Continuum (TV series)

File:Continuum promo 2640.jpg

They're running out of time.

Continuum is a Canadian science fiction series that premiered in May 2012, which was entirely filmed in Vancouver. The first season was commissioned for ten episodes. The show stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron. Continuum is created by Simon Barry, who also acts as one of the show's Executive Producers. Currently, Continuum is only aired in the Showcase channel in Canada.

Kiera Cameron is an ordinary police officer — ordinary, that is, for the corporate-run, vaguely dystopic future of 2077 in the Vancouver District of the North American Union or NAU. She's assigned the routine job of guarding captured terrorists belonging to the Liber8 group during their very public execution. However, the group has an escape plan that involves Time Travel and Kiera is pulled along with them back to 2012.

Underground, motivated and very dangerous, the surviving Liber8 terrorists are determined to wage their war against the forces they believe will destroy the future in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia and it's up to Kiera to stop them. Luckily, she's not alone: she's quickly pulled into the orbit of Detective Carlos Fonnegra and the Vancouver Police Department, who think she's an expert on this "new street gang up from Portland," and Alec Sadler, a young tech prodigy who will shape the future Kiera and the terrorists come from.

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Tropes:

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Some of the Liber8 terrorists storm a VPD police precinct to free one of their comrades. A few officers were killed trying to stop them.
• Chekhov's Cigarette Smoking Gunman: William B. Davis appears for a few minutes as a corporate executive before Kiera is sent back in time. At the end of the pilot, in a flashback, he returns and is revealed as old Alec Sadler.
• Chekhov MIA: The Liber8 leader played by Tony Amendola, who disappears during the time jump.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Kiera's Protector uniform acts as a Bulletproof Vest, has a built in computer, can change color and its sleeves can be used as a stun gun.
• Crapsack World: The North American Union in 2077. The corporations of the day are said to have "bailed out" failed governments in the 2050s, and gained a stranglehold on power as a result.
• Cyberpunk: It has some bits of Cyberpunk, especially with the North American Union under corporate rule.
• Does This Remind You Of Anything: The NAU was created after corporations tried to "bail" out the governments in the North American countries.
  • The explosion and collapse of the Corporate Congress building in the very first scene of the pilot is reminiscent of the Twin Towers on September 11th.
• Fictional Counterpart: None here. The Vancouver Police Department is depicted as it is.
• Fish Out of Temporal Water: A lot.
• Hey, It's That Guy/Girl!:
  • Gaila became a cop! (And lost the green makeup.)
  • Rommie and Varro went and became terrorists?
  • Spec. Gage is still a Jerkass.
  • The Cigarette Smoking Man is still being mysterious and manipulative.
  • Bra'tak is involved in another rebellion, although you'd think he'd retire since he's over 160.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Kiera obviously has no recognizable jurisdiction in 2012, so she pretends to be a detective from Oregon. The police inspector in the Vancouver Police Department is naturally livid that a US cop is trying to butt in on his investigation. However, cops start dying and he does not hesitate to ask for her help. By the end of the pilot he is demanding that she stay and help them catch the killers. Thanks to Alec's hacking skills, Kiera stays with the VPD to catch the Liber8 disguised as an FBI agent.
• Letters 2 Numbers: "Liber8".
• A Million Is a Statistic: Liber8's actions are said to have caused the deaths of 30,000 or so people in an effort to bring down the comparatively small number of Corporate Congress board members. Though these numbers might be inflated by propaganda, the urban cataclysm in the first scene of the pilot cannot have had a small number of casualties (and who knows what else occurred off-screen).
• No Backwards Compatibility in the Future: Majorly averted.
• One-Man Industrial Revolution: Alec Sadler is/will, apparently, design all the major technologies being used in 2077.
• One Nation Under Copyright: The North American Union.
• Only So Many Canadian Actors: It seems so. A majority of the actors involved are Canadian-based.
  • Verges on a Production Posse — plenty of the actors are familiar faces from other Vancouver-filmed franchises like Stargate and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Only a few of them, like Roger Cross, have been involved in American-based TV shows.
• Police Are Useless: Kiera thinks so with good reason. The VPD in 2012 thinks they are dealing with a standard street gang muscling in on new territory. Instead, the Liber8 terrorists are ruthless revolutionaries who have no qualms about killing cops and leaving a high body count. Some of them seem to have military special forces training. The police are completely unprepared for this and are easily outmaneuvered.
• Present Day: Subverted. The show takes place in 2012, but the characters are from 2077.
• Red Shirt / Redshirt Army: The VPD, including the Emergency Response Team.
• Shout-Out:
  • To V for Vendetta, or at the very least Guy Fawkes Day: Liber8 leader Edouard Kagame opens the series premiere with a scene where he outlines the group's manifesto, calls for a rebellion, then blows up a large building. The date? November 5th, 2076.
• Stargate City
• SWAT Team: The VPD's ERT.
• Temporal Mutability: Discussed by Alec.
• Time Travel: Of the Set Right What Once Went Wrong variety for the Liber8 terrorists.
• Trapped in the Past: Kiera and the Liber8.
• True Companions: The Liber8 members storm a VPD precinct to free one of their own.
  • However, their hands were forced, because the one they rescued is The Engineer among their team, and is critical to the Liber8's ability to make more time jumps — which they attempt in the second episode.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The series is at least initially set in 2077, after a governmental collapse led to the rise and dominance of corporations. Thanks to Time Travel, though, this doesn't last beyond the first act of the series premiere.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Young Alec Sadler in 2012. He invented the technology that Kiera depends on in the future, so his computers are able to interface with her suit and her cybernetic implants.
  • This is briefly taken to borderline creepy levels when Alec comments on Kiera's good looks when she pauses to look in the mirror in her hotel room. She promptly demands that Alec cut the connection; to his credit, he complies.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Liber8 terrorists are fighting to take down pro-corporate governments and restore true democracy. However, they are willing to kill 30,000 people in order to assassinate the twenty corporate leaders in charge of the system. In 2012, they have no problem murdering police officers simply to obtain weapons and create a distraction.
• Xanatos Gambit: The Liber8 group pull one in the series premiere. After stealing a variety of weaponry, they raid a series of banks and Kiera thinks she's deduced that the Liber8's have used the early break-ins as a distraction and are going after the final bank that they hit. Keira and her 2012-era partner thwart the terrorists there, but when Kiera returns to the police station, she finds that the gang used the whole operation as cover to raid the precinct and retrieve their imprisoned comrade.
• You Already Changed the Past: Discussed by Alec in the pilot, and heavily implied by the ending of that episode.
• You Are Too Late: Invoked by the Liber8 leader/spokesman, Edouard Kagame, when he is arrested in the first scene of the pilot after broadcasting a speech outlining the group's manifesto. Kiera arrives with a number of officers to apprehend him, but moments later, they can only watch as a large office tower explodes in the distance.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Liber8.