Discontinuum

Speaking, as I was, of shows I've lost interest in, Continuum Season 3 never really grabbed me, hence the lack of reviews. So now you know, and you don't need to worry anymore.

Continuum - 'Minute to Win It' and 'Minute Changes'

Cool. It's a thing.

Liber8 set out to enact radical change by mind-controlling corporate executives to raid their own safe deposits and reveal their companies' malfeasance. This course of action troubles Travis, who seems to be becoming the voice of positive spin for the organisation, or perhaps is just freaked out by Lucas puppeteering living humans. Kiera and Carlos stop a robbery and find a strange piece of tech, which appears to be a pan handle, but is apparently more advanced than even the Freelancers have seen before.

Meanwhile, Green Alec inherits Piron and learns that Emily was working for Escher, as well as finding out that Escher was his father. Red Alec continues to put the moves on Emily, who is confused when the two Alecs blow in such different directions. Alec discovers that her past is more than a little chequered.

Hearts and minds, but not spelling.

In 'Minute Changes' Green Alec steps up as CEO of Piron, with a little advice from Kellogg, while Red Alec lets Emily in on his secret. Kiera and Carlos investigate pro-Liber8 rallies on a university campus, which turn ugly when a security cop loses his gun and a cop opens fire into a cloud of smoke at a rally, killing a student.

Theseus is back on the scene, engaging in some sort of psychological cat and mouse with Carlos, who is a cop on the edge. This week he uncovers Betsy as the mole and voices his confusion to dead Kiera. Kiera herself is increasingly skeptical of the value of 'the system' as something worth protecting in and of itself. Even in her future flashbacks she seems softer, and I wonder if this isn't a sign of the future timeline shifting, the Kiera who will be changing as her world becomes more and more obviously a crapsack.

Continuum - 'Minute by Minute' and 'Minute Man'

Fancy meeting you here.

Season 3 of Continuum begins where 2 left off; with all of the time travelers in Freelancer cube prison apart from Alec Sadler, who has jumped back a matter of days to save Emily from the Freelancers. In short order Kiera is offered a deal; by taking himself out of the equation, Alec has basically turned the timeline she is in - dubbed the 'Red' timeline - into a doomed multiversal cul-de-sac. To restore any semblance of order, she needs to cross into the over-Sadlered 'Green' timeline and clean up the mess.

Oops.

What follows is a pretty patchwork of paradox, as Alec's attempts to save Emily's life lead first to Escher being assassinated and then to his discovery of 'Green' Kiera's corpse in his lab. This leads straight into episode 2, 'Minute Man'.

Red Alec and Red Kiera - who is not unreasonably pissed at Alec - show Green Kiera's corpse to Carlos, then start to work on fixing the royally fucked timeline. It's only after that that they learn of Escher's death, and that Kellogg planned it. Kiera uses her knowledge of Escher's identity to keep Kellogg away from Alec, but Kellogg then uses that information to hook Emily into working for him. Meanwhile Liber8 are going after the Mayor to make themselves more likable and considering how to go after Kiera without the supersuit that Alec got rid of until Garza - who was released from the Freelancer cube farm by Red Keira - shows up and tells them it's all more complicated than they think.

And that's kind of the theme of this season, to judge by the opening episodes: 'It's all more complicated than you think.' From Liber8's new touchy-feely approach and Kiera's continuing slide towards monomaniacal bitch, I wouldn't be entirely shocked to see her played as the villain for at least some of this season, and the same is true of Red Alec.

As yet, the question of how the Freelancers have dead members of Liber8 in custody has not been touched on. Maybe next week.

Continuum Season 2

Serious... but stylish.

I polished off Continuum Season 2 this week, catching me up to UK TV in general.

Following on from Season 1, Kiera's position in the VPD is shakier now, and Agent Gardiner and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) are all over her as a potential Liber8 mole, despite her being clearly too stiff and correct to ever use an 8 in place of the suffix '-ate' like that. She is protected largely by the mysterious Mr Escher, a modestly wealthy corporate head with fingers in a lot of pies, but there are new antagonists on the scene as well. The Freelancers are described as time-travelling privateers and collectors of other time travelers.

Season 2 of Continuum gets kinda dark, with Kiera's 'get the job done' attitude aligning her with the darker side of the VPD from honest cop Carlos and her drive to get home becoming more and more consuming and selfish. Alec is out on his own and being courted by Kellogg, who is determined to profit from someone he knows to be a surefire winner. He also has his own little love story, which turns out to be a set up of course, with tragic consequences, and it is a testament to Erik Knudsen's kicked-puppy expression that he pulls off this somewhat hackneyed plot twist.

I found Season 2 a somewhat uneven ride, although it does end up on a shockingly effective cliffhanger.

Continuum - Season 1

'Nice' Time-Travel Terrorist, Nasty Time-Travel Terrorist, Basically Honest Cop, Lying Time-Travel Cop, Innocent Tech-Nerd Who Grows Up to be the Chessmaster, the Lounge Lizard from Time-Travel Accounts.

Thanks to a Netflix account and a weekend of hideous blurgh, I have been catching up on some series that I missed first time out. One of these is Continuum, which is kind of like Time Trax for the arc-plot generation.

In 2077, the world - or possibly just Canada/North America - is run by a congress of representatives from the major corporations following a bail-out of the government(s). A group of terrorists demanding a return to representative government and personal liberties blow up the Congress and are sentenced to death, but dramatically escape by smuggling a small time machine into the execution chamber. Protector (police officer) Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols, which is presumably why she didn't appear in the GI Joe sequel) is caught up in the field and finds herself in 2012, along with half a dozen terrorists with knowledge and methods far ahead of their new time.

Cameron teams up with tech geek Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen,) a young man whom she knows will one day be the head of the most powerful corporation in the world and will create most of the technology she has brought back with her - a high-tech suit, a handgun that unfolds from its own handle and a multitool which is fortunately not quite as omnpotent as a sonic screwdriver. She is able to communicate with Alec through a compute in her head, and also connects with the Vancouver PD in the form of hunky Detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster). Throughout the first series her main goal is to get back to 2077 and the husband and child she has left behind.

I do not know why Tony Amendola isn't in the cast shots.

On the flip side of the coin are Liber8, lead by Edouard Kagame (Tony Amendola). Kagame represents a flawed balance between peaceful protest and violent activism. Of the remaining Liber8 members, three are more for violence and three for a more measured approach, although one of the former is killed early on and one of the latter essentially sets out on his own to profit from his future knowledge and live large. Liber8 are interesting mostly because they have valid arguments, but employ unacceptable methods (to assassinate the Corporate Congress they set off an explosive device and killed 10,000 innocents.) They are directly compared - and linked - to Alec's stepfather, a peaceful grass-roots activist, and stepbrother, who is played by the guy with the scary intense eyes who is Murphy in The 100 and so you know he's going to be trouble.

It's this measured approach that makes Continuum interesting. While Kiera is the good guy and Liber8 the bad guys, the system that Kiera defends is clearly a terrible one and many of Liber8's arguments are valid. They are also presented in a - sorry - continuum from peaceful protest to mass murder which makes it harder to draw sides, especially after an information gap leads to the death of a peaceful protester by a police sniper's bullet.

All-in-all, Continuum is an interesting series with decent action and technothrills accompanying a more than usually nuanced social position.