Machines running around poking us with cattle prods, using us as slave labor and participating in a campaign to eliminate all human life from this planet.

A conspiracy? Corporate America? Dallas? NO. The future? Maybe.

The terminators are loose and Skynet is suckling from its unholy, cold, electronic mother's teat. And all that stands in the way of this final dark fate are an obsessed, near psycho, gun-nut mom; her future leader of mankind, forlorn and on-the-verge-of-whiny teenage son; and one of the most badass and sexy terminators the world has ever seen.

It's going to be a heck of a journey, and when you combine fast, movie-like action, brutal fight sequences, sharp dialogue and well-written episodes, you get Fox's “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

This one's going to burn through the geek community like napalm. It's that good.

I know, I know, the first episode of the new series was basically a retread of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” but come on, we are in the middle of a retcon here. Considering how the first two episodes went, the third movie may become obsolete by the time this series ends. Because maybe Skynet is not a virus after all. Maybe it is a computer again? Or, or maybe it is a computer virus and the events in this show will lead to John leading the resistance in a different way than how we saw in the third movie.

In that case if it is a virus — and you know IT is never around when you need them — and if John and company discover Skynet is a virus, after hours, we are all SOL. Because then our three heroes will be forced to take on the virus by themselves, and then we're doomed. Cause Norton Disk Doctor will get its sorry ass handed to it if it ever were to go up against Skynet.

I am getting way off track, but I can't help it. The show inspires this kind of demented thought scenarios within me. I am in love with the damn show just for this same reason.

Regardless, I hardly think the trio will ultimately defeat Skynet and stop the horrid future, because that would make the entire mythos of the franchise moot, but the fun is in the struggle and twists we can expect from the series.

And struggle is what John, mom and T-Hottie will be up to for the next couple of months.

Did I mention how cool Cameron Phillips, aka John's terminator protector, aka T-Hottie, is? She has that innocence of a “friendly terminator” we saw with Schwarzenegger in the last two movies combined with a lethal edge that will terminate your butt with extreme prejudice if you so much as look at John Connor wrong.

Oh me of little faith. All this time I was beginning to fear that with the writers strike in never-ending mode I would be stuck with dumb reality TV.

Seems the terminators are out to save mankind after all.