Sci-fi fans have had a relatively lousy television season so far: The immensely popular Lost and Battlestar Galactica have both been on lengthy hiatuses, Bionic Woman turned out to be even more ridiculous than its original incarnation, and Heroes' second season was a disaster of FEMA proportions. Fortunately, Fox may have just found itself a sleeper with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Divided into two parts—Sunday's premiere and Monday's time-slot premiere—the show features Lena Heady as Sarah Connor, a mother obsessed with protecting her son, John (Thomas Dekker), who just happens to be the leader of the rebellion against evil, world-destroying machines of the future. For the uninitiated, the Terminator films' mythology is more confusing than keeping track of who has slept with who on The Young and the Restless, but the show manages to avoid a lot of exposition by jumping directly into the action. Robots, as is their wont, are hell-bent on some sweet, sweet boy-blood.

Thankfully, the series is quick to slide into a natural rhythm, focusing as it does on rich characters and high drama. Chronicles takes a page from Battlestar and uses the current spazzy U.S. political climate to illuminate its story line rather than merely relying on standard-issue robot aggression and seizure-inducing pyrotechnics (though these would be welcome at some point) to keep viewers interested.

Sure, the dialogue at times can be a bit, well, mechanical, but that has less to do with the writing talent than with an at times difficult-to-follow plot. In fact, in the midst of this lugubrious writers' strike, we may have finally found a series to hold us over until heavyweights like Lost return. We're going on record that this series is even worthy of keeping in your schedule long after the strike is over.