seekingferret | The Luddite Spy

Title: The Luddite Spy
Recipient: Sanguinity
Vidder: Seekingferret
Music: "The Luddite Spy" by Polski Fiat
Summary: I can't deny I kissed the Luddite Spy
Notes:

The Luddite Spy from ronarfelq on Vimeo.

password: tscc

I stumbled across the song "Luddite Spy" and saw that it was only about 1:13 in length and had appropriate, ambiguously technophobic lyrics for a TSCC vid. So I set myself the challenge to see if I could assemble a vid in one night, by limiting myself to footage only from the pilot. I really like how it came out.

chaila is right, at least sometimes. TSCC sometimes just vids itself.

I think there's probably a Sarah/Cameron read on the vid. I definitely seized on the places where the episode sexualizes Cameron, and cast her as the "Luddite Spy" that the narrator kisses in a skewed attempt at irony. She does confess to being freaked out by technology in a deleted scene from the pilot, in what is from the show an equally bad attempt at irony. But John kept drifting into my shots despite the lyrics not really supporting it, and ultimately I think this is probably best understood as a Sarah-centric story about the creation of their ensemble, which is founded on the three characters' inability to trust each other. When I first watched the Pilot I quit partway, and when I rewatched it again I thought it was weak, but rewatching it from the perspective of someone who knows where the show goes, I think it is stronger than it looks, if you focus on the complex interrelation between Sarah, her son, and her son's pet Terminator. Though I remember telling sanguinity after my first watch that this was my problem with the pilot- it was too interior, too intensely focused on those three characters, and I didn't want to watch a show that was only about them. It wasn't until we got Derek and Jesse and Riley, until we saw Martin Bedell and Alison from Palmdale and Lauren Fields and all of John's future soldiers, that I bought into the show. But watching the pilot from that perspective, knowing where John needs to end up and knowing that all three of them are working from limited information and trying to survive until John can get there, works. Sarah has to be her son's human support, since she can't let him depend only on machines, but she doesn't know how to protect him without Cameron, so she allies with the devil itself, and then spends much of the second season cursing herself for that decision. Oddly, I was flipping through songs about Luddites because I wanted to more directly confront the show's flirtations with actual Luddism. Sarah virtually never touches a computer herself. She always lets John do it, because she is scared shitless of machines. So one might say, though I wasn't really intending this when I made it, that the Luddite spy isn't Cameron but Sarah's terror of technology, which sometimes betrays her and which she sometimes betrays.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I object to the concession that I am only sometimes right! I am always right, obviously, even if TSCC only sometimes vids itself. :) I didn't even notice that you'd limited this to pilot footage!

Sarah virtually never touches a computer herself. She always lets John do it, because she is scared shitless of machines.

This is actually one thing that bugs me! Not that I think it isn't logical for her character. I think it mostly is, but I also think that she would see that this is utterly irresponsible. Like when she sees Andy Goode's AI and can't understand anything about it or explain any of it to John. It just seems like a bad plan, strategically, to allow herself to remain so ignorant of technology. I can handwave it, because it is born of her fear of machines, and because she just hands that part off to John (which makes for lots of fascinating contrasts between them, of course, given their different, er, comfort levels with machines). But still! It bugs me a bit.

You can ask

sanguinity, when I first watched S1 I spammed her with all my complaints about how irresponsible Sarah is and how bad she is at obvious tactical stuff. And yes, especially as the whole narrative of the show tilts toward John being the (potential?) savior because he's the one who understands how terminators work and understands how to reprogram them, it becomes more and more glaringly dangerous that Sarah is afraid of computers.

He spammed me all through S1 with his complaints about how irresponsible Sarah is and how bad she is at tactical stuff. I was mostly extremely tolerant of his COMPLETE AND UTTER WRONGNESS IN NOT REALIZING THAT SARAH IS THE BEST THING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF BESTNESS. I hardly gritted my teeth at him AT ALL.

(And then I went and made a vid about how dysfunctionally knee-jerk flailing she is on certain topics as a direct consequence of what she has managed to survive. So perhaps he is only sometimes wrong.)

Strategy is not her thing. Keeping John alive is her thing. Teaching John to keep himself alive is her thing. Her thing pretty much begins and ends there, and her 1x01 decision to stop Skynet is a huge leap in paradigm for her. (Thank goodness for Weaver, and her ability to look for a solution that might actually be implementable. Because smash all the machines just isn't going to cut it.)

(Thank goodness for Weaver, and her ability to look for a solution that might actually be implementable. Because smash all the machines just isn't going to cut it.)

I don't think we really discussed this, because my response to the finale was mostly just !!!! flailing about in agog, but you've said things like this a few times and I'm not sure I buy what Weaver's selling. That whole John Henry isn't Skynet, he's Skynet's replacement spiel sure worked on John, but Weaver is a master manipulator and there are lots of signs that she's not in this just to end the war: Her rejection of John's offer in Jesse's timeline, her involvement in automating Serrano Point, the fact that she gives me the creeps, the way she disappears as soon as they go into the future, the fact that she deactivates Cameron.

This is one of many reasons I wish there was a season 3, but... I don't feel like we've seen all of Weaver's plan, and I don't believe that she's really the hope for an end to all of Sarah's never-ending fight.

We don't know enough to know what Weaver's selling, and it would be foolish to buy it wholesale. But "raise an emotionally secure Skynet that feels an inhibition about murder" is making a lot more sense to me than "smash all the machines." If someone has another proposal, I'm willing to discuss it.

:: the fact that she gives me the creeps ::

The show has been known to lie for emotional effect. When Ellison brings Laszlo in for questioning -- and does not yet know that he's tracking a terminator, and we do not yet know whether that's Laszlo or Cromartie -- the show plays termiator music at us, even though that's Laszlo sitting there. If she gives us the creeps, it's because the show thought it would be fun to have her give us the creeps. It's difficult to say what it means about her.

Weaver deactivates Cameron?

We haven't seen all of Weaver's plan. But I'm given more pause by John Henry haring off to the future (why? why does he think he has more leverage there? or is it FINALLY SOMEONE REALIZING THAT FIRST-HAND DATA MIGHT BE GOOD? I swear, the things people in this show will do because someone else told them a ripping good yarn) than I am by your list of uneasinesses about Weaver's behavior.

the fact that she gives me the creeps

Yeah, I slipped that one in for silly. Obviously it is not evidence in the same way the other points I mentioned are.

Weaver deactivates Cameron?

Fine, Cameron is deactivated by SOMEONE while being in Weaver's secret lab. Is that better?

But I'm given more pause by John Henry haring off to the future

Only if he wasn't sent into the future by Weaver, which we have no evidence for except that Weaver said she didn't send him. The whole final scene in the lab consists of data that can't be easily explained, plus Weaver with an explanation that is just so tailored to make John want to believe it. And as soon as they leap into the future, Weaver disappears on her own plan.

"raise an emotionally secure Skynet that feels an inhibition about murder"

I'm not sure this is clearly her goal at all. It's something she keeps getting pushed toward by Sherman and Ellison, but with Sherman she was pursuing stability, getting John Henry out of a computing glitch in any way she could, and with Ellison she was pursuing controllability, a machine that wouldn't destroy things that were still useful to her like Sherman. It's easy to rationalize John Henry without framing the narrative the way she has led Ellison to believe it.

:: Fine, Cameron is deactivated by SOMEONE while being in Weaver's secret lab. Is that better? ::

Someone who could have been Cameron, from what I can tell.

I'm not bothered by her disappearing once they're in the future: she's in an unknown future, in the middle of a resistance stronghold, and there's a dog. Deciding to be somewhere else for the moment seems reasonable, whatever her political affiliation.

However, I quite agree, we don't know what she's actually doing. NOT ENOUGH DATA, neither pro nor con.

For that matter, I don't even know what John believed himself to be doing, when he jumped into the future. All the data is too scant.

The Luddite Spy

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