Terminator comes to TV

Sarah Connor is a single mother not unlike millions of other single mothers. (And dozens of other single mothers on TV shows.) She's devoted to her teenage son, John, and she'll stop at nothing to protect him.

Unlike the offspring of most single mothers, however, her son is threatened by cyborgs — Terminators — from the future. And Sarah had better protect John because he will one day be the savior of mankind.

The character from the first two "Terminator" movies is back, but she's not on the big screen this time. She's the lead character in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," the new weekly series that debuts Sunday at 7 p.m. on Fox/Ch. 13. It's a continuation of the movies, in a way — it's an action-packed thrill ride — but it's also a different way to tell the story.

The weekly series is "an opportunity to explore Sarah Connor's character and the problems that this mother would encounter raising a 15-year-old son and trying to teach him to be a good man while being in extreme danger," said consulting producer James Middleton. "That's something that we feel we can do better in a television show than in a two-hour movie.

"The other thing the series allows us to do is change the narrative dynamic. The movies are a chase dynamic. And in our show, Sarah Connor is on the attack. She is the one who is searching and trying to root out Skynet," the "pernicious, evil force from the future."

For the uninitiated, in the "Terminator" mythology's future, the computer system Skynet declares war on humans and annihilates billions. John Connor leads a human army fighting a winning war against the artificial intelligence.

So Skynet creates the cyborg Terminators and sends them back in time to change history, first by attempting to kill Sarah (in "Terminator") and then by killing John (in "Terminator 2").

(All of this is made clear enough in the series that you don't have to have seen any of the movies.)

Lena Headey ("300") takes over the role of Sarah played by Linda Hamilton in the first two movies; Thomas Dekker ("Heroes") stars as John (played by Edward Furlong in "T2" and Nick Stahl in "T3").

"This is a story of two people (and) you want to find out what's going to happen," said David Nutter, who directed the pilot. "How is John Connor going to grow up? How is Sarah Connor going to take care of him? This is a mother-and-son show. This is a show that we can all very much relate to."