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SCC Andy Goode gravesite
SCC 107 andys tombstone
Thedemonhand1
Thedemonhand2
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"What, they only have one FBI agent in this town?"
- Derek Reese.

When Sarah breaks into Agent Ellison's apartment looking for a missing endo-arm, she discovers dossiers, files and video from her stay in the mental hospital. The files lead her to hospital psychiatrist Dr. Silberman, a doomsday convert who made Sarah's hospital stay unbearable. Meanwhile, Cameron enrolls in a ballet class taught by Maria Shipkov, Dmitri's sister, in an effort to track down his whereabouts and to find out who has the Turk. John learns what it took for his mom to escape the hospital; Agent Ellison's endo-arm discovery puts him danger.

Synopsis[]

The episode begins with a shot of Cameron dismounting a motorcycle. She is disguised as a police officer, presumably to allow her to complete her present mission, without raising suspicion. She then breaks into a power plant. She identifies the turbine that is the primary source of electricity to Los Angeles, and destroys it with her bare hands, causing a city-wide blackout. Next, she goes to the Central Los Angeles Police Department. The panic in the aftermath of the blackout allows Cameron to walk through the station undetected. She punches open the door to evidence storage. Cameron finds an evidence box, and a corresponding sign-out log book. Agent Ellison's is the last name on the list. Cameron looks through box and finds nothing.

Sarah walks through a crypt and stops at the headstone of Andy Goode, comparing his cremation to the incineration of the T-888 in a voiceover. Derek now lies in bed, still recovering from his battle with the T-888 at the jail (in "Queen's Gambit"). Sarah tells him that the T-888 has been successfully destroyed and that she hasn't located Dmitri Shipkov, Andy's chess partner. Derek suggests assigning Cameron to it. Cameron comes home and tells Sarah the FBI has the missing T-888 hand. Sarah orders Cameron to find Dmitri, and in order to do so, Cameron enrolls in a ballet class taught by Dmitri's sister, Maria. (Summer Glau, the actress who portrays Cameron, is a classically trained ballerina.) At the end of the first lesson a Russian man (apparently a gangster) shows up demands money he is owed as Cameron listens in to the conversation since she can speak Russian.

Meanwhile, Sarah calls the FBI, disguising herself as an evidence clerk. Sarah hears the man ask Ellison where the hand is, and he claims to not have it. At home, Ellison watches footage of Sarah during her stay at Pescadero. Sarah's words on the tape click in Ellison's head. Ellison opens his freezer and reveals the T-888's hand in a bag. Ellison visits Pescadero and is shown Sarah's cell by a doctor. Ellison asks the doctor if there are any people who worked in the hospital that he can talk to. The doctor tells him of only one person, he tells Ellison that a Doctor Silberman is living in the mountains and that nobody has been in contact with him.

Later, Sarah breaks into Ellison's house looking for the T-888 hand. As she is searching through the place, she finds that Ellison has been examining a video of her stay at Pescadero. Sarah grabs one and leaves.

John finds Derek cleaning their arsenal of weapons on the floor of Sarah's room. Derek asks about Charlie, and John says he can be trusted. As they start a conversation Derek gets angry that John trusts Cameron. Seconds later, Sarah comes home and wants John to find an address. Derek tells Sarah that Cameron needs to leave for John's safety. In the other room, John finds Sarah's tape from Pescadero. He takes it into his room and slides it into his VCR, and then puts on headphones. Nothing is heard, but within moments he has tears in his eyes.

Cameron tells Sarah she's following up on Dmitri and The Turk and Sarah tells Derek that Ellison has the hand. She thinks Ellison might know what's going on. John hands Dr. Silberman's address to Sarah and he hurries out the door to school. She then notices that the tape in her bag is missing. She finds it in John's VCR. She pushes it in and watches. On the video, inside Pescadero, a DCFS agent puts a document before Sarah. The papers waive all parental rights to John. Sarah signs. At the breakfast table, Cameron and Derek stare at each other. Cameron eats a piece of pancake then pushes the plate away. Derek says she might have fooled the Connors, but she isn't fooling him.

Ellison finds Dr. Silberman working in his yard. Silberman invites Ellison in for tea. The two sit and talk about Sarah and what she said inside Pescadero. Suddenly, Ellison gets dizzy and falls to the floor. When he awakens, he finds that Silberman has tied him to a chair. Silberman explains that he believes Ellison is from the future and may be a Terminator. Silberman finds a small knife and forces it deep into Ellison's leg. Ellison screams in pain, concluding to Silberman that Ellison is in fact not a Terminator. Silberman, crudely, tourniquets Ellison's wound. Silberman speaks like a mad man about the apocalypse, and recalls when the T-800 (from Terminator 2: Judgment Day) came to Pescadero to save Sarah. Ellison listens closely and asks him more questions about the day Sarah escaped. Ellison tells Silberman that he came for his help, and that he, Ellison, could prove that Sarah wasn't crazy. Silberman opens the trunk of Ellison's car and finds the T-888's hand inside a cooler. Silberman knows the hand must be destroyed, and then he drugs Ellison. Silberman douses his home with gasoline, and Ellison is trapped inside. Silberman leaves the house, taking the T-888 hand with him. Sarah intercepts Silberman, punches him in the face, and takes the hand. The house begins to explode and Sarah hears a scream from inside the house. Later, as rain pours on Silberman, Ellison, now freed, kicks him away and demands the hand. Silberman says Sarah took it and begins laughing like a maniac. Later, Agent Ellison watches as guards lock Silberman into a cell in Pescadero. He screams like a mad man about the apocalypse and the machines, but his cries fade out in the background as Ellison walks away from the cell.

When Cameron returns to the ballet studio, she watches Maria Shipkov dance from the doorway. She engages Maria in conversation and asks about her brother. The Russian gangster, from before, walks in. Cameron steps in, and kicks the man to the ground. Cameron tells an astonished Maria that she's looking for Dmitri, and that she can help him. Maria takes Cameron to Dmitri's hotel room. Cameron asks Dmitri what happened to The Turk. When he refuses to answer, Cameron offers him a priceless diamond. He takes the diamond and says that a man came and offered him cash for The Turk. Dmitri sabotaged The Turk by programming it to throw the chess match so that the man could take the machine. Dmitri gives Cameron a piece of paper that supposedly says who has the Turk, or at least who took it. Cameron takes the paper from Dmitri, then leaves. She passes two armed men on the way out (supposedly the gangster's henchmen.) They kick open Dmitri's door and Cameron walks out of the hotel with the sound of gunfire and screams coming from Dmitri's hotel room.

John hands Derek some clean shirts and tells Derek that he bounced from home to home while Sarah was in Pescadero. Derek tells John that being locked behind four walls can change how a person thinks.

Sarah asks Cameron about The Turk, and about Shipkov. Cameron gives Sarah the paper Dmitri gave her, and tells her that he and his sister are both dead. Sarah asks Cameron if she killed them, but Cameron tells Sarah that she did not. Sarah continues into John's room and tells him that she was going to destroy the tape and that she didn't want him to see it. She asks him if he noticed the date on the tape. John says it was the date Sarah gave up being his mother. Sarah replies that it was the date she broke out of Pescadero. Sometime later, Sarah places the hand in thermite, and destroys it. In the backyard, Derek is enjoying a moment of peace until Sarah arrives. She confirms it to Derek that Kyle is indeed dead and promises to take him to where he is buried.

Dr. Silberman's words have begun to haunt Ellison, as the agent knows that even though the doctor is mentally ill, he has confirmed the arrival of the future apocalypse led by the machines. Later, Ellison is seen sitting in a Bible reading group, seeking solace with the knowledge he now has. It is revealed, in a flashback, that Sarah rescued Ellison from Dr. Silberman's burning house.

Derek, confused, watches Cameron practicing ballet before a mirror. Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor (1830) is playing. It is ambiguous whether the music is diegetic or non-diegetic. It is also the same music heard when Derek entered the basement in the previous episode. As Cameron dances, Sarah narrates the closing scene. She says that machines "cannot appreciate beauty, they cannot create art. If they ever learn these things, they won't have to destroy us. They'll be us." In the final frame, we see Derek with a look of disbelief with tears in his eyes as the episode fades out.


Continuity notes[]

  • The date on the tape is June 8, 1995. This would put the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day a month or two afterwards.
  • Dr. Silberman talks about the Terminator reaching his hand out to Sarah which happened in T2.
  • The box that probably contained Vic's hand and other material from Derek's escape was handed over from evidence storage to FBI agent James Ellison on 10/28/07 (October 28, 2007). At least that's shown on the evidence room custody log almost 3 minutes into the episode. According to this log, the evidence was received from CSI on 10/06/07, so this must be the date of Derek's escape, as a later date for his escape would mean the hand had still been attached to Vic, while an earlier escape date would mean the chain of evidence had obviously been broken. During the intervening 22 days, it has been at the lab and in forensics several times, as well as at "Det Dept" (Detective Department?) twice. The log also mentions the victim as 'Andy Goode' and the suspect as 'John Doe' (i.e. Derek).

Notes[]

  • Cameron's disguise at the beginning is similar to the T-1000's California Highway Patrol disguise in the film Terminator 2.
  • Cameron stops a power plant turbine by putting her hand into it, without getting any damage to her gloves or skin, nor breaking any parts on her body.
  • The Connors keep a trunk full of loaded weapons in their house. That's not responsible weapons storage.
  • Sarah's Pescadero clothing in the video doesn't correspond with what the people at Pescadero wear in Terminator 2: Judgment Day; during the video she wears a full-length blue top with sleeves and trousers, which is standard hospital wear, but not the same as the white tank top and trousers she wore in T2. Dr. Silberman wears white clothing similar to this when he is incarcerated in Pescadero at the end of the episode, so this could have just been a mistake on the part of the production team.
  • Since Dr. Silberman was played by Earl Boen in Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, but by Bruce Davison in this episode, he has more hair now than he had about 10 years ago.
  • The scene of Silberman laughing in the rain and Ellison next to him is kind of reminiscent of the death of the Joker played by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's "Batman".
  • Summer Glau trained as a ballerina before becoming an actress.
  • According to a conversation between Derek Reese and Sarah Connor, it can be concluded that not everyone has the same opinions and passion for technology and robots as John Connor shows.
  • The place where Cameron is taking ballet is called East Valley Ballet Studio.
  • The music which is played is Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor (1830).
  • Dr. Silberman murdered a hiker believing him to be a Terminator prior to Ellison's arrival according to the Extended Cut.

Goofs[]

  • In promotional material and the script for the episode Doctor Silberman was misnamed Doctor Silverman.

DVD Extras[]

  • Terminated Scenes
  • 52-minute Extended Cut

Monologue[]

Opening
"They say that when a person dies the soul lives on. The soul, the thing that separates us from the machines. Cameron had burned the metal monster. Two thousand degrees. I suppose they did the same to Andy. There was nothing left of either. Nothing that told the story of who or what they were. Gone is gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, when I go bury me in the earth. Part of me died years ago with Kyle Reese, but a part of him lives on in John. If that's not a soul, I don't know what is."

Closing
"There was a time when I was a hero to my son. He thought I walked on water. He knows better now. We all have weak moments. Moments where we lose faith. But it's our flaws, our weaknesses that make us human. Science performs miracles like the gods of old. Creating life from blood cells or bacteria or a spark of metal but they're perfect creatures and in that way they couldn't be less human. There are things machines will never do. They cannot possess faith, they cannot commune with God, they cannot appreciate beauty, they cannot create art. If they ever learn these things, they won't have to destroy us. They'll be us."

Quotes[]

Derek: (groggy) The triple eight?
Sarah: Vaporized.
Derek: The Russian, Dmitri? You found him?
Sarah: (shakes head) He took off after Andy's murder.
Derek: (sighing) Now if he has the Turk... Put the machine on it. She'll find him. It's a...
Sarah: I know. It's what they do.

(Cameron enters the house in police uniform)
Sarah: And somewhere in the city a naked cop bleeds in an alley. (John smirks)
Cameron: (serious) The hand. Couldn't acquire it.
Sarah: Why not?
Cameron: The FBI has it.
Sarah: (to John) You're playing hooky.
John: Today? No, I can't miss class today Mom.
Sarah: We have to find the hand. Destroy it. No loose ends. Cyberdyne built Skynet.
John: With the chip. Remember?
Sarah: And the hand.
John: Look, the Feds have it now Mom. I can't help. Besides, absent gets me on the radar. (John leaves for school)
Cameron: (steps toward Sarah) I can play hooky.
Sarah: Find Dmitri. Derek says he has a sister, teaches ballet. Start with her. Low profile, no guns. (as Cameron leaves while wearing her police uniform) You might want to change.

Cameron: (watching a ballerina practice) What is she doing?
Maria: Pas de Chat. Step of the cat.
Cameron: Will you show me?
Maria: That is the advanced class. You are a beginner, ya? (Cameron dances and mimics the ballerina)
Maria: You have taken ballet before.
Cameron: No.
Maria: The height is nice. Beautiful feet, but your upper body is little...mechanical, ya? Remember, you are a cat.
Cameron: I'm a cat?
Maria: Come next week. We need to develop your flexibility and your... imagination. Remember, dance is the hidden language of the soul, ya?

John: What are you doing?
Derek: What's it look like?
John: Looks like your're loading guns that I know for a fact are already loaded.
Derek: True enough.
John: I loaded them.
Derek: Look... no offense, I just don't like firing a weapon I didn't set myself.
John: Anyway, you should take it into the kitchen or something. Mom wouldn't like you doing this in her room.
Derek: Why?
John: Becaue it's her room.
Derek: Listen, um... the paramedic that patched me up. Where did he come from?
John: That's Charley. He was her boyfriend, her fiancé actually. Long time ago though.
Derek: He's a liability.
John: Look man, he's not going to tell anybody.
Derek: How do you know?
John: Because I know him. I trust him.
Derek: Can't believe you trust anybody.
John: (scoffs) Maybe it's just him.
Derek: (sighs) You trust the machine.
John: Cameron...
Derek: Yeah... Cameron. What a joke. Walking around with a name. Like it's a person. It's not a person. It's not something you should be trusting.
Sarah: What's going on?
John: Nothing.
Sarah: I need you to get on the computer and find an address.
Derek: You're making a mistake.
Sarah: How's that?
Derek: The machine has got to go.
Sarah: This morning you had me sending her out to do our dirty work.
Derek: Dirty work is all they're good for! Don't let yourself think that you can train them like a pet. Because it will be the last thing you think.
Sarah: John...
Derek: John doesn't know everything.
Sarah: You should be resting.
Derek: (shrugs her off) They never rest.

Dr. Silberman: (patching up the agent's leg) It's an honest mistake. Can't be too careful.
Agent Ellison: (heavily sighs)
Dr. Silberman: Tell me, do you believe in the Apocalypse, agent?
Agent Ellison: Yeah...um... I read Revelations.
Dr. Silberman: Could it be, that the apocalypse in the book and the predictions of Sarah Connor, are one and the same?
Agent Ellison: Um... I suppose it's possible. What do you think?
Dr. Silberman: He came down the hall. He was a large man. I thought it was a man until... he threw the guard through the window, like a rag doll. Not an ounce of emotion. Just blank, like a death mask. Then the other one came.
Agent Ellison: There was two of them?
Dr. Silberman: Yeah, they were different. The second was almost beautiful like perfect... like a changling, the face of Mercury.
Agent Ellison: What about Sarah?
Dr. Silberman: She was there. She was on the floor. And the boy was with her, he was screaming. And then the first one, the big one, I'll never forget. He reached out his hand and he said, "Come with me if you want to live." The hand of God reaching out to Man, like the Sistine Chapel.
Agent Ellison: The hand of God.
Dr. Silberman: Hand of God. Yeah. Well, there's no proof, so we don't talk about it, all of us that were there.
Agent Ellison: What if I told you I had proof?

Q&A[]

  • Q: Derek Reese and Cameron Phillips know each other from the future. What happened between them since the relationship is so tense?
    • A: One explanation could be later in the series[1]
  • Q: Why did Cameron let Dmitri and his sister die?
    • A: Cameron's mission was to get information about who bought the Turk. Her mission was not to save Dmitri and his sister.
    • A: Cameron is capable of lying if the mission requires it.[2]
  • Q: Who bought the Turk?
    • A: Someone named Sarkissian.[3]
  • Q: Why would Dr. Silberman burn down his house to kill Ellison?
    • A: Either Silberman still didn't think that Ellison was human (remember he is one of the few survivors of the T-1000), or he was trying to make it look like an accident, while at the same time trying to aid Sarah in her mission to prevent Judgment Day in his own, delusional way (after all, he tells Ellison what danger the hand could be in the wrong hands).
  • Q: Why did it take such a long time between when Ellison was saved and when he got out to Dr. Silberman?
    • A: He had been poisoned, stabbed (in the leg, no less), and probably dehydrated by the fire. It is also unclear whether Sarah untied him before rescuing him (she does reach out her hand as if to encourage him to grasp it, but his arms are clearly still tied to the armrest). Even assuming he was free to move after his rescue (and Sarah might have tied him down again to ensure her escape), it is likely he took some time to recuperate enough to be able to walk again, and even then he would not have been fast.
  • Q: After the mission of getting contact with Dmitri's sister, why is Cameron still dancing ballet?
    • A: She might be practicing for the ballet class. The show sometimes show flashback scenes at the end of episodes. The ballet scene could be something that happened before Cameron killed Dmitri and Maria. It might also be that Cameron is becoming more "human" as she learns the art of ballet (which is "...the language of the soul").
  • Q: When Derek Reese is listening to the music and watching Cameron dancing ballet, it seems like he is remembering something from his past. What is that?
    • A: Probably his encounter with her in his past (after Judgment Day), combined with the torture chamber[4]
  • Q: Is there something significant with the music Cameron is dancing to?
    • A: It is the same music that is played in the basement where Derek is tortured in the future.[5]
  • Q: It is claimed the ballet music is the same music as in the torture room. Is there a connection between Cameron and the torture room?
    • A: Possible. It would be one explanation why Derek knew she was a Terminator. Another could be later in the series[6]
  • Q: There was a scene where in Derek's flashback, the John Connor he met had looked like the young John Connor. Was there a possibility that this served as a foreshadow for the later episode, "Born to Run", where the young John Connor had traveled into the future?
    • A: Yes and no. No - Derek states in the season one finale that he celebrated John's 30th birthday with him (John states he is 16 in the episode with Judgment Day being 4 years away and Derek stating he was 15 when it occurred) which would make Derek 23 at the 30th birthday if the current timeline remained unaltered. Yes - In an alternate reality, which TSCC has more than alluded to occurring when past events are changed, this episode may have foreshadowed the writers intentions for the character (3 seasons were roughly drafted out so we may assume this paradox was planned at the show beginning), however in this case it would have been impossible for the flashback John to be circa 16 years old. NB - John has previously calculated his own actual age withstanding time jumps, however if he had done this in the future he would be closer to 40 then 30 at the time of his birthday.

It is more likey this is an allusion to the intended storyline for the benefit of viewers then actual events in the future.

Characters[]

Main[]

Recurring[]

Special guest star[]

Minor[]

  • FBI evidence clerk - Mark Bloom
  • Social Worker - Ron Butler
  • Russian Man - Alex Veadov

External links[]

References[]

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