Mondays are a light night for me in terms of TV watching. Most of the time I’d just end up not watching anything serial, or I just, play COD, or try and try to write something. That is, until I was listening to the Firewall&Iceberg podcast (a good listen for people looking for TV podcasts). One of the many shows discussed was a Canadian import called Continuum, premiering on SyFy as part of its Monday night block. Continuum is a time travel show in which terriorist travel back intime and a lowly cop is dragged back with them. So, its Canadian Power Rangers Time Force.
It’s a corporate run future in the year 2077. Twenty years prior the various corporations of the world bailed out the failing world governments and replaced them with the Corporate Congress. This new congress has high tech surveillance and all the other dictatorial toys to keep order. 2077 Vancouver, has all the makings of the dystopic future seen in the numerous films and TV shows, except it is noticeably lacking in the rain department. Surprisingly things don’t even look that bad, people seem happy a little perturbed about lacking certain civil liberties but you know “needs of the many” and stability.
The terrorist group Liber8,yes that is how it is spelled, opens “A Stitch In Time” by assassinating the 20 members of the Corporate Congress, along with 30,000 other people. Liber8 is captured and sentenced to die. Than in a flash of light the terrorists and Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) are gone. Transported back in time to 2012 Vancouver. One of the main questions in the show is how did they manage to time travel. Not much is really made of it right now, except that it happened and Kiera has to deal with living in 2012, separated by the farthest of distances from her family. Liber8 is out there planning to start their anti-corporate revolution and Kiera resolves to stop them.
She won’t be alone. Her future suit connects her to a young Alec Sadler, the suits maker and head of one of the big corporations of the futures. Along with Carlos Fonnegra(Victor Webster), a VPD detective Kiera is posing as a detective trying to stop this revolution from starting, most likely with some case of the week cop show antics thrown in.
Time travel in all its various forms across media has two basic settings. Option A, says that this is all just a loop that has already happened, nothing will change the future and Kiera is forced to go through the motions so to speak. Option B (the one Liber8 is hoping) for is that their trip back will change the future and eradicate the corporate regime. Personally I’ve never been much of a fan of Option A. It’s the sci-fi version of fate, a thing I hate.
The world of 2077 isn’t as cut and dry as it appears. On one hand the world is a dictatorship. Why shouldn’t we root for the terrorist to overthrow the regime? Liber8 dose kill 30,000 innocent people in order to take out the just twenty members of the congress. That’s a tad extreme. Our hero, Kiera is a protector, a basic policemen for the corporate man. She isn’t shown doing anything like hurting the poor or anything, except she is really quick to inject a pain drug that will only be treated once you report to booking. Both sides take extreme measures. Continuum has the potential for the exploration of some interesting moral gray areas. Of course none of it is really pondered since “A Stitch In Time” is the pilot.
Continuum has a lot of potential things to mine in the drama department. Right now the acting is kind of stiff and a bit dead from Rachel Nichols and the cast. The Liber8 members have a overly villainous bent, an over correction to make audiences dislike them. Erik Knudsen as a young Alec Sadler has potential, I liked him well enough on Jericho. Smart writing would ease any acting qualms. Right now potential is enough to entice me to stick around for 10 episodes.
C - Not great but not terrible. Interested in what they do week to week.
