Continuum (US) Season 1 Discussion Thread (Spoilers)

[Guy Gardener]

Borgminister wrote:

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The heroin vaguely resembles Jodie Foster

I make careless stupid typos, but that is an awesome typo, because Heroin IS just like Jodie Foster.

[Admiral2]

Futurist stuff was cool...

Rachel Nichols is hot in a bodysuit...

But other than the "No return" clause in the time travel part, how is this show any different from "Time Trax" or "Timecop?"

[Guy Gardener]

It's new.

[Admiral2]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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It's new.

Oh, well, let's give it the friggin' Hugo then...

[Borgminister]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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I make careless stupid typos, but that is an awesome typo, because Heroin IS just like Jodie Foster.

D'oh!

[Guy Gardener]

No matter what they told their sponsors about selling new cars and cellphones, Continuum's chief audience, 14 year old boys, hadn't been born yet when Time Cop and Time Trax were relevant.

Time Cop is awful. Time Cop II is worse, but I actually enjoyed the Time Cop TV show.

Time Trax would have been a thousand times better if Mia Sara had survived the pilot (or her identical ancestor hadn't just wandered off) and taken over the show... There was an episode of Time Trax where Darian Lambert had to find and capture from the wild an endangered rare Koala that was the missing ingredient to foil a plague ravaging the future.

You know that a shit plot like that makes the worst filth from Voyager seem like War and Peace or Snow Crash.

Mia Sara was the wife from Time Cop?

Small world.

[Admiral2]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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No matter what they told their sponsors about selling new cars and cellphones, Continuum's chief audience, 14 year old boys, hadn't been born yet when Time Cop and Time Trax were relevant.

Doesn't change the fact that It's Been Done.

Time Cop is awful. Time Cop II is worse, but I actually enjoyed the Time Cop TV show.

The show's saving grace: No JCVD.

Time Trax would have been a thousand times better if Mia Sara had survived the pilot (or her identical ancestor hadn't just wandered off) and taken over the show... There was an episode of Time Trax where Darian Lambert had to find and capture from the wild an endangered rare Koala that was the missing ingredient to foil a plague ravaging the future.

You know that a shit plot like that makes the worst filth from Voyager seem like War and Peace or Snow Crash.

Time Trax was just fine as a series, and every show has one or two shit eps...VOY just seemed to have an overabundance of them.

[TheSeeker]

Hard to believe this is just premiering in the States. It feels like forever since I watched the season finale.

[Vendikarr]

Admiral2 wrote:

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Doesn't change the fact that It's Been Done.

Then you should stop reading books, watching television and going to the movies, because yes, the plots have all been done.

This show is the same as the others mentioned only in the basic description of the show concept "Future cop travels through time to capture escaped criminals."

After that, the story is all in what they do with it. And from looking at the details, the three shows mentioned are each very different.

[Christopher]

^Right. Every story's been done. Story is a framework, a foundation on which you build. It's how you build on that framework that matters. And I find Continuum to be a far more interesting, nuanced, and creative take on the "cop pursuing criminals into the past" framework than Time Trax or especially Timecop ever managed to be.

[Guy Gardener]

Looper blew chunks.

Same framework.

Criminals chasing criminals in the past.

[Christopher]

Looper was more like The Terminator crossed with Akira, along with some very original takes on things.

[jayceee]

Christopher wrote:

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Every story's been done. Story is a framework, a foundation on which you build. It's how you build on that framework that matters.

The bare bones are easy to state and outline.

These days one can spend hours and hours reading all about them, such as on web sites like tvtropes.org

Christopher wrote:

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And I find Continuum to be a far more interesting, nuanced, and creative take on the "cop pursuing criminals into the past" framework than Time Trax or especially Timecop ever managed to be.

Putting together all the bare bone tropes in a manner which holds the audiences' attention, seems to be the hard part (whether it is a tv show, movie, book, play, etc ...).

They seem to have done a good job of it in season 1 of Continuum. (There was an episode or two which I thought were clunkers).

[Guy Gardener]

Christopher wrote:

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Looper was more like The Terminator crossed with Akira, along with some very original takes on things.

They don't say it very clearly but after the Machines took over the world, and although they were losing the new war for control, until they lost that new war completely, they were the masters of the planet after a fashion and the Terminators were Skynet's Police officers who administered the law of the land which was the systematic extermination of humanity...

"Terminator" was a Time Cop chasing criminals in the past.

The T-80 in T2 was a dirty cop on the take.

Ditto with T3.

The force was rife with corruption.

[stj]

Tony Amendola's plan apparently was to get captured?
If the real attack was to take place in the past, the blowing up of the Corporate Congress wasn't necessary. Nor was it necessary to do the temporal circle jerk in the execution chamber, where guards like Kiera interfered.

I am really getting to despise the getting captured is the plan plot twist. It's just kinky, but not in a good way.

So-called terrorist organizations are not generally comprised of trained soldiers carrying out military attacks. If and when political groups using force have such soldiers and weapons, they tend to start a guerrilla war in a particular area where governmental authority is weak. Really, the more or less random nature of the assaults tend to stem from the inability to mount such attacks against authority.

Generally, as in Syria currently, military attacks on the government tend to be mounted from areas under the opposition's control. And these operations are rarely self-financed. Usually the money and a steady flow of recruits come from outsiders. Guerrilla operations with some control over the countryside may collect taxes on farmers/peasants.

The only scene in which the Liber8 "gang" seemed like something that could exist in the real world was the stepfather's political meeting.

On the plus side, the lead is fetching. Brian Markinson's character doesn't reallhy care about her skills, he just wants in her pants so badly he's hired a foreign cop without references!