Check out the cool here and now from last Friday ’s brand new episode of Continuum . We ’re midway through the final season of this clip - garble copper show , and it still has the exponent to deliver some really neat fictional character moments . But Continuum is also fall prey to telecasting ’s sorry habit when it hail to time change of location .
First off , the coolest moment , as seen above . The major subplot of “ Power Hour ” has to do with Julian , the teenager who ’s specify to grow up to be the anti - embodied terrorist leader Theseus . Julian has been freaked out ever since he find out that his succeeding ego is responsible for killing untold tenner of thousands of people in uprisings against corporate overlords like his stepbrother Alec .
And Julian tries to burn up his writings , the notable pronunciamento that put him on the track to becoming a leader . But immediately afterwards , it turns out that someone has already published the study of Theseus online — and it ’s Curtis , the ex - member of the anti - bodied group Liber8 from the futurity , teaming up with the female parent of Edouard Kagame , the future Liber8 drawing card who ’s just been born .
So Julian is kind of stuck with the words he was n’t even certain he want to drop a line . But unexpectedly , Alec , who ’s supposed to become Julian ’s arch - foeman in the dark dystopian future , tells Julian that he really liked the pronunciamento , and it was beautiful . And perchance if Alec does n’t become an evil incorporated master , then Julian wo n’t have to become a monster to fight him . It ’s a adorable moment between two eccentric who always deserved to share more sieve fourth dimension together .
The rest of the episode is OK … Kiera and Garza use invisible future superintendent - suits to get inside the hole-and-corner facility where the superintendent - soldier from the time to come are build some form of monumental equipment that seems to be a time - simple machine of some sorting . Kiera almost blow the twist up until she realizes that it could get her home — and then she makes a huge messiness trying to keep Garza from blowing it up anyway . In the result scrap , Lucas is killed .
And meanwhile , Kellogg , whose next self is the loss leader of those super - soldier in a top-notch - dingy , redundant - dystopian futurity , gets one of the superintendent - soldiers as his own personal bodyguard . He gets haul into the police place to talk to Carlos , who has nothing to pin on him , and then lounges around with his cute new bodyguard . But then Kiera shows up and say him that Lucas is dead . And she head out that if nobody can entrust Kellogg , then maybe Kellogg ca n’t trust his future ego , either .
( Which only brings to heed the question — why does Kellogg need to confide his succeeding self ? As with Future Alec , who send off Kiera and Liber8 back in time , there ’s no ground for Future Kellogg to care one way or the other . The timeline that Future Kellogg comes from is in all likelihood go at this distributor point , or shortly will be , and that succeeding version of Kellogg will never even get to jazz what becomes of his outline . Unless , of course , the hints that they can charge Kiera place mean value that they ’ve finally contrive a room to confabulate other timeline , or restore timelines that have been annul due to time change of location . )
Which brings me to the problem with time - travelling on telecasting — television is an unresolved - ended medium , where picture are fold - over . A clip - traveling movie can present a straight shut eyelet , or a single curing of brain-teaser , and then attach everything off with a bow . But a television series needs to keep telling chronicle , or expanding the same narrative outwards , week after calendar week .
Back in the day , time - travel on television was somewhat much a serial of one - offs . You had shows like Voyagers ! or classic Doctor Who , where every trip through time was a simple sojourn to history or another time or place , and then the story was over and nobody ever call back about it again . Star Trek , for most of its living , would feature random clip - travel adventures that had no lasting impingement , andthe pattern changed every single prison term .
https://gizmodo.com/6-theories-of-time-travel-in-star-trek-5238315
But today ’s television is more serialized , mean that time change of location has to work up into an on-going narration , and each trip through time has to count . That means a lot more mythos , including big mysteries like “ Who are the Freelancers ? ” which need to be bear off ( and are frequently a morsel unsatisfying when we learn the trueness . ) The characters have to keep learning Modern stuff , and layers of intrigue have to get peeled back over and over again .
And with meter - travelling , more mythos signify more time traveller , or more complicated time - paradoxes and conundrums . ( Continuum made the wise choice , early on on , to clarify that this is a population where each clock time - traveler creates a brand new timeline , so there could be no paradoxes as such . ) More mythos oft means revisiting the actual same points in time over and over again , with added layers of wackiness each time .
But another immense pitfall of time - travelling TV come from the ever - present temptation to give characters a destiny — it ’s a fashion to have prophecies , like fantasy tale , but without any scrolls or magical seer . Instead , you could have someone either travel back from the future or see the future , and come upon that one character is destined to become a dictator or a hero or whatever . This is part of how Heroes got so knot up with its future visions over prison term . There ’s an ever - present temptation to get over - invested in preventing , or fulfilling , a particular vision of the future .
( Which is why Continuum does get points for having Alec agnise he can take not to be the monster from Kiera ’s future , even if it also loses half a point for have its characters so ofttimes misunderstand the rule of clip change of location — like with poor Emily , who seems to call back that if she ’s not the female parent of Jason , Alec ’s child from an substitute timeline , then she and Alec are Not Meant To Be . That ’s just lightheaded . )
Most of all , sentence travelling in an on-going , semi - serialized tale , tends towards a risk of over - explicate or over - elaborating . Time travel is n’t a story , it ’s a plot machine , and when plot machine become more important than characters or crowing thematic theme , then they start to become excessive . I ’m actually not opposed at all to stories that are plot - driven , or all about the characters endeavor to decide a especial problem or achieve a particular goal — but a plot twist is not a plot of land .
And on the one helping hand , I ’m still enjoying Continuum — but on the other hand , I ’ve sort of given up on trying to understand the plot of ground , or what ’s really at interest at this decimal point . In retrospect , I lost the yarn of Continuum inthe scene last seasonwhere Kiera confronts the members of Liber8 with the noesis that Alec created a new timeline to preserve his dead girlfriend , and Lucas spends five transactions clutching his headway and break down “ WHAT ? ? ? ! ” . At this point , I ’m not indisputable who the Traveler is , or what Curtis ’ scheme is , or whether Future Kellogg can realistically have any plan for the world of 2015 that even make any signified . It ’s all sort of a muddle , and the steering wheel - within - wheels - within - cycle matter has become just sort of a spinning blur . What ’s specially deplorable is that Continuum had very specific things to say about corporations and anarchists , and their view on the futurity of our world — and specially incarnate control over the law — and those ideas have been lose at this point .
The best you may say about a lot of television clip travel is that it ’s fun if you do n’t think about it too much . But when sentence change of location ( which is perhaps best suited to a closed - last , one - shot storyline in a lot of case ) gets lucubrate out into the increasingly serialized world of television , then a lot of TV ’s tendencies towards interminable layers of mystery , fate and Rube Goldberg constructions tend to make a worldly catastrophe .
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