Plot
The episode begins in 1999 with Sarah Connor and her son John being captured by police outside a public library. A Terminator attacks the police convoy and kills all the cops; John flees but is shot dead by the machine. The Terminator proceeds to strangle Sarah as a nuclear explosion is seen in the background. It completely destroys the library and slowly disintegrates Sarah and the Terminator down to its endoskeleton. But it turns out to be a nightmare. Sarah wakes up with her fiancé, Charley Dixon. The date is August 24, 1999 and Sarah and John are living with Charley in West Fork, Nebraska. She tells John that they have to leave once he wakes up.
After they have fled from the house, Charley assumes that they are missing and reports this to the police. FBI agent James Ellison then tells him that his fiancée is an escaped mental patient who blew up a building and killed the noted computer genius Miles Dyson because she thought he would create a computer system that will destroy the world. Charley gives Agent Ellison Sarah's new alias, Sarah Reese, which is entered into her database file. A new terminator, who has been monitoring the FBI's database, is now informed of her new name, and begins his search.
Sarah and John move to Red Valley, New Mexico, a "hick" town, where John meets a pretty girl named Cameron Phillips at school. An 800 series Terminator comes to the school masquerading as a substitute teacher. He identifies himself as Cromartie and calls John's name under the pretense of taking attendance. When John answers, Cromartie pulls out a pistol that was hidden within his leg and tries to shoot John, but Cameron shields John from the bullets with her body, taking three hits to the chest. After John flees the school, John hides near a parking space but is found by Cromartie. Cromartie prepares to shoot him but is run over by Cameron, seconds later. Cameron is revealed to be a reprogrammed Terminator from 2027, sent back in time to protect John. She helps John escape and tells him that Skynet was activated on April 19, 2011, and launched a nuclear apocalypse two days later. John convinces Sarah that he will never be ready to lead an army against Skynet, and that she has to try again to stop it from ever being created.
John, Sarah, and Cameron first go to the Dysons' house, in Los Angeles, California, asking about who might have followed Miles' work. Cromartie attacks again, but they escape in the Dysons' car. Cameron takes the Connors to a bank. Cameron pulls out a gun and forces an employee to lock them up inside the vault. Inside, she uncovers a time displacement transporter, which had been surreptitiously built into the vault by "the engineer" sent back in time to 1963. Meanwhile, a SWAT team is preparing to raid the bank outside. After Cromartie is supposedly destroyed by an isotope-fueled weapon also built by the engineer, they use the time machine to travel from September 10, 1999 to September 2007. The time machine generates an explosion that destroys the entire bank. Because nothing can come with them, they appear in the middle of a highway naked. They steal clothes and a car from three drunk men. This news gets reported on TV as a college prank, but Charley Dixon sees the report and immediately recognizes Sarah.
Read more about this topic: Pilot (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
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