Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Sarah Connor on Chess

The latest Channel 9 series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles makes extensive use of chess in its story lines. For instance, the third episode featured "The Turk", while the fifth one, on air just a few moments ago, was named after my current favourite opening "Queen's Gambit".

During the closing stages of tonight's episode, our central character, Sarah, delivers the following monologue:

If there is a flaw in chess as a game of war, it is this. Unlike war, the rules of chess are constant, the pieces unchangeable. You will never win the heart of a rook or the mind of a knight. They are deaf to your arguments. And so be it.

The goal of a chess game is total annihilation. But, in war, even as the blood beats in your ears and you race after your enemy, there is the hope that saner minds than yours will stop you before you reach your target. In war, unlike chess, rules can be changed. Truces can be called. The greatest of enemies can become the best of friends.

In war - there is hope.

Yeah right.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about that. There's hope in war. The things you learn from tv. Of course, in war you don't get all your pieces (i.e. friends, family) back for the next war.

--Daniel J. Andrews

DeNovoMeme said...

Good grief! "There's hope in war." The corollary is, then, that there is no hope in chess. 8-0

joel said...

Just saw a repeat of this episode & wanted to jot down an accurate copy of Sarah Connor's closing line...

What's interesting, i think, is that rules, fundamentally, can't be broken. If you break a rule to a game, you're essentially playing a different game. Laws, on the other hand, which ultimately govern war, are hypothetically based upon morals , and if a law is unjust you MUST disobey it...