It’s hard to summarize the feelings I have for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but I’m going to try.

It’s horrible.

It takes everything that was great about the first two movies and turns it to ash. The burning questions posed by those heady James Cameron flicks, like:

• Is destiny written in stone?
• Will Man be his own undoing?
• Did we create machines to serve us or replace us?
• Can Man be trusted with any technology?

These philosophical quandaries are nowhere to be found in Fox’s lame attempt to get people to tune in. It’s just Summer Glau being a bad-ass (which is almost worth the sacrifice) and shit getting blown up.

Oh, and of course the rape and pillage of my adolescent movie memories.

The implications of time-travel weren’t really explored in T1 and T2 for very good reasons: the films were both too dumb to deal with that issue. But the films knew that and they steered clear of the discussion.

The small-screen spin-off, unfortunately, is content to play with the laws of time and the laws of the time-travel device itself (only living tissue can be sent back, but somehow a flying bullet makes it through). And, of course, there are a billion Terminators that have come back to try and kill the Connors. It’s just really stupid. I suppose that’s the nature of serializing a story that was never meant to be serialized.

On the other hand, the nation really needs more Summer Glau. So, you know, country first.