Plot
"The Turk" opens with Sarah in a room full of nuclear scientists. When she tries to kill them, to prevent a future war, they come back as Terminators. It's All Just a Dream, though. Sarah fell asleep going over information, trying to figure out why the fighters were sent back. One document, a list of Cyberdyne employees, looks promising. Sarah decides to visit the Widow Dyson, to ask if she recognizes anyone on the lists.
Cameron walks by wearing just her bra and panties. Sarah reviews the exits as John and Cameron get ready for school. At school, Cameron sets off the metal detector, and John tells the guard she has a metal plate in her head. We discover that Cameron reads dictionaries and encyclopedias at night while the Connors sleep. Someone has been vandalizing the school with paintings.
Sarah visits Terissa Dyson in the cemetery. She asks about the T-888 from T2, and Sarah tells her it's gone. After some awkward small talk, Sarah asks if she recognizes anyone from the photos, and Terissa points out Andy Goode, an intern at Cyberdyne.
The FBI, including Ellison, are cleaning up at the fighters' safe house. Ellison asks why the safe was wired into the power, and Agent Simpson gives us a drug narrative. Ellison vows to find the killers. He goes to visit Carlos, and asks why Enrique called him three times the day he died.
Cromartie breaks into a blood bank. Sarah finds Andy working at a cell phone store. Despite she and John already using cell phones in this timeline, she buys new ones. Perhaps they were disposable. Sarah, possibly playing dumb, asks what happens if she presses the numbers. Andy asks her out, and she starts getting to know him, and The Turk, the super-powerful chess computer that he is building at home.
Cromartie finds an unnamed biologist and supplies him with the formula for artificial flesh. The scientist is too overcome by the new knowledge to really take notice of the risks of the situation, and once he's helped Cromartie to cover himself in new flesh, Cromartie kills him.
Jordan, a girl at the high school, who seemed to fear that the mysterious paintings were revealing things about her sex life, throws herself to her death from the roof of the gymnasium. John attempts to save her, but Cameron forcibly holds him back so that he won't draw attention to himself. John is even more disgusted when he gets home and Sarah sides with Cameron. He angrily demands to know how he's supposed to become a hero if he has to spend all his time holding back.
Eventually, Andy reveals some deeply scary stuff to Sarah about how intelligent he believes that the Turk is becoming. She comes close to killing him, but finally sets his house on fire instead while he is out, destroying the computer.
Tropes
- Armor-Piercing Question : Terissa gets two.What do you want, Sarah? You never die, and you always want something.Does (Andy Goode) have to die now, too?
- Artifact of Doom : The Turk itself. While it begins life as a chess computer, it grows more sophisticated over the course of the series, into the AI that will eventually build Skynet.
- Artistic License : Andy calls Sarah on her cell phone as soon as she leaves the store; it takes a while for cell numbers to be activated.
- Driven to Suicide: Jordan, despite John's efforts to stop her.
- Eye Scream :
After Cromartie emerges from a literal blood bath, the scientist cuts his eyes open with an Xacto knife, revealing glowing red Terminator eyes. It's then revealed that Cromartie removed the scientist's eyes, presumably to add to his organic disguise. - For Science!: The theme of the episode, as the Manhattan Project scientists in Sarah's dream, Andy Goode, and the biologist who Cromartie doesn't have to force to help him, are all united by their apparent failure to consider the potential consequences of their actions in the cause of discovery.
- Hopeless with Tech : Sarah's combined (mild) Wounded Gazelle Gambit and actual hatred of technology.
- Ironic Echo : When Cameron tells John "Don't be a freak," it's an echo of his orders to her on the first day of school.
- Metal Detector Checkpoint: John and Cameron go to their new school after traveling from 1997 to 2007, they encounter in-school metal detectors for the first time. When Cameron inevitably sets off the alarm John claims that she has a metal plate in her head from a childhood accident. The security guard waves a handheld detector over her head and lets her go after it, apparently, confirms John's story.
- Mundane Utility : Cameron folds the laundry.
- Obligatory Joke: Cameron says how the phones need to be cleaned (re: wiped of data.) Right on cue Sarah hangs a teatowel on the Terminator's shoulder.
- Smart People Play Chess : Andy is a former computer science student who not only plays chess, but is obsessed with chess culture and is building a sophisticated chess computer.
- Take a Third Option : When her options are to kill Andy Goode or let him live (so his invention can lead to Skynet), Sarah burns his house down instead.
- The Singularity : The first of several discussions about the concept in the series.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill : Sarah sets the rule, with John to back her up, that no one dies unless she gives the order.
- What the Hell, Hero? : Sarah has moments of this, as she's contemplating what to do about Andy Good.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Cromartie kills the biologist once his flesh covering is complete.
