The title of Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles definitely captures show’s real emphasis. The Terminator character, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film series, is the hook to get people to tune in, but the real focus of the show is the character of Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), mother of the man who will one day save the world.

Taking Linda Hamilton’s depiction of the character in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and building on it, Headey makes Sarah Connor into a complex, believable character. She is strong, like Hamilton’s version, both physically and emotionally, and she is smart. She is tender toward her son, and tough toward everyone else. She is also very alone, in a way more typical of male action heroes.

Most interestingly, Sarah’s protectiveness toward her son, John, seems likely to resonate with many children, although the show does not seem pitched toward that age group.

John’s father is gone, and Sarah and he must live very frugally and are perpetually forced to move to new towns and start over, as government agents are chasing her because they think her a dangerous person. Which is precisely what she is, of course, but ony to those who endanger her son.

Like both Ripley and the alien mother creature in Aliens, Sarah Connor in this series has no greater goal in life than the protection of her child. She will do anything she must, endure anything she has to, in order to keep him safe. Like Hamilton’s version of the character, she is a female Rambo, but she is a warrior not by choice and thirst for blood or adventure, but instead for the most noble of motives: to protect her loved ones.

The missing father and struggling mother theme must of course have great resonance for today’s children, given the heavy prevalence of divorce and unmarried motherhood today. I suspect that African-American children will find the show very compelling, given the even greater prevalence of fatherless families in that demographic group.

Sarah Connor’s devotion to her son and her courage in protecting him could well provide some comfort, confidence, and appreciation among such children, as they contemplate the difficulties their own mothers confront in raising them.

But the show’s strongest emotional effect may well be on women who are divorced and raising children.

Sarah’s strength, along with that of a new T2, played by Summer Glau, suggests to women, in particular, that they can summon up the power to struggle through even the most dire of circumstances, and the fact that John will make a great difference in the world shows how fully worth the effort that struggle is.

The show is a fine example of how character is revealed in action.