Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Terminator DVD & Blu-ray special features

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season Two, DVDWarner Home Video has announced the full list of features that will appear on the Terminator season two DVD & Blu-ray sets. Season two will be released on September 22. See the details from the press release below.

Josh Friedman talked to Sci Fi Wire this week. Here are a few quotes:

For you, over the two seasons, what storylines took on their own life, maybe in a way you didn’t expect?

Friedman: I was pleased by how much we got out of Cromartie/John Henry [Garret Dillahunt]. Most of that is due to the genius that is Dillahunt—there’s a reason David Milch couldn’t leave him dead in Deadwood. I always knew we’d have a Terminator body aiding in the A.I. development, but I’ll admit it wasn’t always the Cromartie body. We explored other ideas there, but ultimately we couldn’t stand removing Cromartie from the chessboard.

The ending could be looked at as an actual end to the series or as a cliffhanger. Was it difficult to come up with the finale? Why did you want to end it on such a big note?

Friedman: The finale wasn’t really any more difficult than any other episode. Frankly, “Adam Raised a Cain” almost f–king killed the writers’ room, so the finale was a vacation compared to that. I’d known for quite a while where we were headed, so once we got to that point it was pretty organic. I don’t think I set out to end “on a big note,” but I knew I wanted John Henry to be attacked, and the drone seemed the most dramatic way to hit that beat. I needed to drive people to the future, and making the present an extremely dangerous place to be seemed like an important part of the equation.

Do you ever see the story continuing, perhaps in a comic book or another format?

Friedman: I don’t own this franchise or control it in any way. I can’t just go make a deal to do a comic book or a DVD movie or anything like that. The people that control the franchise need to be interested in another iteration of not just Terminator, which clearly they are, but TSCC, which at this point they are not. I’ve tried to pull this proverbial band-aid off as quickly as I can, but I don’t want that confused with me giving up on the show. It’s been my entire creative existence for years, and nothing strokes my ego more than hearing about people clamoring for more TSCC and e-mailing network executives to that effect. But I want people to have a realistic understanding of what’s going on. I owe them honesty.

Is there anything you’d like to say to the fans?

Friedman: I don’t think there’s much I could say to fans that I haven’t already said. TSCC has been my life for almost four years, and the fans have been a huge part of that experience. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and television is nothing if not a social compact—I’ll try to make something worth watching, and you’ll try to watch it. It’s a handshake, and you don’t want to leave the other guy hanging. Hopefully, we’ll try again soon.

Bigger Terminator screencaps are up. Pics from individual episodes are all linked here: TERMINATOR IMAGE GALLERIES.

Season two can be pre-ordered on Amazon. DVD & Blu-ray details below.



DVD and BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

  • The Continuing Chronicles featurettes
  • Write the Future – An inside look at creator Josh Friedman and the writing process and how it guides the creative decisions for each episode
  • Conceptualization – Visual Effects supervisor James Lima and others discuss the production challenges of bringing the sci-fi world of Terminator to television
  • Blood and Metal – Go behind the scenes with special makeup effects artist Rob Hall and the cast as they reveal the process of creating realistic cybernetic organisms
  • Designing Destruction – Production Designer Marek Dobrowolski and others discuss the challenges of combining real locations with futuristic sets to create a world in which the present fights to avoid a horrific future
  • Choreographing Chaos – See how Stunt Coordinator and 2nd Unit Director Joel Kramer and Special Effects Supervisor Steve Galich work closely to create the stunts and on set effects that add an undeniably kinetic quality to each episode
  • War Stories – From an unexpected earthquake on the jam-packed Santa Monica pier to the intricacies of filming underwater sequences, the producers and cast reflect on some of the most memorable production challenges from Season Two
  • Setting the Tempo – Composer Bear McCreary and the producers explain the process of taking cues from the Terminator mythology and incorporating them into the score. Bear, Josh Friedman and Shirley Manson also talk about the process of recording the season opening song “Samson and Delilah”
  • Motivations – The producers and cast discuss the themes of Season Two and how these informed both the writing and acting
  • Terminated Scenes
  • Cameron vs. Rosie: Fight Rehearsal – The raw fight rehearsal and choreography session between Summer Glau and a contortionist is interwoven with storyboards and interviews explaining this intricate battle sequence
  • The Storyboard Process: Cameron Goes Bad – The production team outlines the process for mapping key sequences from the show in Storyboard format
  • Audio Commentary with Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau and Shirley Manson and Executive Producers Josh Friedman, James Middleton and John Wirth
  • Gag Reel

BLU-RAY ONLY SPECIAL FEATURES

  • Collision with the Future: Deconstructing the HUNTER KILLER Attack – Interactive exploration of the climactic Hunter Killer attack featured in the Season Two finale. Four simultaneous points of view show all elements of the filmmaking of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles from Production, Direction, Visual Effects, and Special Effects. Additional focus points allow the viewer to explore even more elements of what it took to create this dramatic stunt sequence.

EPISODES FEATURED

1. Samson and Delilah
2. Automatic for the People
3. The Mousetrap
4. Allison from Palmdale
5. Goodbye to All That
6. The Tower is Tall But the Fall is Short
7. Brothers of Nablus
8. Mr. Ferguson is Ill Today
9. Complications
10. Self Made Man
11. Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point
12. Alpine Fields
13. Earthlings Welcome Here
14. The Good Wound
15. Desert Cantos
16. Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep
17. Ourselves Alone
18. Today is the Day (Part 1)
19. Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter (Part 2)
20. To the Lighthouse
21. Adam Raised a Cain
22. Born to Run

BASICS
Street Date: September 22, 2009
Running time: Approximately 1,012 minutes

DVD
Price: $59.98 SRP
Language: English, Portuguese
Subtitles: ESDH, French, Thai, Portuguese, Spanish
5.1 Audio

Blu-ray
Price: $79.98 SRP
Language: English, Japanese
Subtitles: ESDH, French, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Japanese
5.1 Audio

Terminator updates, season two DVD & Blu-ray out in September

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season Two DVDTerminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles season two will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 15 22. No word yet on deleted scenes (Beastwizard would be nice) and other bonus features, but the collection will have six discs and <- that’s what the box art will look like.

In related news, Josh Friedman is back among the living in the blogosphere and has a lengthy post up about the days leading up to the cancellation. You can check it out HERE.

The fan campaign isn’t over either. Earlier today, someone posted this on Warner Bros’ official Twitter page: “I hear ur proclamations of TSCC love – so I gotta know, when did u first fall under TSCC’s spell?” Bottom line, WB may not be as disinclined to shop the show around as they were only weeks ago, so if you have a Twitter account, consider leaving them a quick message. The show is also now being streamed on the WB site. You can revisit the first five episodes of season one HERE.

There’s also a bunch of bigger season one screencaps (season two coming this week) on the site:

1×04 Heavy Metal, page one
1×04 Heavy Metal, page two
1×05 Queen’s Gambit
1×08 Vick’s Chip, page one
1×08 Vick’s Chip, page two
1×09 What He Beheld

And there’s also some Life news:

Season two will be available on DVD a bit earlier than Terminator, on August 25. If you are not planning on getting it and either live in the U.S. or know how to use proxies, you can still check out both episodes with Garret on Hulu at these links: 2×12 Trapdoor, 2×21 One.

Terminator will not be returning on Fox

Fox revealed the fall/midseason schedule at the upfronts earlier today and Terminator is not on it. Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said:

[Sarah Connor] has completed its run. I think it had a nice little run. It was a good show. It was not an either or [with Dollhouse]. We did see it tailing off a bit [in the ratings]. It had a nice creative core, but, ultimately, we made the bet on Dollhouse, so that’s it for [Sarah Connor]… We make no apologies. We gave it a lot of support and some consistent scheduling. We tried and thought it was time to move on.

In somewhat better news, the show’s executive SF geeks, Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller will be feeding lines to Mr. Spock himself next season on Fringe. No word on what Josh Friedman is up to next or whether any of the cast will be joining another show full time.

For updates on the cast & crew, add these to your bookmarks/readers:

Sarah Connor Society

Josh Friedman

Ashley Miller

Dan Thomsen

Dekker Daily

Summer-Glau.net

Hadley Klein

Terminator fan campaign info and screencaps from Born to Run

Screencaps from T:SCC 2×22 Born to Run have been posted. Click on John Henry to visit the page and keep reading to see what you can do to improve the show’s chances of getting picked up for another season.

Garret Dillahunt,John Henry,terminator,the sarah connor chronicles,2x22 Born to Run

Fox hasn’t made a decision to renew The Sarah Connor Chronicles yet and will not be making any announcements either way until May 18, when they announce their full schedule for the fall. The ratings are not looking good and the fate of the show will be decided in the coming weeks, so this would be the right time to let Fox know how much you enjoy it and why. You can send letters, cards and emails to these addresses:

FOX Broadcasting
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035

WB
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
4000 Warner Blvd
Burbank CA 91522

askfox@fox.com c/o Fox President Kevin Reilly
Scott.Rowe@Warnerbros.com

There are several other ongoing fan campaigns out there at the moment.

Hadley at the official Terminator blog is encouraging fans to vote in the Save One Show poll at EOnline.com.

The admins at the Sarah Connor Society admins say this:

Fox is looking at ALL the numbers. They are looking at Nielsens, DVR, Live Plus DVR, HULU, and Fox Online. They also pay attention to sales on ITunes and Amazon. As far as I know Fox is not going to make any kind of decision on a S3 22 or 13 Episode renewal until the DVR numbers come in for Born to Run.

So what you can do (if you’re in the U.S. or use U.S. proxies) is watch T:SCC on Fox on Demand or Hulu, get episodes on iTunes and Amazon’s Video on Demand, and sign up for the season two DVDs on Amazon.

Fans at the Terminator Wiki have also launched a social media campaign so if you have an account on any major social media sites – Digg, Reddit, Mixx – you can submit and vote for any Terminator-related articles or reviews you come across. With Digg, it’s pretty easy to do a search of all the recent articles once or twice a day and vote for them on the site.

Finally, if you have a blog or a profile page on a social networking site, you can post the links to the video-on-demand sites and the fan campaign info to help spread the word.

To watch the season two finale on Hulu right now, click on the picture below:

Garret Dillahunt and Summer Glau in T:SCC 2x22 Born to Run