Derek Reese

Derek Reese was a male character who featured in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Biography

Early life

Derek Reese was born in 1995 and lived a mundane life in the suburbs of Los Angeles up until the advent of Judgment Day on April 21, 2011. Kyle and Derek witnessed the launch of U.S. missiles while playing baseball in their yard. Remembering a school research project about air-raid shelters and tunnels that were built in preparation for a missile attack during the Cold War, Derek took his younger brother underground for safety before the counterstrike. In the resistance, he was a First Lieutenant with the 132nd S.O.C., operational specialty Tech-Com (aka The Four Horsemen).

He grew to manhood while raising his younger brother in the post-apocalyptic world ruled by Skynet for four years until the machines abducted Kyle in the tunnels near City Hall. At some point after Kyle's abduction, Derek learned of the rebel movement against Skynet and its army of machines led by John Connor, and joined his group in hope that the newly formed Resistance would aid him to rescue Kyle. Eventually, John Connor and Martin Bedell planned an attack on Skynet's Century Workcamp (located on the ruins of Westfield Century City Shopping Centre within California State Route 2). The Reese brothers were reunited after The Resistance freed Kyle and other prisoners from there. This event also made Kyle well-known for his bravery for carrying Connor to safety. As he grew older, Kyle joined his brother's group.

Years after the event at the Century Workcamp, the war between Skynet and The Resistance broke out. One night during a battle to secure the "Kansas Bunker" from the machines after an HK breached its perimeter, Derek, who's a lieutenant within The Resistance, witnessed Martin Bedell sacrificing his life as he once again attempted to rescue Kyle, who was trapped with his unit, along with forty prisoners, including John Connor. By 2027, both brothers were active Resistance fighters living in an over-crowded underground bunker. Derek was irritated by the picture of Sarah Connor that was given to his brother by John Connor, though the picture was considered a good luck charm by Kyle.

When separated from his brother during a recon mission of tracking a Centaur Hunter-Killer, Derek and the rest of his unit, Billy Wisher and Sayles, were captured by Skynet. Derek received his bar code brand (serial number: 091201291304) and was held, along with the rest of his team, in a house prison camp chained to the floor for an uncertain number of days. Derek also met another prisoner, Timms, and the two became friends during their dire situation. During their time of captivity, the prisoners were led one by one down to a room in the basement. Those who were brought back were in an extremely weakened state. What happened to them was never made clear. Wisher was taken and when he came back he confessed to Reese that his real name was Andy Goode and that he was one of the creators of Skynet. Goode pleaded for forgiveness for his sin, but before Derek could even respond he was dragged off to the basement himself.

When the humans were mysteriously let go, Derek and his team along with Timms returned to the bunker they had lived in to find it had been attacked. Other Resistance fighters then arrived and informed them of the situation, but that Derek's brother and John Connor were away fighting a battle in Topanga Canyon for a Skynet research facility at the time. Kyle went on a secret mission with John inside the newly secured facility and he was never heard from again, while John had returned. Greatly angered by the unknown fate of his brother, Derek headed back to the new Resistance base to demand answers from John Connor. Back with the Resistance, Derek learned that John began reprogramming Terminators to help fight Skynet, something that would continue to bother Derek. The loss of his brother made Derek consider suicide, and when one of the reprogrammed cyborgs malfunctioned and reverted, Derek intended to let the cyborg kill him. Derek was instead saved by another cyborg, the one later known as Cameron Phillips.

After the incident, Derek participated in a search and rescue mission for survivors of a deadly plague on Eagle Rock Bunker (located somewhere on the ruined downtown Los Angeles). Horrified at the sight of those killed by the virus, Derek contemplated suicide again with his firearm. However, the intervention of Jesse, a female Resistance fighter, prevented his attempt. The two discovered a survivor of the disease: Sydney Fields, who is immune. Derek and Jesse later found themselves infected by the virus, but Sydney's immunity was used by a medical team to cure the virus. Derek met Sydney's older sister, Lauren Fields, while being treated. Derek also confessed to Jesse his desire to begin a relationship some time after their meeting at Eagle Rock.

Finally able to get a meeting with John Connor, Derek learns that Skynet has developed time travel capabilities. Derek witnesses the time displacement device and the plans the Resistance took from Skynet's Topanga facility. John sends Resistance members to the past in order to set up safe houses and for other missions. John offers Derek a mission to be sent back 20 years and attack the very birth of Skynet, aiding other subsequent agents, as well as to assist a young John Connor and his mother, Sarah Connor. Derek accepts, but a nod between Derek and the older Andy implies that Derek's real plan is to kill Andy Goode in the past, hoping to stop him from creating Skynet.

Protecting Connor

After arriving in 2007, the four man team (Sayles, Timms, Sumner, and Derek) set up a safe house (an apartment building within downtown Los Angeles) where they stash stolen money, diamonds, weapons, and then begin surveying possible Skynet progenitors. Derek occasionally stops at a park during his jogging routine, for hot dogs, drinks, newspapers, and watches the present versions of himself, Kyle, and the rest of his family who are not yet perished there. The team is later attacked by a T-888 ("Vick Chamberlain") after it detects them tracking its human "wife"; Barbara Chamberlain, a key Skynet contributor. Derek manages to escape, but with his entire team killed, he decides to go after Andy Goode and starts to stalk him. Derek shoots and kills Goode after a chess tournament with the Japanese <ref>episode S01E03 The Turk</ref>. Spotting Derek leaving the room where she finds a dead Andy, Sarah goes after him and the two engage in a brief brawl before the police arrive. Sarah runs off, while Derek is captured by the police.

Special Agent Ellison visits Derek in jail and tells him about blood evidence that connects Andy's murder and the murders at the safe house, but Derek refuses to tell him anything. Sarah Connor also sees Derek in jail and confronts him about killing Andy Goode, but he denies that he was the one who killed him. Sarah realizes he's Kyle Reese's brother and her son's only other living relative when he gives her his name and mentions that Kyle carried a photo of her around as a good luck charm. John, Cameron, and Sarah break Derek out of his prison transport, but not before having to fight Vick, who is hunting Derek. Cameron succeeds in disabling the Terminator with help from John and they escape, but not before Derek is shot and badly wounded.

Derek makes a full recovery from his gunshot wound thanks to the combined effort of paramedic Charley Dixon and John, who has the same blood type, and he is accepted into the Connors' household. He helps them in their fight against Skynet and participates in missions, though he is intentionally kept in the dark about John's parentage, because Sarah continues to distrust him and John's fear of rejection from his uncle. After John discovers that his mother signed off her parental rights during her stay in Pescadero State Hospital, he is tempted to tell Derek the truth of their relation as he felt abandoned by his mother and hoped his uncle, who is biologically the closest person as a father, would take him in. His experiences during the future war caused Derek to become paranoid about and completely prejudiced against the machines (including ones who were on John's side), as seen when he is openly hostile and distrustful towards Cameron, believing her to be a double agent of Skynet (though, because of Cameron's unexplained behavior, some of his suspicions may prove to be valid), and he couldn't admit that Cameron saved him back in the future. He also has an antagonistic relationship with Sarah, on their opposing approaches to their mutual mission of stopping Skynet and its machines, as well as their relative importance and concerns in John's life.

By the first season finale, Derek reveals that he knows his brother was John's father, as he sees young John having some resemblance to Kyle ("Every time I look at you, I see him.") and Sarah was the kind of woman that Kyle liked. Derek begins trying to become a father figure to his nephew on his brother's behalf. As a birthday present, he takes John to a park where they see the present-day youth versions of himself and Kyle playing baseball, and John is moved to tears at finally being able to see his biological father in the flesh and of the fatherly affection from his uncle. Afterward, Derek and John begin their relationship as uncle and nephew, but they keep Sarah in the dark about it.

Learning of the fire at the Connor residence, Derek disguises himself as a fireman and retrieves Sarkissian's hard drive from the wreckage, spotting Charley at the scene. Derek and Charley search for Sarah and John and eventually find that John has disabled a malfunctioning Cameron. Derek tries to convince John to destroy Cameron, but John resists. John eventually agrees, however, and Cameron is taken to a remote location where Derek preps Cameron for burning. Derek is shocked when John reinserts Cameron's chip and hands Cameron his gun as a sign of faith. When Cameron proves herself trustworthy again, Derek is visibly frustrated.

Days later, Charley calls John's cell phone, desperately asking for the Connors' help. After Sarah and Derek meet up with Charley, he gives them the scoop on his situation: his wife has been kidnapped by Cromartie and he needs their help to rescue her. Derek fervently disapproves of rescuing Charley's wife, suggesting that Cromartie has already killed the woman and is impersonating her voice. Regardless, Derek tells Charley to call the woman and ask her something that she and Charley would intimately know. Charley confirms his wife's identity, and she gives details on where she is being held. At the abandoned house, Derek goes around the area looking out for Cromartie while Sarah and Charley attempt to save Michelle. Derek soon discovers a cell phone tapper and a cell phone wired to a bomb inside the cell tower outside. Derek orders everyone outside just as the bomb goes off, bringing the tower down on the house. Sarah, Derek, and Charley escape unharmed, but Michelle is mortally wounded by the bomb's shrapnel. While he, the Connors, and Cameron do not attend her funeral, they do mourn her death at the dinner table.

Derek takes a job offered by General Hobbs of the United States military at Presidio Alto Military Academy to train young cadets under the alias as Lieutenant Derek Baum of US military, in an effort to protect a young Martin Bedell, who would play a role in forming The Resistance, from a T-888. Aside from Bedel's future importance, Derek attempts to save him as a way to pay his debt to the future Bedell, who would go on to save Derek's brother at the cost of his own life. Seeing Derek has high regard for Bedell and not yet knowing of the future Bedell has sacrificed, John, who has temporarily enrolled at Presidio Alto, sees young Bedell as a rival of his uncle's affection before they become friends. Derek's headstrong attitude and war stories make most of the young cadets fear him, who finds those who think of war as games offensive, and it is only John and Bedell who admire Derek.

Derek also reunites with his lover, Jesse, who has followed him without authorization from the Resistance after an incident involving one of the reprogrammed Skynet agents. She claims that she wanted to be with Derek, but underneath her hotel bed is a collection of photos suggesting that she has been stalking him and John Connor for months and that she has other motives. He also expresses a fatherly concern to Sarah over John's welfare after an incident involving one of the family's weapons, suggesting that John may have contemplated suicide to escape the violence and guilt in his life, but Sarah is unwilling to believe that her son has any problems emotionally.

In the episode "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today", he joined forces with Sarah, James Ellison, and Cameron, in a final battle to destroy Cromartie once and for all in Mexico. He later buried Cromatie's remains with John and Cameron after their successful attack. In this episode, along with "Goodbye to All That", he is shown as the family's armourer, stockpiling a variety of weapons, including armor-piercing rounds which contain powerful incendiary agents capable of destroying T-888s. Since this episode, his hostility towards Cameron seems to have faded, and he begins to accept her help and usefulness during situations that require her help.

In the episode, "Complications", Jesse kidnaps a man claimed to be a traitor who was sent back to the past. Jesse reveals to Derek that the man is Charles Fischer, a prison inmate before Judgment Day, who will subject him to a series of brutal torments for the machines in order to learn more about humans in social circles, and how to interrogate humans for information. Jesse also abducts his younger present-time self, who is shocked to discover how insane he will eventually become. Derek doesn't remember his tortures at the hands of Fischer, and after a confusing period, he believes that he comes from an alternate version of the future than Jesse, where Fischer never did torture him, therefore it's a sign of change in the future time line. Knowing his younger self's future torment from Fischer, and that the machines still rule in the alternate future, upsets Derek, but the knowledge that the future can change gives him hope and encourages him to keep trying. At one point, he is enraged and attempts to kill young Fischer in front of the elder version to save himself from those events, and for revenge, but Jesse stops him because she knows that the young Fischer is still an innocent, despite the fact that technically, he is the same person who tortured the alternate Derek. According to Jesse, the elder Fischer had mentally scarred the alternate Derek, and he vowed to find and kill him for the tortures. Even knowing that he and Jesse are together in the alternate future time line gives him the belief he and Jesse are meant to be together in any version of the future. After Jesse murders the elder Fischer, young Fischer is later arrested by the FBI for his old counterpart's crimes for his unauthorized access to the government's computer networks, which apparently secured his own fate in prison, which will be a perfect bomb shelter during Judgment Day. Under predestined time paradox, this event may create the reason why Fischer would torture the alternate Derek for his sadistic pleasure in the future, because he would blame him and Jesse for his imprisonment.

Derek discovers Jesse's deception of her stalking his nephew. Concerned for John's safety, Derek confronts Jesse to find out why, and swears that he would kill her if he had to in order to protect his brother's son. Jesse reveals that the other reason she came to the past besides wanting to be with Derek is to keep Cameron from getting close to John, because in the future, he made questionable decisions. Derek leaves but comes back later after aiding Sarah in a mission on Dakara Systems Corporation, and the couple reconciles, with Derek telling her his own secrets that John is his nephew and his concerns with Cameron as well. Jesse doesn't tell Derek that she had Riley involve herself with John for unstated reasons. While aiding Sarah at Dakara Systems, Derek is not convinced that Sarah's obsession with the three-dotted sign would lead them to anything, because he believes that they are merely fingerprints left by the dying Resistance fighter, Bloom, when he wrote John's future self's message on her basement wall. Derek is starting to question if Sarah is losing her sanity or already has, since John told his uncle of his mother's history in a mental institution on the previous episode "The Demon Hand."

Derek later attempts to protect a young Lauren Fields and her mother, Anne, who is pregnant with the unborn Sydney. Skynet has sent a T-888 to go after the Fields to prevent the Resistance from developing a cure for the biological weapon Skynet created in the future from Sydney's blood, and possibly also to attempt to eliminate Lauren, since she would serve within The Resistance in the future. Anne Fields and her husband David, are killed by the T-888, but Anne managed to give birth to Sydney before her death. Derek tells Lauren of her future importance along with her sister's. Derek invites Lauren to stay with him and Sarah, but she leaves with Sydney and goes into hiding from Skynet even when it is confirmed that Sarah destroyed the T-888, because she's aware that there will be more coming after her and her sister.

In the episode, "The Good Wound", Derek aided Sarah in covering the traces of her being hospitalized after a fight with a guard at the Desert Heat and Air Company warehouse. After he found her, Sarah finally decided to tell Derek the truth of his relation to John, but he replied that he doesn't need an explanation, implying that he already knew. On their way home, Derek and Sarah spotted a cloud of smoke where the warehouse once stood. He later arrived to Charm Acres with Sarah, John, and Cameron, hoping to find survivors of the warehouse to discover exactly what was going on there. At the end of the family's search, they were shocked to see one of Skynet's future war machines, a prototype Hunter-Killer, in the sky.

In "Today is the day Part 2", he meets Jesse at a parking lot. He has found out that Jesse killed Riley. He has been told by John Connor to let her go, but he says that he isn't John Connor, so he attempts to shoot her. It is not shown whether he kills her or not, although she has not been seen again after that episode. It is also revealed that Jesse was pregnant with his child, but miscarried during a future mission aboard her submarine. Derek never knew of the loss of his unborn child until Cameron told him on the episode "To The Lighthouse."

In the episode "Adam Raised a Cain", he is finally able to visit his brother Kyle's grave site, but all the gravestones were identical, and Sarah didn't know which one was Kyle's. Later in the episode, Derek is fatally shot in the head by a terminator while trying to help save Savannah Weaver. John silently grieves the death of his uncle, but Sarah orders the group to keep moving. At the end of the episode, Derek's cremated remains are shown being buried anonymously in the same cemetery as his brother.

In the series finale "Born to Run", John and the T-1001 travel through time to an unspecified point in the future where they are met by Derek, Allison and Kyle. John tells the group who he is, but Derek claims to have never heard of a "John Connor."

Notes

• Derek Reese was an original creation for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles where she was created by Josh Friedman with role being portrayed by actor Brian Austin Green.

Appearances

• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

External Link

• Wikipedia Entry
• Terminator Wiki Entry

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