CONTINUUM Gets Loopy

Episode 101 “A Stitch in Time”

It’s one of those shows where you have to buy into the original premise from the get-go — that governments can be replaced by corporations. This notion has been around at least as long as Blade Runner (and very likely before that, even), and it’s always made me shake my head in wry amusement.

Wry, I tell you.

Because fundamentally, no government is going to collapse in on itself so badly that a private sector enterprise would take its place. Any failing government is always replaced by another government — be it a puppet regime, dictatorship, socialist plutocracy, oligarchy, monarchy or republic. And that’s a little niggling thing that sticks in the back of my head watching this. If I can get over that, I may fully enjoy the show.

OK. On with it, then.

Continuum puts Rachel Nichols (looking better when she’s not green) as Kiera Cameron, a law enforcement officer known as a Protector, among the peace officers that arrest the terrorist Edouard Kagame (Tony Amendola), who’s responsible for the deaths of 30,000 people when he bombs the Corporate Congress.

Kagame and his cohorts are then sentenced to be executed, and Cameron gets tasked at the last minute to be inside the chamber with them. This sets off Cameron’s husband, and gives us a glimpse at the conspiracy that’s dangling in front of us — sure to be a key factor in this show. When the execution doesn’t go as planned — instead sending everyone back in time — Kiera gets caught up in the time bubble and gets sent back as well.

It’s a bigger time bubble than the Terminator uses, but it’s just as destructive. And it leaves Kiera dazed long enough for all of Kagame’s group to skedaddle to the four winds. So it’s sort of Time Cop. Only the cop is hotter.

Something that gets played with a bit after she accidentally makes contact with boy genius Alec Sadler, who (coincidentally) happens to be the guy who invented the communications network that Kiera and the Protectors use in the future. Convenient, yeah? He even has the ability to tap into the recording device in her head and see what she looks like as she’s standing half-naked in front of the mirror in the hotel.

So, we have the requisite “nerd in the basement who doesn’t see enough girls” scene out of the way. Please.

The rest of the episode has Kiera throwing in with the local law enforcement — pretending to be a cop from Portland, Oregon but never showing anyone a badge — and she somehow suckers convinces the locals that she’s valuable by predicting the terrorists’ every move. Frankly, I’m surprised no one took her into an interrogation room to ask her just how she knows so much about these guys, despite what she said about having tracked them in Portland.

As a pilot, it does the job. It introduces the main players and sets the stage. At times, it’s a bit sloppy on the details. But it could be that those details play into a bigger picture that we don’t have yet. I have my suspicions that Kiera’s husband is involved in this up to his eyeballs, especially considering he works for the elderly Alec Sadler. This feels like one of those plots that’s going to play out somewhere along the lines of Sadler making sure Kiera goes back because he knows she’s the only one who can stop what Kagame plans to do — start a war earlier than it happened the first time.

She just happens to get re-assigned. She just happens to get caught in the time bubble. She just happens to land in 2012. She just happens to make contact with the younger Sadler.

Too many coincidences. There had better be a plausible conspiracy brewing here.

[Official Show Web Site on Syfy]