Despite the fact that Sarah believes she stopped the terrible future where sentient machines attempt to wipe out the human race—a future where her son is the leader of the human resistance—she fears they've stayed in one place too long. In her mind, they will never be safe.

So Sarah and a reluctant John pack up and take off, leaving her fiance without a word of explanation. He goes to the police, believing that something is terribly wrong. He soon learns how right he is when he meets James Ellison (Jones), an FBI agent who has been on Sarah's trail for a very long time.

Sarah and John settle in to a new home in Red Valley, N.M., and John starts at yet another new school. He meets a pretty girl named Cameron (Glau). She's friendly and he's drawn to her. Just as John begins to believe his new school might have possibilities, a Terminator finds him, and John barely escapes with the help of Cameron.

The Terminator captures Sarah and tries to lure John into a trap. But Cameron has been sent from the future to protect John, and she takes on the Terminator, giving John and Sarah a chance to escape.

As the trio try to figure out what their next move is, Sarah and John learn that not only are the Terminators back, but nothing has changed. The human race still faces armageddon on Judgment Day at the hands of the Skynet Missile Defense System after it goes online on April 19, 2011.

Terrified of taking on the role of the future savior of the human race, John begs his mother to stop Skynet. That plea is one Sarah cannot deny. She knows she must somehow figure out a way to stop Judgment Day, not only to save the human race, but also to save John from his destiny.

She's back

Fox's new series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles begins in the Terminator timeline after the second movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and pretends the third movie never existed. That's a great decision for more reasons than that Sarah Connor dies before movie three begins. The pilot episode turns out to be one of the best pilots of the year, creating a one-hour mini-movie worthy of the movie series. And that's no small feat.

Josh Friedman's script doesn't waste a moment getting to the action. However, it isn't at the expense of the characters. And while the pilot is a terrific action piece, the second episode, "Gnothi Seauton," actually sets up the world these characters will live in.

Friedman has promised Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles won't be just a chase series, which would indeed get old very quickly. Instead of just saving John from being assassinated so he can lead the future resistance, Sarah is determined to save the world and stop the machines at all costs. It's a good proactive direction that promises to build us a world with a nice, complex mythology.

Lena Headey does a fine job of reinventing Sarah Connor, while maintaining all the edge Linda Hamilton, the original Sarah Connor, had in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Fresh from a very different role in 300, Headey is tough and uncompromising, but she also has fragile and loving moments that lead to Sarah becoming a well-rounded character.

As for Thomas Dekker's John Connor, he does an excellent job of defining a character who never seemed to be as well-realized as he should have been in the movie series. However, it's Summer Glau who has the toughest role as she turns her mostly expressionless character into someone we care about. Glau is a lovely actress with an otherworldly quality, and it is fun to watch her toss around men three times her size.

The only complaints about the pilot are minor, such as Sarah's failure to use an alias after she moves on with John initially. That key mistake leads to lots of trouble for our heroes, and it's one she wouldn't have made. She had two years to have an alias ready to go. Aside from such minor nitpicking, and the fact that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has a really long name, this looks to be the next great action series.