Somewhere along the Continuum

A while back I wrote a post on my own site about how time travel works (and doesn’t) in fiction. It’s full of all sorts of breakdowns and spoilers so read through with caution. ButI bring it up because I love time travel. I come from a physics background and while I know that the restrictions on real world time travel are severe compared to fictional methods, I absolutely adore the thought experiments one can run through with it. I love watching and reading stories about it, extrapolating the physics of their version of time travel, of picking apart the bits where they missed an opportunity or overlooked a limitation. I love that time travel stories at their best are both hard science fiction (inherent in their acknowledgment of physical laws) and great at character studies (what can be more introspective than meditations on accepting power and reshaping the world by one’s own desire and hand?). And there’s a good time travel show on television right now.

That show is Continuum.

It’s not perfect. There are some pacing issues and the tonal shift between seasons one and two is a sharp one to say the least. But it is interesting and it’s utilizing the time travel tool very well. In the future there was a large economic collapse and this time around the corporations of the world bailed out their governments. They have since (legally) taken power of Canada where the show takes place. There is a terrorist organization called Liber8 (liberate) whose aim is to overthrow the corporations and reinstate a more democratic rule. The twist is that they use terrorist tactics (they take down a skyscraper in the pilot) while the corporations stay within orderly legal means of obtaining their goals. Right there it’s a nice set up because there’s at least something on both sides that will resonate as well as put off most people. The story follows Kiera Cameron. She’s a police officer for her government/corporation SadTech. She is part of the task force that ends up taking down most of the Liber8 members and is there at their execution. Something goes wrong (or right) and instead of being executed, Liber8 jumps back in time, accidentally taking the nearby Kiera with them. She ends up in present day Canada and, due to her cybernetic implants, makes contact with a fledgling engineer who will (possibly) grow up to found SadTech.

The setup sounds like it’s aimed at reinstating the existing future with both a SadTech employee and the founder of the company working together against Liber8. One of the beautiful things about this show is that nothing stays that simple with either plot or the time travel conceit. The founder of SadTech is not yet the man he’s supposed to become and is prematurely being confronted with consequences that, as a young man, he could never foresee. Kiera is torn between wanting to return home by way of maintaining the status quo but is also a protector. With new and advanced terrorists in our present, she also feels compelled to protect people.

This show is not afraid to have people change their minds while maintaining motives. This becomes incredibly obvious by the second season. Only a few episodes into season two and you’ll see people that have changed sides, groups that have ideological schisms and people who think they are fighting the same fight they started but now using tactics they would have eschewed before. The people in this show change and sometimes they don’t even know it. While the first season seems more like plotting to make statements the real dynamics are under the surface. It becomes clear that nearly everyone is actually fighting to win over opinions both of the public and of key individuals. It’s dark and complex and a bit cynical on every side.

And then there’s the time travel. It’s used well. There’s a twist in the finale of season one that, while I caught the events, I missed the implications of. I had been so busy focusing on the plot that I didn’t realize a large piece of what had been a mystery was revealed, and only caught it while watching through a second time. What’s really spectacular is that when certain aspects of time travel come to light it doesn’t just show how their world works. It also shows how some of the characters work.

If Person of Interest is a speculative fiction of near future thought experiment in government and individual rights then Continuum is the science fiction long term version of the same concept. It’s about to finish off the second season in one more episode if you’re following the first run Canadian broadcasting. It’s currently doing a staggered broadcast on Syfy but I have no idea where that is. If you have Netflix, I believe season one is waiting there. However you want to track it down, this show is worth getting into.