Too good to be true
Mr. Nelson was the plant manager of the Seranno Point nuclear power plant.
Season Two
Officious and overbearing, Mr. Nelson was behind the strong push to override Carl Greenway's safety concerns and reactivate the plant on schedule.
If the plant had been activated as an unsafe facility, Skynet would reap the benefits of its devastation and the millions of dead it would cause, and if it wasn't, the Resistance wouldn't get control of it in the future. Sarah gets too close when she follows Mr. Nelson, who catches her in an unauthorized space. He claims there is a radioactive spill in the next room and orders her to suit up and help clean it up. However, even in the hazard suit, she panics and gets out. A faulty scan (probably rigged) indicates she's been contaminated, so she is subjected to a decontamination wash by Nelson, presumably to curb her "unhealthy" curiosity. "Automatic for the People"
At the beginning of "Greenway"'s rampage in the facility, Nelson was called to the control room by a panicked technician reporting that Greenway had "gone nuts". Bursting into the room, he was witness to the scattered dead and wounded technicians before the Terminator struck him down and left him unconscious. "Automatic for the People"
"I bet that never happened to you before either"
Mr. Nelson was one of the survivors of the T-888's attack. Although initially hostile to and suspicious of Sarah and her snooping, his survival is thanks to her intervention. Later, Mr. Nelson also escorted Agent Ellison through the damaged areas of the facility, expressing concerns that echoed Ellison's own questions about the event. Concerned with the misrepresentation of the facts about the Greenway incident in the official report, he compiled a separate report for submission to the NRC that may cause severe complications for Weaver's plans to automate the facility in August, 2009. For this threat, he was terminated by the T-1001 outside the local plant worker hangout, The Broken Atom. "Goodbye to All That"
Behind the Scene
- Mr. Nelson was portrayed by Dean Norris, who also played the leader of the SWAT team that assaults the Cyberdyne facility in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Quotes
- Ellison: I'm familiar with the incident Reports, Mr. Nelson. I know what they say. But what I don't know is what really happened.
- Mr. Nelson: People who wrote that report are bureaucrats. You know what bureaucrats do when the facts don't fit their little checkboxes? They ignore them. Or change them. So this valve supposedly blew open because of metal fatigue. Sure. Okay. Not likely, but let's grant mother nature that one. So how in the hell did it force itself closed?
- Ellison: Okay. How strong do you have to be, to force it open and push it back?
- Mr. Nelson: On a scale of one to ten? Superman. Report says this damage was caused by a transformer explosion. You want to see what the security tapes say?
- Ellison: There are no tapes. They're gone.
- Mr. Nelson: That they are. And who took those? Carl Greenway, on the way to hanging himself? Those mystery employees who shut the reactor down?
- Ellison: You ask the same questions I would.
- Mr. Nelson: Putting together a report for the NRC. They're going to crawl up this place's ass with a wire brush. It's going to play hell with the schedule.
- Ellison: Schedule? What schedule is that?
- Mr. Nelson: August 2009, New automated system comes online. And we're back in business. That's what they say. Of course, that ain't going to happen if the feds are on a war path.
- Season Two, "Goodbye to All That"