Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles/Pilot

Pilot
Season 1, Episode 1
Airdate	January 13, 2008
Production Number	276022
Written by	Josh Friedman
Directed by	David Nutter
Stream
← 1x00 Original Pilot	1x02 → Gnothi Seauton
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles — Season One

Pilot is the first episode of the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Starring: Lena Headey (Sarah Connor), Thomas Dekker (John Connor), Summer Glau (Cameron)

and Richard T. Jones (Agent James Ellison)

Guest Starring: Owain Yeoman (Cromartie), Sonya Walger (Michelle Dixon), Nick Wechsler (Deputy Ridge), Charlayne Woodard (Tarissa Dyson)

and Dean Winters (Charley Dixon)

Co-Starring: Aurora Antonio (Wiseass), Chad Brummett (F.B.I. Agent), Aaron Cash (Terminator), Jason Grutter (Police Officer), Gary Houston (Mr. Ferguson), Deborah Martinez (News Anchor), Genia Michaela (Bank Teller), Kenneth Miller (Boy), Brandon Molale (Big Cop), Shawn Prince (Danny Dyson)

Plot Overview

Moments after taking her son out of school, Sarah and John Connor are arrested by the police. They're put into the back of separate police cars, but their arrest is short lived. When she sees a suspicious man decked out in sunglasses and a leather jacket, she assaults the officer next to her and breaks out of the car while the man opens fire on the officers. She gets John out of the other car and tells him to run so that she can stay and fight, but the handgun rounds only do minor damage. The Terminator shoots John in the back and Sarah demands that he kill her. Nuclear explosions go off in the background, annihilating the school and melting off the machine's fake skin. He reaches out to strangle her and Sarah wakes up in a cold sweat; it was all just a dream.

Next to Sarah in bed is her fiancé, who clearly is not aware of her eccentricities. She goes into John's room to tell him that they need to leave, but he refuses. School begins in three weeks and the only reason she wants to leave is because of the ring. But, his pleas are ignored and they go on the run again. Her fiancé, "Mr. Dixon," goes to the police about her disappearance, which brings in the FBI to explain exactly what Sarah has said and done in the past including her comments about Skynet, John's destiny and the alleged murder of Miles Dyson. Now that he has his attention, the agent pries her current information out of him, including an alias. When he updates this information in the FBI's database, a Terminator intercepts it.

Now settled in New Mexico, John meets Cameron in school and she tries to befriend him immediately. Although he's clearly unsettled by the amount of questions she asks, he agrees to see her again sometime. The next day, John explains himself to Cameron, about his dad's death and his mother's tendencies to be stiflingly uptight. Their conversation is interrupted by Cromartie, their substitute teacher who is quite clearly a bit off. While taking attendance, he cuts open his thigh with a letter opener and retrieves a hidden pistol. When John answers to his alias on the roll, the machine opens fire. Cameron takes three bullets to the chest and John dives out a window. Cromartie pursues his target, turning over school buses and firing wildly when he catches John's heat signature.

John keeps ducking for cover behind cars in the parking lot, but trips next to a truck. The terminator finds and takes aim, but a pick-up truck driven by Cameron suddenly slams into him. She backs up and tells him to come with her if he wants to live. It isn't the time for being discerning and he gets into the truck, even though she's apparently unfazed by the bullets in her chest.

In the distance during the aftermath, Cromartie finds Sarah spying on the school and pins her to the ground. She tries to shoot herself in the head to stop him from using her against John, but fails to get a shot off. The machine answers her cell phone in her voice to tell him to stay at home while "she" comes to get him. He knocks out the real Sarah and drags her back to their home and waits for John to appear. A figure soon appears at the door, using John's voice, but it turns out to be Cameron. She and Sarah, equipped with a hidden shotgun, fend him off until the real John comes home. He and Sarah start to run, leaving Cameron to overload Cromartie's systems with a live electrical cable. Cameron gives chase and the three flee the premises while their attacker's system reboots. She tells Sarah that she has been sent from the future to protect John, but Sarah doesn't want to hear it—not until they're a safe distance away.

At an abandoned warehouse, Cameron tells Sarah more about the future. Skynet doesn't become self aware until April 19, 2011 and the nuclear apocalypse follows two days later. Even though Miles Dyson is dead, someone else completed and sent the system into space. She doesn't know who started the system because she comes from 2027 and was only given enough information to protect John from assassination. The next morning, John and Sarah decide that they're going to try to stop it for good instead of running to Mexico again. They go to see Miles Dyson's widow to tell them how their futures have not changed. Theresa tells them, after a minor altercation, that Sarah destroyed everything and that there is no one else who has carried on her husband's work. Their talk is cut short by Cromartie, who has found them again. They escape in Theresa Dyson's SUV and Cameron slows down the assassin by blowing up the truck when he gets close, but Sarah takes a bullet in the shoulder and the explosion only slows the machine down enough to let them get away.

The next day, Cameron takes the Connors to a security trust where she steals a handgun from the guard and stages a bank robbery. She forces the teller to give them the keys to the vault and lock them in. Inside the vault, she punches open one of the boxes and pulls out two sets of keys which open security boxes holding pieces of a weapon developed in the future. While they're putting the contraption together, the SWAT team answers the silent alarm, as does Cromartie. After dismissing the team as unthreatening, Cromartie peals away layers of the vault to get at his prey. Cameron unlocks another door which holds a compact time machine that they can use to escape into the future, where they'll be able to find Skynet and destroy it before it is activated. Cameron turns the machine on just as Cromartie is nearly through the vault door. Sarah blows his head off with the future weapon when it becomes armed, as indicated by the red isotope, and they're rocketed into the year 2007.

Notes

Music

• "Save Tonight" by Eagle Eye Cherry: When John is first dropped off at school, "Save Tonight" by Eagle Eye Cherry can be heard briefly in the background. The song, clearly only there to reinforce the date, was released in 1997 on the album Desireless in Cherry's native Sweden. The album was not distributed in the United States until January 1999. "Save Tonight" was Cherry's one and only major US hit, although he continues to enjoy some success in Europe.

• "Pardon Me" by Incubus: The song that John is listening to in 1999 after his first day at school is "Pardon Me," a breakthrough single for the funk/rock turned mainstream rock band Incubus. The song appears on their third album, Make Yourself, and largely gained popularity because of an acoustic version issued to radio stations. The song is about a state of confusion with allusions to spontaneous combustion.

Trivia

Behind the Scenes

• Rumored Cuts: After the pilot was first completed, a variety of edits were publicly announced—some of which proved to be false. Chief among these cuts was the school shooting scene where Cromartie first encounters John. Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori claimed that the scene was going to be cut out of respect for the victims of a campus shooting at Virginia Tech in May 2007. However, in the broadcast version the scene is more or less intact. In fact, most of the changes between the pre-broadcast pilot and the official version involve Sarah's fiancé. His name was changed to Dixon from Daniels and the first scene between the two was extended. The rest of the differences are mainly in editing.

• Casting: "Mr. Dixon," Sarah's fiancé, was recast for the broadcast pilot. He was originally portrayed by Tim Guinee, but in the pilot he's played by Dean Winters. Though there was no formal announcement as to why Winters has taken over the role, it is likely that Guinee simply wasn't available for a recurring role in the series.

• Preview: This episode was put online in its entirety at YahooTV for 24 hours on January 5, 2007.