3. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Despite having big budget effects and being shown on massive cinema screens, films are often only second place to TV when it comes to story telling. This is nothing to be ashamed of however, just a byproduct of the smaller amount of screen time they are given. On the plus side though, when some of Hollywood's best loved films are given a spin-off TV series, they have the potential to be truly epic. Potential that The Sarah Connor Chronicles only began to utilise. Originally produced between the cinematic release of Rise of the Machines and Salvation, The Sarah Connor Chronicles actually followed on from Judgement Day instead (as the series would explain, there are a whole number of different futures), and managed something that neither of the James Cameron-less sequels could, which is tell a captivating story about family. I guess this should be pretty obvious from the title, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Lena Headey does a stellar job taking over from Linda Hamilton as the mother of humanity's survival, Thomas Dekker who plays a more subdued but equally headstrong John, than T2's Edward Furlong. They are joined by the newly introduced Derek Reese (Kyle's brother and John's uncle), but it is Summer Glau who truly steals the show. Utilising James Cameron's original idea that Terminators should be infiltrators capable of blending in, over the show's two seasons we saw Glau's Cameron develop through her interactions with the Connors (or Baums as they are known to those they are hiding from, taking the name of Wizard of Oz author L. Frank). Whether it be socially when protecting John at school or learning the nuance of dance, Glau's unique model of Terminator often blurred the boundaries between cyborg and human, and the gradual exploration of robotics and emotions was just one particular aspect of the show that deserved far more attention than it would be given.