Summer Glau

First Look: Terminator Returns in Sarah Connor Chronicles

The best scene in FOX’s’ Terminator-based TV series is the last when our time-traveling hero and heroines materialize on a desert highway stark naked, staring, like alien deer caught in the headlight, at a car load of drunken frat boys.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles, debuting next fall, concludes with this tip of the hat to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stripped down bodybuilder entrance in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and sets up for the rest of the series about a misfit trio determined to destroy artificial intelligence tyrants before they enslave the human race.

Picking up, very roughly, where Terminator 2: Judgement Day left off, Chronicles follows 15-year old reluctant hero John Connor (Thomas Dekker) as he’s dragged around by his fierce mom Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) to avoid getting prematurely rubbed out by a Terminator sent from the future by AI villains SKYNet. This bot is an incredibly bad shot, blasting hundreds of machine gun rounds at his targets and hardly ever scoring a hit.

Fiery explosions, gun fights and car chases lead up to the get away in a 1999 bank vault, aided by Cameron Phillips, a seemingly innocuous classmate who in fact proves to be an invaluable ass kicker.

Cameron is played by Summer Glau of "Firefly" and "Serenity" sci-fi fame and she’s the best thing in the show. Joss Whedon fans interested in "Buffy" - style grrl power will find plenty to admire. Those who like their action spiked with the occasional wisecrack will have to wait and see if this earnest series starts taking itself a little less seriously as the season progresses.