The second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is to premiere on September 8, and in anticipation of that, the show's producers and stars talked about upcoming changes to the program on their recent press tour in Los Angeles.

Like most shows, Terminator's first season was forced to pack up early due to the writers' strike, and producer Josh Friedman is intent on using some of the ideas for that season into the new season.  “We had stuff planned for a whole season arc that we didn't get to and we're still working off some of the material in a macro sense, but in terms of the micro sense, it's different,” he said.

Friedman also revealed that there will be more self-contained episodes in the upcoming season.  “If we learned anything last year, sometimes the show got overly complicated.  There were heavy mythology episode and serialized and we're trying this year to tell—I don't want to say less complicated, but maybe slightly less ambitious stories.”

Terminator executive producer James Middleton discusses the dilemma that the new film Terminator: Salvation might bring to the show's timeline.  “Both the show and the movie take certain inspirations from the Terminator mythology and certain themes are important like the value of sacrifice, perseverance and faith,” he explained.  “What we did in the pilot is put them in the present day, so there is a new timeline and can only be seen on this show.  I wouldn't call them inconsistencies though.  The franchise has always had this idea [that] a new fate can be created by time travel … so it's consistent with the mythology in that way.”

Aside from the new cast members we've mentioned previously—Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson and All My Children's Leven Rambin confirmed to be taking on roles—there will also be some changes to the more established characters.  For one, Thomas Dekker, who plays John Connor in the series, promises a tougher version of his character.  “In the first season, John was weak. He was mentally there but I don't think he had the blood in him yet for war,” he said.  “This year, John's got a lot more cold blood running in him and I'm taking that into account every time we do a take.”

Lena Headey, on the other hand, joked about criticism from fans for her being too frail to play the title role, Sarah Connor.  She only said she was building “huge biceps.”

Finally, Friedman couldn't hide his excitement about the season premiere itself.  The new season's theme will be “evolution,” and he says it will greatly manifest in the first episode.  “We're hesitant to talk specifics, but I can say the first episode of the new season is very ambitious,” he said.  “Almost every character goes through a major unexpected change.  There's a lot of mayhem.”

The coming season also confirms the return of pilot director David Nutter, and Garret Dillahunt reprising the role of Cromartie.  Again, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will return to screens on September 6 on Fox.


-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: Wired, iF Magazine
(Image courtesy of Fox)