Continuum: Time & Time Again?

Canada has long been the home of some cutting-edge action productions. For over a decade it's been a recognised force to be reckoned with, managing to attract films and television shows to the likes of Vancouver (labelled 'Hollywood North') and Toronto. It's been the home of the Stargate franchise, The X-Files, X-Men, Highlander, the recently-cancelled Sanctuary, the upcoming Primeval: New World and the just-launched Continuum.

For Continuum, Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols of Criminal Minds, Alias, The Inside and G I Joe fame)  is a cop or 'Protector' in the year 2077. By that time, major cities are run by towering corporations, their streets and skies dominated by neon signs, steam, ethnic markets and monorails that are decently visualsied on a budget that won't quite stretch to Blade Runneresque proportions.  Dressed like a regimented Tomb Raider and with the enforcement credentials leaning to the Judge Dredd side of subtlety, Kiera is a caring mother and wife but her daytime job is as an unquestioning officer committed to her job. Mess with her and she'll deliver a kick to your ribs and stab you in the neck with a truth serum. She's part of the team that arrests social agitator and rebel figurehead Edouard Kagame (Stargate, The Mask of Zorro, Once Upon a Time's Tony Amendola) after his disastorous, explosive attack on uptown Vancouver.  When he and his followers are about to be summararily executed, Kiera notes something isn't right with the televised proceedings and as she attempts to stop the rebels, they are all caught in a blinding light. She awakens on a pile of rubble circa 2012, realising that the criminals are vanishing into the night. If she can't stop them, they will corrupt the timestream and prevent the future ever happening the way it did. Can she convince the local authorities (in particular Victor Webster's contemporary cop, Carlos Fonnegra) of the graveness of the situation without revealing her own origins?

Is Continuum any good?  It's a mixed bag, bursting with good intentions and ideas but sometimes having its reach exceed its grasp. The script could have done with more work -  characters thinking aloud  ("Where am I? What happened? This can't be happening!") works well on the printed page, but on the screen those should-be-interior monologues veer a bit close to creaking cliche and exposition, where more can and should  be said through a look than such a generic line of dialogue.  Plus, the basic time-travel-cop plot seems to wholly familiar territory, bringing back instantly the ideas from the heart of Time-Cop and even moreso, nineties series Time Trax, nevermind more recent fare like The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Just for familiar grins, we have the obligatory plucky boy genius Alec Sadler (Jericho's Erik Knudsen) who becomes Kiera's information hub and who may have more effect on the future than he realises. He quickly and conveniently has a major future-history importance to the plot and buys Kiera's chronologically-displaced predicament while being quietly terrified of what may await him down the line.

For all the pieces that may well have you wondering if you've fallen through a wormhole to '90s television yourself, what the show DOES have is potential. Beneath the chronological cuttie-cutters, the oh-so-topical and not-so-subtle musings on big business and their cosy relationship with government (and vice versa) there are some genuine questions and hints as to whether Kiera iseven fighting on the right side or not.  Given that much of the story is put in motion by a 2077 skyscraper being bombed to the ground - by those opposed to the ruthless(?) ruling classes of the future - there's certainly some moral quandries to play with if the series starts to play to the sympathies of their cause - of which we know very little except they don't like product-placement law enforcement. Those rebels - called Liber8, see what they did there?  - feel like a militant Occupy Vancouver moment mixed with Twelve Monkeys, seeming to have some genuine and worthy frustrations underneath it all, but lacking a cohesive plan (apart from growling a lot and talking of revolution). Familar faces Roger Cross and Lexa Doig look on with furrowed brow but have yet to walk the walk to match the talk. Given the chance to affect the future/history, we see the beginnings of their plan is to infiltrate and take-over local gangs and slowly establish an army.  For a group more than willing to inflict a 9/11 event on a city in 2077, this 2012 approach seems somewhat vague and pedestrian. When Kiera threatens to take down one of their ancestors to stop the rebels, you wonder why THEY didn't think of that sharper initiative first? 

William B Davis, best known as The X-Files' Cigarette Smoking Man, appears in the pilot though it initially feels like more of a cameo until we get to some interesting developments before the credits roll.  All in all, Continuum's pilot has the usual out-of-the gate problem of having to sketch a new canvas, rather than delivering any detailed oils for us to devour with our eyes.  So far, you want to like it more than you do, but there's certainly enough ideas there ready to be better explored as the ten-episode series develops, including the quickly brushed-over but quite important 'How exactly DID they acheive time-travel to begin with...?' doozie.

Series DO need to be given time to fully grab the audience's attention. So far Continuum is very broad strokes on a very predictable template. Once we get more promised nuance and greater attention to detail, this is a show that could develop nicely and be just as successful as its other North Hollywood counterparts... only time, as it were, will tell.