"Sarah Connor" 1.06: A mind-bending puzzle film
"Sarah Connor" 1.06: A mind-bending puzzle film
"Dungeons and Dragons" was years ahead of its time.
Season 1 - Episode 6: “Dungeons and Dragons”
Original Airdate: February 18, 2008
Written By: Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz
Directed by: Jeffrey G. Hunt
Plot Summary: Charley does everything he can to save Derek, who begins to slip in and out of consciousness. Flashbacks to the post-apocalyptic future reveal how he became separated from his brother Kyle and ultimately arrived in the present.
Review:
My favorite movie of all time is David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I love many things about it, including its sound design and music choices, its amazing visuals, and its very specific tone, which can shift from dark serious to lightly comic in an instant. But perhaps the main reason I love it is because it was probably the first movie that made me think about what it meant.
Only after seeing it for the fourth time did I realize that the film was telling a very specific story in a non-linear and deliberately ambiguous manner. It provided many clues as to what was going on in its plot, why, and in what order, but never explicitly spelled anything out for the audience. To understand it on a narrative level, one had to scrutinize it and pay attention to little, seemingly insignificant details, a task home video made all the more enjoyable.
Mulholland Drive was thus my introduction to the “puzzle film,” which takes pleasure in messing with viewers’ heads while facilitating multiple interpretations. Think of movies like Donnie Darko, Primer, Memento, Predestination or Resolution. These pictures enjoy playing around with time, making it unclear as to what is going on or when, what is real and what isn’t, while having narrators who may not be all that reliable. A great degree of pleasure comes from realizing that all the little pieces add up to something, that you have understood the logic behind them.
In the last few years, puzzle film narration has become embraced by serial television. Shows like Mr. Robot, Westworld, and Twin Peaks: The Return are now classified as “puzzle TV,” and theories pertaining to their puzzles are now increasingly appearing on mainstream sites like Vanity Fair, rather than being confined to fan cultures.
I bring all this up, because inasmuch as “Dungeons and Dragons” is a big “mythology” episode of TSCC, it also constitutes a trippy, self-contained puzzle film and a radical stylistic departure from the series we’d seen up to now. Its combination of visuals, music, and editing perfectly encapsulates Derek Reese’s confused state of mind and his inability to distinguish between past, present, and future. At the same time, its enigmatic storyline leaves a LOT up to viewer interpretation.
Like, what’s up with the Terminators dragging around jet engines? Why are Derek and his men taken to that old abandoned house, rather than a work camp? Why is there classic music (Chopin’s Nocturne, I believe) playing downstairs? What the hell happened to Derek — and, by extension, the others — in that mysterious basement? Why do the Terminators then let the survivors go, leaving a hatchet behind for them to get free? Were Derek and his men brainwashed, maybe to carry out some mission for Skynet? But if so, why did the T-888 Vick have a mission to assassinate them?
Why was the resistance bunker Derek returns to conspicuously devoid of bodies after apparently being attacked by Skynet? Something I realized only upon revisiting the series is that the answers to pretty much every single one of these questions can be inferred from what we see on-screen in Derek’s flashbacks to the post-apocalyptic future, if you put in the time to carefully examine the details and do some detective work. (By contrast, when I first saw it, I was certain that the many unexplained plot points were mysteries meant to set up future episodes of the series.)
At the same time, you don’t have to study “Dungeons and Dragons” in-depth to truly enjoy it. For one thing, the production design and effects for the Future War scenes are amazing. Admittedly, much of the episode takes place indoors, but we do see some pretty ambitious shots here and there. Moreover, the present-day plotline, where the Connors bring Charley into the fold while doing their best to keep Derek alive, works well on its own. I especially appreciate how Charley, like Ellison, helps bring a more down-to-Earth outsider perspective to the madness of the Connors’ lives. There’s a kind of purity and sincerity to him that shines through the apocalyptic darkness. He takes all the weirdness well, even though Cameron creeps him out.
If there is a misstep to this amazing episode, it’s in the inclusion of the final flashback to the events of “Queen’s Gambit,” which explicitly reveals that Derek had indeed murdered Andy Goode. Now, I can appreciate the decision to not “drag out,” as some would put it, the mystery of Goode’s murder. Serialized mystery shows teach us that the most obvious answer is usually the wrong one, so it was easy to believe that Derek wasn’t the culprit given that he was the most likely suspect.
By resolving this question just one episode later, the series makes it into a legitimate surprise, as well as positions it as the natural end of Derek’s relationship with the older Andy/Billie Wisher. Moreover, it establishes that skipping over certain crucial story events, only to flash back to them later, is a recurring technique for the show. The problem is the scene directly clashes with the oblique storytelling that defines the rest of this episode and so takes away its sense of unity.
“Dungeons and Dragons” would’ve been better as a whole, had the scene been cut, allowing viewers to figure it out on their own or realize the truth the moment Sarah does later in the series. Nonetheless, it is a real winner and probably the most ambitious episode of the series from a narrative perspective. It’s also another sign that the series was ahead of its time. Had this episode aired six or seven years later, I’m sure it would have garnered greater critical recognition and generated a much larger amount of discussion among puzzle TV sleuths.
Grade: A-
Notes and Annotations:
While later installments, especially the immediate follow-up, “The Demon Hand,” do provide a tad more context to the circumstances of Derek’s time in the basement, they are not necessary viewing to understand what’s going on here. I have my own theory, as to what really happened to Derek in this episode and why.
TSCC without a doubt shows the influence of Lost in its interweaving of different timelines for this outing, but I would argue that Lost was more of a mystery series than a “puzzle TV” show. And Lost never had an episode as narratively dense and equivocal as “Dungeons and Dragons”.
Cameron looks legitimately creepy in the burning scene, and there is a kind of veiled threat in her interaction with Charley. I love that Sarah realizes almost immediately what Cameron is thinking about. That confrontation was great.
The show has never been able to devote enough time John and Charley’s personal relationship. We didn’t see them interact in the pilot, and here, a really good scene just between the two, with Charley noticing that John may be attracted to Cameron, was cut, apparently for time.
One thing I am unclear on — does present-day Cameron actually know about John’s parentage and hence that Derek is his uncle? John asks her what she knows about Kyle Reese and her responses indicate she doesn’t know about the biological connection. But in previous episodes, Cameron was the one coaching John about what story he should give about his father. Not only that, he told her straight up that his father was really a soldier, who died on a mission. And she was well aware that Sarah and John used “Reese” as a last name, which was a major tell for Charley. So, did Cameron not put the pieces together? Is she lying? Or is this a narrative inconsistency?
Billie Wisher is obviously a reference to writer William Wisher, who co-wrote Terminator 2: Judgement Day with James Cameron.
Charley gives Sarah Cromartie/Robert Kester’s card. I wonder what the intention was for this plot point, as it was never really followed up on, possibly due to the WGA strike cutting the show’s first season down to 9 episodes.
John decides to tell Derek that Kyle was “a hero.” As he put it himself, “My dad is always a hero. And he’s always dead.”
I love how Derek keeps trying to dig out his shackle from the floor, only to find a new floorboard installed when he comes back. This is completely uncommented on.
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