The Connor Wars EXTRA03 – First Draft: “A Thousand Miles”

Here is an extra little something I’ve gotten from the archives for The Connor Wars. The fanfic that picked up where the second season finale of Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles left off.

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.

F0301 – “A Thousand Miles” First Draft

As y’all know, after the second season finale, “Born to Run”, aired, I was compelled to continue the saga as best I could. A quick meander through this site shows the fruits of that effort. Still, it’s said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This is that step.

On April 23, 2009, I started writing a script that continued from where “Born to Run” left off. I hadn’t written a complete script in over 10 years, so this was going to be a bit of an experiment–but mostly it was going to be an exercise in passion. As the fate of TSCC hadn’t been publicly announced, my hope was that if I could squirt out one or two scripts before the up-fronts, then maybe the suits at Fox would be able to see the possibilities. I fully expected them to pick up the series over Dollhouse, and my participation would then come to an end as I awaited new episodes. Who knew?

I mention this to give you some context. I was going to write these scripts as quickly as I could in the hope that they would help get the show renewed. The first draft of the first script was finished on May 2, 2009–some nine days after it was begun.

This wasn’t what ended up as what you read for F0301 – “A Thousand Miles”. Most of the stuff from the future is the same, but the events from the past are different (though they did eventually emerge in F0310 – “Tumbling From the Ski Jump”). I didn’t feel that starting both timelines where we had left them gave me the strongest punch. What it gave me was a fair amount of stress as I tried to figure out how to fix it. It was here that I made the daring move to tell the Sarah storyline out of order. This gave me the flexibility to sync up the two timelines better than if they’d both been kept in sequence. So…I quickly wrote up a new “B” story and posted the finished script on May 5.

Here is the first draft as it came off my fingers. There are plenty of typos and stuff, which you sort of expect from a first draft. A lot will be familiar, but there are also bits and pieces that never ever made it off the cutting room floor.

Disclaimer: Information in this script that matches an officially-released final script is (obviously) TCW canon. Other information should be considered to be nothing more than a (one-time) canonical option but not canon unless it’s restated in an “official” script.

(With the size it is, and if it didn’t do it automagically, the PDF seems to read easier if you zoom to 66.7% and then scroll the text horizontally so it’s centered.)

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.