CONTINUUM Doesn't Waste Much Time

Episode 103 “Wasting Time”

Well, this is a bit better. We actually get some movement forward with the story, and Kiera shows that she can kick some butt. And Lexa Doig finally has something to do!

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

This week, we get three plot lines, which is ambitious for any serialized show, but Continuum manages to pull it off by making sure things don’t get too complicated. This happens to too many shows, resulting in disappointed fans at the end of the show’s run (look at Lost and Battlestar Galactica).

 

Continuum keeps it simple by setting up three ideas and keeping them easy and straightforward, while at the same time moving Kiera’s story forward in a way that keeps me watching. This time around, we have Travis dying because his super-soldier-altered body needs the human equivalent of Ketracel White, and the only way to synthesize it is with human growth hormone from the pituitary gland. This gives Lexa Doig a chance to play several aspects of Sonya Valentine: caretaker & doctor for Travis, besieged leader of LIBR8, and Black Widow sexy danger-mouse preying on the innocent men with the matching pituitary gland. Straight out of a 1950s B-movie, she’s digging out the gland with a device that leaves a cauterized hole in the back of the head.

The second plot line intersects with this first one: Kellogg playing both sides against the middle. He likes it in 2012, would be perfectly happy to sit out the war and disappear into the past to live a happy and private life. So his idea is to partner up with the Protector, all secret like, and figure out a way to get her back to her time while stopping the terrorists and leaving him to go about his business, move along.

So he seemingly sets up Kiera and Carlos by planting a pituitary patient match under the name of “Herbert George” and leading them into a trap, as he and Chen almost get the drop on Carlos, and Kiera barely scrapes by and manages to take Chen down after a rather impressive bit of fight choreography. And along the way, Kiera tags Kellogg with a tracking device.

But it’s really a trap for whom? Because Kellogg brings along Chen at Chen’s insistence because no one trusts Kellogg now, a line of thought carried over from the previous episode. Kellogg reveals to Chen that he’s setting up the Protector to prove himself worthy of respect should Travis kick off this mortal coil. Chen figures to go along to make sure Kellogg’s on the up-and-up.

So when Kiera tracks down Kellogg at the safe house (now abandoned), Kellogg reveals it was his plan all along, that she take out Chen — clearly the most dangerous and ambitious of the group. Kellogg makes the case that he delivered Chen straight to her. But did he? Was that really his plan all along? Because while it worked out for Kellogg (and Kiera, in a certain sense, since she was able to take out one of the terrorists), it leaves our heroine with a quickly cooling trail. Kellogg, y’see, was left behind sitting on a bomb because he was tagged. Something Kiera recognizes just in the nick of time because it happened to her before in 2077.

The third line involves the conspiracy nuts at the farm where Alex lives. This has yet to get developed with any degree of substance, and it’s sure to play a bigger part in Alec’s relationship with Kiera and his future as a big industrialist, but they need to get on with it.

As an added bonus, we get a hint that the writers actually get that viewers who are paying attention will start to wonder about the show logic, especially wondering how long Kiera can go before someone thinks talking to thin air isn’t normal. So she gets a bluetooth. Nice save.

All in all, some nice ‘splosions this week, and one terrorist down. And Lexa gets to actually act.

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[Official Show Web Site on Syfy]     [Previous recap: “Fast Times”]