one of them waked up (booted) as cameroon inspected him, why did he decide to evade her?
The man who keeps watching sarah by sneaking after her [she glimpse him outside of the salesman house, who is he… another one of the 4 dead resistance guys or the same one that has earlier evaded cameroon??
January 31st, 2008 at 11:50 am
The resistance guy that evaded Cam wasn’t a resistance guy. It was a Terminator. I mean, he was able to scan her and realize she wasn’t part of the programmed mission parameters, which is why he ran… to re-evaluate. He was playing dead to trap whoever came back to the safehouse.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:38 am
Was the head not covered in flesh when it got into the bubble?
They did show it as a metal head whilst flying, but the flesh could have stripped/burned down only at the end of the travel just before bouncing off, just like the concrete is always piping hot and burning around the bubble’s perimeter, hmm?
February 4th, 2008 at 5:53 am
The terminator needed human eyes. This was a nod to the original terminator movie. Its the scene where arnold removes the eyeball revealing the robot pupil which then causes him to use the sunglasses throughout the movie.
February 5th, 2008 at 2:06 am
Something I was wondering… How does your cellphone service work in 1999 and the same phone works in 2007 ? Eventually, Sarah bought 3 phones but she used the old ones before she bought the new ones.
February 9th, 2008 at 4:41 am
unregistered outdated phones are workable. I don’t see why not… Terrorists seem to have no problem with them in real life. Note that they use them for the same exact reason that the Connors + Cameron do in the series, car bombs included. How its done, I don’t know.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:08 am
They came through time naked. I think we can assume they didn’t bring their cell phones with them from 1999.
What’s bothered me is this. The third episode ends with two scenes that seem to contradict each other. The first shows FBI agents discovering the doctor, dead, with his eyes removed, in the house where Cromartie showed him the skin formula. In the second, Cromartie emerges from the bath tab and the doctor watches in amazement, then helps him open his eyelids. Were these scenes just shown out of chronological order? Why? Or did I misunderstand something.
February 16th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
1. The head travels through as it is blown off the body of the terminator, towards the field as the Connors are ‘warped’ through time. The field stays there for a couple seconds - as Cameron shows (i think in this episode or the next) on a dvd she happened to find (one of the people in the car that stopped just before the field dug a camera out and filmed the naked trio) - you see the head fly through a moment after they arrive. When the terminator is actually shot by Sarah, you actually see it recieve one pretty powerful shot.
2. In terminator 3, the T-X can remote control electronic equipment after touching it with that needle finger (there are scenes where she controls a number of vehicles remotely whilst driving another) - perhaps this is built into the terminators, so that they can better self-repair? If a terminator could be ‘killed’ just by blasting its head off, it would be a bit ‘too easy’ :).
February 18th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Chromartie’s head definitely went through the time bubble; it bounced off the hood of a car on the other side! That jump through time is also why the cell phone vibrating distracted Chromartie; he had not seen that technology, before, just as the Conner’s had not. So, I don’t know how it traveled through time when it apparently was not encased in flesh.
The autonomous body has back story. Remember in T3 when the female terminator reprogrammed Arnold’s body? He only had control of his head, and could shout out a warning to John, but his body was intent on killing John. I would explain the body being able to navigate on its own by saying that it has enough processors (actually, embedded processors) to control all its autonomous functions, some sensory controls (perhaps radar, maybe sonar, maybe some other sensor fields) and certainly a directional link to guide it to its head. The head has the main processor, but not the only processor. So, the main processor would tell the legs to run, then the processor(s) in the legs would actually control the running, without bogging down the central processor in the head.
David, the scenes were out of chronological order. The scene where the doctor cuts the skin open was a flashback.
Lemuel, if you could tell me how to keep cell phone service for 8 years without paying anything all that time, I would appreciate it. All the cell phones I’ve bought set an expiration on the minutes in the account.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
They just ended with the scene where the doctor is “Creating” the humanized cromartie to emphasize who’s really behind the terminators–the absentminded human enablers who aren’t thinking and are just science-ing too much (a la oppenheimer, etc, we are told). As for the head, in the opening cutscene of ep 3 we see it flying out of the bubble, so yes, it DID travel; anything more is a mystery.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
The head when initially blown off was still encased in skin even though it was blown away from the body.
This would be enough to temporarily sustain itself through the time “bubble”. The inside of the bubble is protected, but the outer layer is scorching hot and would have burned off the still dying tissue of the T-888 while it was flying inward. The head obviously still had the momentum of moving through the bubble since it bounced off a car to the side of the road.
The body of the terminator was NOT discovered in the bombed out bank rubble. The body was escavated with the remainder of the building probably by means of large construction equipment that would have just scooped it up with the rest of the bank vault.
The T-888 is a more advanced version of the terminator and therefore, having a means of controlling the body remotely is possible. How it was able to navigate, it could have some kind of sensor to help it other than just visual.