Characteristics
The factory in which Cameron is built is shown in "Heavy Metal" when the cyborg and the Connors track a shipment there of coltan — the metal from which Terminator endoskeletons are constructed.
The appearance of Cameron's outer organic covering is modeled after a captured human resistance fighter, Allison Young. The episode "Allison from Palmdale" shows the cyborg interrogating Allison in a future Skynet prison about the details of her life, the location of John Connor, and the nature of Allison's superficially innocuous bracelet pass. Once the interrogation is complete, the Terminator kills Allison and sets out to infiltrate the resistance in Allison's place to terminate John and "place his head upon a pike for all to see".
At some point, the cyborg is captured and reprogrammed by John to serve as their ally, as were the T-800s in the second and third films, and a T-600 in Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Dungeons & Dragons". Flashbacks detailing Cameron's time in that episode exhibit John's uncle, resistance fighter Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green), acting with suspicion towards Cameron. When a reprogrammed T-888 suddenly goes on a rampage before Cameron can destroy it, Cameron explains to Derek that "sometimes they go bad; no one knows why." In the episode "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today", Cameron claims to be the confidant of a lonely John Connor in the future. Jesse (Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen), a rogue time-traveling resistance fighter, confirms the pair's close relationship in "Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point" and suggests that the present-day Cameron may still be John's confidant twenty years in the future.
In the pilot episode, Cameron states she was sent to 1999 from the year 2027 by the future incarnation of John Connor to protect himself. This departure from 2027 follows those of each of the Reese brothers on similar missions, as evidenced by the cyborg's presence in his headquarters in "Dungeons & Dragons" when the Reeses both leave. A temporal engineer is sent back in time to 1963 to build and hide a time machine in a bank vault; either his/her departure was prior to Cameron's, or he/she contacted Cameron after her arrival in the past and informed of that resource, as Cameron is fully aware of its location, operation and date of installation. In the timeline from which Cameron came back from the future, John had been an orphan since 2005 when Sarah died of cancer.
Cameron arrives in the town of Red Valley, New Mexico, and enrolls as a high school student under the name "Cameron Phillips", sometime prior to the Connors' relocation to the town. In the fall semester, sometime after the Connors leave Nebraska on August 24, 1999, John enrolls in the high school and is immediately greeted by his classmate, Cameron, fully aware of his identity. Cameron saves his life from substitute teacher Mr. Cromartie (Owain Yeoman), a T-888 Terminator, using the phrase "Come with me if you want to live," the same words said to Sarah both by Kyle Reese in the first film and by the T-800 to both Connors in the second film. Chased by Cromartie, Cameron takes the Connors to a bank branch, sealing themselves in the vault, where she assembles and activates a time displacement device with their assistance, sending them forward to 2007 with the intention of preventing the creation of Skynet, thereby eliminating the threat it would later pose. Several plot lines that spanned the rest of the season were introduced in the three episodes immediately following the pilot; however, the season was cut short because of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike.
The first season's main story arc concerned the efforts of Cameron and the Connors to locate and retrieve a chess-playing computer called The Turk, which was destined to evolve into Skynet. In the second episode, "Gnothi Seauton", Cameron and Sarah obtained weapons, money and information on Skynet's creation from resistance fighters, including Derek, sent to 2007 from Cameron's time. This information led Sarah to the man responsible for the computer's creation, Andy Goode (Brendan Hines), in the following episode. Two episodes later, Andy was killed, The Turk was stolen and, in a story arc that encompassed the second half of the season, Cameron worked with Sarah, John and Derek to acquire it from a man named Margos Sarkissian (James Urbaniak). However, Sarkissian managed to catch Cameron in a car bomb, as part of the season finale's cliffhanger.
Two additional plot lines are also developed over the course of the season. In the fourth episode, "Heavy Metal", Cameron discovered that Cromartie (now portrayed by Garret Dillahunt) continued to pursue John after the events of the pilot; several episodes later, Cameron identified Cromartie posing as an FBI agent, unsuccessfully looking for John. The episode "Heavy Metal" also introduced a storyline concerning Cameron assembling materials involved in the construction of a Terminator; the cyborg has collected a bar of coltan — a metal used in Terminators' endoskeletons — and a computer chip from a Terminator destroyed in the episode "Queen's Gambit." It is suggested in subsequent episodes that these pieces were retained in order to effect necessary repairs.
In the second season finale, Cameron denies that exposure to Terminators and their shielded nuclear power cells cause cancer in humans, as John believes that if his mother is sick it could be from living with her for so long. Cameron states that she has internal sensors to detect radiation leakage. While rescuing Sarah from the Los Angeles County lockup, Cameron sustains heavy damage, including the loss of her left eye covering. Cameron then enters the basement of ZeiraCorp to find John Henry. The cyborg's body is subsequently found inside the room where John Henry was kept, but missing its chip; the original chip (from Cromartie) was destroyed by Sarah Connor. When John and the T-1001 give chase into the future, a character portrayed by Summer Glau is present, but it is Allison Young, and not Cameron, as Josh Friedman stated in the audio commentary to the finale episode of the show (the dog is not barking at her and she acts as a human female rather than as Cameron).
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