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Summer Glau, best known for her role as the uber-powerful teenaged reaver slayer, River Tam, in "Firefly" and "Serenity," is now ready to step into, or more accurately blow away, Arnold Schwarzenegger's shoes and become a Terminator.

Named in honor of "Terminator" creator James Cameron, Glau's character, Cameron, is a cybernetic organism who has come from the future to protect John Connor (Thomas Dekker) and his mother, Sarah (Lena Headey) from being murdered by other Terminators.

"The most interesting thing about playing Cameron and the fact that she is a Terminator is that the way [executive producer Josh Friedman] wrote Cameron is very delicate," Glau said in a recent interview for Comics Continuum. "Every Terminator in our story is different, and what I think is interesting is that, instead of making Cameron a more advanced machine by being able to turn into different things and or being able to meld and come back to a different form, he's going more into an emotional direction.

"Cameron doesn't feel things, but she almost can. And she can absolutely mimic human emotion. And that's been the most challenging thing for me."

There's further evidence that this is not all touchy-feely sentimental "Terminator." According to Glau, "It's very exciting and we're doing lots of different things with cars and guns and explosions and things. But it's also so much about the characters and just their lives together and their relationships. I think the way it's written is very smart and very funny, but it's also very personal."

Glau said she has also developed a "unique" chemistry with Dekker, who plays John Connor. Cameron poses as a fellow high school student, and as such, the relationship between the two will become very complex.

"She's kind of a mysterious character and so is he when he comes into this school," Glau said. "That's how I meet him -- he's a new kid in school. And their relationship is really fun. They're both a little bit different, a little bit of a loner, and they make a connection."

"Cameron, she's got a lot of surprises coming," Dekker said. "She's very human, which makes it harder on John because she's not so obviously robotic, so he's constantly in the sweep, 'I like her. I can't like her.' It's going to be a really interesting relationship with John and Cameron, that's for sure."

Glau and stunt coordinator Joel Kramer, who also worked on the "Terminator" films, talked about what it is like to do fight scenes as a Terminator. Unlike the graceful River of "Serenity," "Cameron just smashes things," Glau said.

"It's completely different, because when I was playing River, I was supposed to be a small girl, just a human girl, and so I had to learn finesse, and I had to learn how to use my body weight," she said. "But when you're a Terminator, you just break things and throw things and drive over people and use bombs and use guns."

"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" premiers for two nights on the Fox on Jan. 13 at 8 p.m. ET and Jan. 14 at 9 p.m. After that, It will move to its regular timeslot, Mondays at 8 p.m.

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