The Connor Wars F0306 – “Clutch”

Here is the sixth installment of Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles fanfic that picks up where the second season finale left off. As I mentioned before, I was so enthusiastic about the possibilities presented when the season ended that I just had to keep it going regardless of what happened with the suits at FOX.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that I changed the name of the series to Terminator: The Connor Wars. I think that more accurately conveys what this project will cover as well as it being a lot easier to say.

As I disclaim on the title page, this is just meant to be a bit of fannish fun in the long spirit of the various fan communities. I’m not intending to step on any toes.

Clutch

The battle between the resistance forces and Skynet comes to a head. As the tide of battle can tip either way, John learns a critical lesson.

In the past, Sarah and Savannah have some “girl time”. Meanwhile, while savoring a political victory, Governor Wyman finds himself once again on Kaliba’s radar.

Action, information, and a sort of reappearance of a familiar character. Definitely not an episode to be missed.

Once you’ve finished reading the script, it would be nice if you would take the time to rate this episode. Thanks.

(With the size it is, the PDF seems to read easier if you zoom to 66.7% and then scroll the text horizontally so it’s centered.)

Previous episode: F0305 – “Mrs Worthington’s Formal Tea”

Next episode: F0307 -“Resfest”

Oh, and before I get emails about this. The PDF file I generated has the setting to allow people to print out the script turned off. If you are having trouble with the plug-in, click here.

24 Responses to "The Connor Wars F0306 – “Clutch”"

TheSqonk says:

July 10, 2009 at 6:17 pm

That was an absolutely fantastic sixth episode. The characters all on par as per previous episodes with Brandi’s attitude once again standing out.

The revelations in this one really took me by surprise. I really didn’t see many of them coming, notably the history concerning the 850 or the pieces concerning Savanah.

Well done.

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CJ says:

July 10, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Thanks. I enjoyed the contents of this one as well. It was a pain in the butt to write, but I did enjoy reading it when I was done.

I’m going to post my thoughts about the ep in the forum soon, but I will mention that the T-850 past future history is decidedly a nod to T3…as was the exploding fuel cell. (You might think I watched T3 recently, but I haven’t.)

I tried hard to make the 3-ep Palisades battle arc as consistent as I could. Too often I watch the first part of these sorts of arcs and then find myself let down by the follow-on episodes.

I’m gladdened that I was able to surprise you with some stuff. With all of the speculation that is rampant here, there, and everywhere, it’s not an easy thing to do. Not that I’m intentionally trying to be surprising so much as I’m trying not to be easily predictable. BUT and this is very important: if it doesn’t work for the story, I don’t put it in even if it’s a really cool idea. Story and character always, ALWAYS, come first. (Not so much the budget as I’m clearly making $4+ million episodes. But even at that rate, a 22-episode season would come in under $90 million…much less than even a modest SF motion picture.)

Thanks again for your comments. I always get a kick out of seeing what other think of the writing I commit.

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hezi says:

July 11, 2009 at 6:51 am

another great episode.

savannah misses her robot mom!! didn’t see that one coming.

cameron and weaver talking was very interesting, it explains a lot.
I tried to imagine an endo speaking with cameron’s voice, creepy…

I liked the nods to T3. by the way CJ, have you seen T4?

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CJ says:

July 11, 2009 at 10:53 am

It’s interesting how people get different things when they read the same work (happens all the time – that’s why it’s so much fun to read what other people think). For me, the key with Savannah wasn’t missing her moms but that she knew Weaver was a robot almost from the start. It really puts a new twist on the Season 2 Savannah eps when you see them.

Your comment about Cam and Cath made me go back and add one important word to the script that I was going to put in but neglected to when I was doing the final polish. I changed “Cameron’s voice” to “Cameron’s techno voice”. Without the soft tissue, Cameron is going to sound more synthetic.

As for T4…after I first saw the trailer, I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it. I just…couldn’t. (Now that you see what terminatory tales were floating in my head, can you blame me?)

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TheSqonk says:

July 11, 2009 at 9:43 pm

You’re right about Savanah and the scenes from Season 2. Now that I think back to a number of those key scenes, such as the photo shoot, Dr Sherman’s office, the later in the series discussion about how she misses her dad and CW’s lap being cold really do take on a new meaning if the girl knows who or what Catherine is. This plot point raises another interesting idea…. Did Catherine know that Savanah knew?

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hezi says:

July 12, 2009 at 12:02 pm

what I ment about savanah missing her robot mom, was that weaver was actualy functioning as her mom.
in T2 sarah said that the terminator was like a father to john, and now weaver was a mother to savanah…
terminators can learn how to be parents (sort of).
in fact, weaver refers to john henry as her son, so she realy is maternal (sort of).

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CJ says:

July 12, 2009 at 1:35 pm

@TheSqonk – “Did Catherine know that Savanah knew?” Let’s leave that open for now. If she did, when did Catherine find out? (I have my own suspicions. If it gets written, I wonder if I’ll be right?)

@hezi – You’ve actually hit on one of the main themes I wanted to follow this season. If I remember, I’ll discuss that in my writer’s room post (whenever the next one is). In the meantime, I’ll refer back to F0301 p.7

Coincidentally, when I had my little reunion with a HS friend a few weeks back, she brought up exactly the same notion about bonding. It’s nice when fiction turns out to have parallels in the real world like that.

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TheSqonk says:

July 13, 2009 at 7:18 am

It’s fascinating stuff. If she did, that would be placing a huge amount of trust in a girl who had a poor track record of keeping important secrets, which would make that question of “when” just as important. We could see this with Elison. At one point she implies she’d do away him if John Henry revealed her identity and then right at the end of the season she saves him along with the others. How much of it is based on truth and how much is simply due to overwhelming circumstances of the moment? Which ever way you take the story I look forward to finding out.

One of the things you touched on in a comment to me in your previous episode was that telling a story in screenplay formatting was that it stopped the writer from delving too far into the thought processes of the characters. I think the 2 seasons of TSCC actually used this restriction quite well. We, the human viewers, were continually left wondering just what the heck was going through the minds of our resident cyborgs and their real motivations behind their actions, especially with regard to the extent of their bonding with the humans under their direct protection.

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ebshumidors says:

July 13, 2009 at 12:17 pm

Another cliffhanger! I see some tension between Brandi and Skynet developing. Her character is the most interesting new one so far. What’s her religion angle?

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CJ says:

July 13, 2009 at 1:08 pm

@TheSqonk – Honestly, I think Ellison (and Sarah, probably) were saved only because John Connor had to be saved. They were just happy recipients of Catherine’s beneficence. Even so, I do think that she’d bonded with Ellison and Murch to the point where she’d rather not kill them. Savannah…well, Savannah is probably the biggest enigma being that after the crash Weaver had any number of options to take Savannah out of her life (death, family, boarding school, etc.) and didn’t. Seems like a lot of hassle just to maintain the illusion of being Catherine Weaver, no?

I think sometimes keeping the robots mum was taken a little too far. John, especially, could have benefited from a little more timely information. E.g. S0102 “Gnothi Seauton” when Cameron revealed the presence of the resistance fighters and the support materials. Sarah was understandably miffed that Cameron waited three days to say anything. Those three days allowed Vick to kill 3/4 of the team. Makes no sense being that Cameron had been very calculating in the events leading to that point…unless it was important that John not have that resistance help. Wheels within wheels.

@ebshumidors – Well…as cliffhangers go, it’s not a big one. I tried to give it a little bit of a climatic feel, actually. ‘course that doesn’t mean that when I reveal an answer it won’t spark even more questions.

Brandi’s religion angle? Well…obviously she’s Roman Catholic. She still has her faith in God…or a desire to want to have faith. Beyond that? Would a global apocalypse increase or decrease faith? Would some faiths have a different shift than others? There are a few threads that have been touched on by JF and by me…should be interesting to see how they evolve.

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hezi says:

July 13, 2009 at 3:36 pm

CJ, about T4, lets just say that I like your john connor better.
its very interesting to see how he becomes the leader and how he defeats skynet.
sadly, that is exactly where T4 fails.

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CJ says:

July 13, 2009 at 4:15 pm

Thanks. To be fair, though, I get 22 episodes to get John from A to however-far-into-the-alphabet-I-get-him.

John defeats Skynet? Really? I’ll have to make a note. This could change EVERYTHING! :-D

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hezi says:

July 15, 2009 at 9:06 am

it just occurred to me that cameron and weaver are not from the same future.
we know (from season 1) that derek and cameron are from the same future,
and in season 2 we learned that derek and jesse are from different futures.
weaver and jesse were on the JIMMY CARTER, so weaver is from a different future than derek
and cameron. so the cameron that sent jesse to bring weaver, is not the same cameron
that went back in time to save john. since “our” cameron knew about the “will you join us”
tthing, that means that it happened in her future too, but the jesse of that future
wasn’t on the JIMMY CARTER.
am I making sense here?

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CJ says:

July 15, 2009 at 10:21 am

I know what you’re saying. It is definitely the toughest causality problem that JF left for us. I’m really good with time-travel and even I had to reckon it out after the eppies aired. Here’s how:

Original Timeline:
* Skynet sends back T-800. John sends Kyle back in time. (Future changes.)

New Timeline:
* Skynet send back T-1000. John sends T-800 back in time. (Future changes.)

New Timeline:
* Derek meets Jesse.
* Derek captured. Cameron installed at Serrano. Derek back at Serrano.
* Derek sent back in time. (Future unchanged.)
* MPA sent message.
* MPA picked up by Jimmy Carter. Hijinx ensue. Gives message to Jesse. MPA escapes to time-travel to 2005-6. (Future unchanged.)
* Jesse debriefed by Cameron about MPA. Cameron goes back in time. (Future changes)

New Timeline:
* Vengeful Jesse unhappy with her world (where Derek is tortured by Fisher). Finds Riley. Travels back in time. (Future changes)

That’s the simple version. There are a lot of other minor causality loops that have to be dealt with, but the short of it is that we’re operating under the premise that to change the future you have to change the right thing(s) necessary that will change the future in a meaningful way. As we can see, in this case it’s an element of the order people go back and what their influence is upon John’s (or Skynet’s) future actions. The “people” who affect John and influence the outcome of the future are his protectors and Jesse–who is trying to destroy John’s relationship with a protector.

Simple. Just common sense really. :-)

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TheSqonk says:

July 16, 2009 at 7:40 pm

I see you subscribe to the theory that Jesse is from a different future. When laid out like you have just done it makes a lot of sense.
I mention it because I’ve seen it debated a bit on other web sites, mainly due to it causing so much confusion due to the way Season 2 rolled it out. I actually think this comes down to a few choice words from the characters at key points and in the way the story was told –

• Early on in the season when Derek confronts Jesse about her motives she merely says she’s here to keep Cameron away because “can you imagine what he’ll be like if he spends the next 20 years with her” (rough quote sorry, going from memory).
• Jesse’s story on the “The Last Voyage Of The Jimmy Carter” and her trip back in time.
• Cameron’s condolences to Derek in the next episode.

When pulled apart and ordered like you have just done, it’s much more possible to sort out what really happened. Was “The Last Voyage Of The Jimmy Carter” the same episode where they showed Jesse and Riley bubbling back in time and setting themselves up in the past? If so that could be the biggest problem of their story telling as you would essentially be following Jesse in one time line for part of the episode and then a different Jesse for the last part. Even if it wasn’t, if you’re theory holds up, the Jesse we watched on the Jimmy Carter would not be the same version who finally jumps back in time.

TSCC seems to follow a different model of causality from other Sci-Fi stories, which either follow the butterfly effect or that you never manage to change anything, you just end up completing the sequence of events that caused history in the first place. In TSCC the future appears changeable but it’s a constant struggle against the overwhelming trend so one person can only manage to cause small alterations unless they attack key events which are the turning points in the timeline. Of course it ‘s also possible that the writers just choose to take a certain amount of artistic license with all of this and just blend things to suit the circumstances.

There is actually a lot more to this subject that I wanted to pick your brain about but it’s already getting to be a long comment so I’ll stick to one more thing for now :-) …… Derek does change things, along with Sarah. Sarah destroys The Turk and Derek kills Ande Goode. Very much depending on whether the Turk was the original Skynet or Andy just believed it was determines whether these actions caused John Henry to already be in existence prior to Derek jumping. This directly relates to the timeline Weaver is from. I am going by the theory the MPA on the sub was not the head honcho of the faction, just the emissary.

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The Connor Wars F0306 – “Clutch”

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