Discuss TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES "Allison From Palmdale" (Season 2 Episode 4)
So What Did You Think of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES "Allison From Palmdale"?
First, let me start with what I liked. Summer Glau really brought it here as she portrayed the human that inspired the machine that is now Cameron. Her emotional portrayal was just stunning. I am glad the TSCC writers wrote this very challenging part for her.
Now let us get down into the nitty gritty of things. There are a lot of things that did not make sense about this TSCC episode. Let me just list them out and maybe some of you can help me out with this:
- If Cameron "crashed", was the amnesia the equivalent of my computer restarting in safe mode?
- If Cameron had a malfunction and lost her memory, how could she explain the Terminator vision? Did she just think that everyone sees numbers everywhere?
- Why does Cameron not display any emotion as a terminator but becomes a real girlie girl when she forgets? Does that mean that the base programming is human and the rest are just commands?
Overall, if you are willing to overlook the "huh?" moments, "Allison From Palmdale" was a very decent episode. What did you guys think? And oh, can someone help me with the above questions? I need to be able to sleep at night
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I thought this episode was amazing. the writers really did something unique, and original that you would not have guessed would happen. to answer your questions...
yes she was in a "Safe Mode" where she went back to basic programming
the terminator vision seamed normal to her, so she did not thing it was different for other people
the reason she reverts back to human emotion and actions and memories rather then a machine code is that she is an infiltrator. Her basic programming is to take a subject and make that person her. or her that person rather, so when she crashed her system reset to the human information she had gathered from the real Allison. and thats why she thought for so long that she was Allison. its like when a program auto-saves. her programing had auto-saved the information of the human, and the glitch rebooted the human part and not the machine.
so thats my $0.02 hope it helps.
Thanks very much Daniel. You have answered my questions. Next week, I will ask you about all the timeline inconsistencies because that still confuses me
. J/K.....no but seriously can I ask you? 
Pretty much what Daniel said - Cameron is Cameron's base-programming (or her resistance-version upgrade) and "Allison Young" is an assumed persona based on the real girl. Obviously, Cam's chip was not repaired (which we pretty much knew) but like when I pull the battery to reboot the logic board on my Mac, when John pulled her chip and rebooted her, her programming loaded normally, overriding the factory-installed "kill John Connor" setting.
Last season, Cam told Sarah that the resistance wipes the memories of terminators when they reprogram them but again, like my mac, deleting a file doesn't mean it's necessarily gone just that the path to access it is cleared. I guess segments of Cam's memory where her "Allison Young" persona was stored have yet to be over-written and are bleeding through.
The interesting thing about this episode is the premise that a terminator, when programmed with a human persona, won't necessarily realize that it is a machine until another program is triggered - Cam was probably programmed not to be aware of her "terminator vision" while the Allison program was running .
All in all, deeply cool.
sure if you have other questions let me know, no promises I can answer them, but I will try.
"- If Cameron “crashedâ€, was the amnesia the equivalent of my computer restarting in safe mode?
- If Cameron had a malfunction and lost her memory, how could she explain the Terminator vision? Did she just think that everyone sees numbers everywhere?
- Why does Cameron not display any emotion as a terminator but becomes a real girlie girl when she forgets? Does that mean that the base programming is human and the rest are just commands?"
ur totally missing the point of the episode.
1) cameron didn't get amnesia. humans get amnesia, she's a machine. she didn't "lose" her terminator memories, the glich is the opposite in which she "resurfaced" hidden or deleted memories. memories that were probably removed from the upper functions "in the event of capture" to prevent the resistence from recovering her past crimes. Or the resistence could've been the ones removing the memories to prevent the terminator from having memories of past murders. placing these memories in the higher function would suppress her other memories to the lower function (eg, when you open a window in ur winxp, other windows are in the back)
2) because she is a replica of the human allison and the memory play back were visual/audio even if it was coded in binary, she was unable to associate the difference, thus she thought the memories where her own... until the point where the terminator was brought into the picture. the bigger question is, how can she have "allison's memory" like when she jumped off into the water. this is where you have to realize ur watching a TV show which never stated those memories were seen from 1st person view, it just played the narrative for you.
3) Its kinda presumptious for our level of technology to describe how a terminator is programmed, don't you think? truth is we don't know how she is programmed, but safe to say that emotions in human beings are merely chemical that alter electrical signals to our brain. thus emotions can simply be a programmable sub-routine, in fact it can simply be an outward simulation for all we know. the question of why she display it in the false memory, well she is an infiltration unit, correct? disguised as allison, so hence the emotional portrayal and stuff were probably part of the overall program of her infiltration that were wiped out in the reprogramming. hene the "glitch" again is the resurfacing of these memories... or perhaps the whole program all together.