After 25 years, the groundbreaking film franchise comes to the small screen in a new series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. All images © 2007 Warner Bros. Ent. Inc.

After 25 years of existing as a film franchise, this month the blockbuster Terminator mythology transitions to, of all places, the small screen in the new Fox series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (premiering Jan. 13 at 8:00 pm and concluding Jan. 14 at 9:00 pm). Starring Lena Headey as Sarah Connor and Thomas Dekker as humanity's future savior John Connor, the series puts its own spin on the post-apocalyptic, time-travel storyline created by James Cameron.

But the big question that faces this new incarnation is whether you can successfully take a billion dollar franchise, that over the course of its history literally changed the way Hollywood creates and features visual effects, and scale it down to the scope and budget of television? If you ask Jim Lima, the show's visual effects supervisor, the answer in unequivocally "Yes!"

For the last 15 years as a designer and vfx supervisor (Spider-Man, Strange Days and Taken), Lima has been learning his craft alongside such mentors as Cameron and Steven Spielbeg. Lima suggests Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the latest example of how artistry and technology are bridging what once was a chasm between film and television. "The interesting thing is that TV always uses the analogy that it's more character driven," Lima explains. "To a certain extent that is true, but what James Cameron wrote were character driven films. Josh Friedman [exec producer and screenwriter for T:SCC], took what worked brilliantly in the [film] franchise, which is this very strong character driven story, a modern mythology, if you will. And when you think of the Terminator, there are certain iconic elements and it has this ubiquitous energy to it so that people immediately identify it right away. With anything Terminator, the audience expects to see the fully realized Terminator in the environment. The audience expects to see believable time travel like it was brilliantly executed in all the films. They expect the weaponry with the same impact and effect that the plasma rifles have. The interesting thing about TV is that it truly now competes with feature film. What is demanded from TV in terms of action, pacing and visual effects is nothing less than what is demanded in a feature film. It's why feature films are going 3-D. Television keeps catching up to films with the cinematography and the acting, etc... For example, Lena Headey is a feature film actress...and the energy and vibe she brings to Sarah Connor has the gravitas and depth of a film actress. My approach to this whole thing is that this is a feature film and it is film quality, but we have to do it on an insane TV budget and schedule. So the giant mountain that I climb every day isn't that this is a cool idea that no one has seen before but we aren't downshifting from the films, but rather saying that this is part of the landscape."

VFX Supervisor Jim Lima knows that certain iconic elements are identified with Terminator, such as the fully realized Terminator, believable time travel and weaponry with the same impact of the plasma rifles.

As a self-professed "huge" fan of Cameron's Terminator films, Lima says that one of the most exciting aspects of working on the series is how it creatively strives to equal the films in all aspects. "On set and in story meetings and concept meetings between Josh and [exec producer] James Middleton and me, we were always talking about the mythology. We talked about the laws and the logic foundation established, and where we could expand it and where we should never deviate. I realized I was becoming this encyclopedic guardian of this mythology to a certain extent because I started out as a fan and now it's a dream come true that I am working on Terminator! And from my perspective, having worked with Jim [who started out as an illustrator and a designer and worked his way up to directing via visual effects supervising], I know how he thinks and I am simpatico because my approach is very similar [in terms of problem solving]. The whole thing is extremely challenging but satisfying because I love to solve the impossible problem."

And Lima says that philosophy is especially conducive to helping overcome the particular challenges on T: SCC. When it came time to start working on how to develop the visual effects for the series, Lima explains that they looked to the original films to serve as their template for the show. "We looked at everything we were doing and our model isn't so much T2, which is brilliant, but Terminator, which is one of the greatest B-movies of all time. I remember being at Jim Cameron's house years ago where he showed me the original sketches and the original one-and-a-half page treatment written for Terminator," he remembers with awe. "So basically that is our model and we said it's a brutal battering ram of a film that doesn't stop. It was done economically and even at the time in 1984, $6 million was still considered a low budget movie but Jim was able to pull off an epic scope on that budget. So that is our bible and it is Terminator all over again."