There's a valid basis to the idea that the future is hard to change. Most things are the result of many interacting causes rather than a single one. Change one factor and it may alter a few details, but the flow of the current of time is not that easy to redirect. Occasionally a specific event may be pivotal enough that changing it will have a major impact, but there are plenty of other changes that would be damped out by the larger forces of history. This is a concept that's been used in science fiction for decades, going at least as far back as Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.
Temporal inertia versus temporal momentum. The Time Nun (It's religious order who worships time) said that time course corrects mostly unless you do something horrifically stupid. Here's what I'm not liking. The present fell apart and dissolved because Alec Saddler left and didn't come back. Let's just account for what the present is... Trillions of habited planets across infinite reaches of endless space for the next 80 billion years until heat death. All that crumbles because Alec doesn't build some shitty, probably quickly forgotten (Ozymandias anyone?) 21st century financial Empire. A bit of an overreaction surely? So what happens after the universe unmakes itself into a time-vacuum? (And how long would that take?) Nature abhors a vacuum. Something else is going to grow in the vacant area of non-time-space that used to house a universe we would think is familiar.
I do wonder what makes Alec so cosmically special. Perhaps future Alec's actions prevent a time travel war that destabilizes the universe.
Catherine claimed that her order (I'm the only one calling it that) was set up a thousand years ago. The present as those Canadians understand 2014, is the result of trillions of course corrections by the thousands of drones loyal to the order carrying out some generational grand plan, as well as actual time travellers blundering about like wild horses arses. If someone doesn't invent timetravel and send a beachhead back to 1066, then of course the next thousand years are going to vanish like a fart in a sauna. Although because of branch theory, if you go back far enough, the splayed multiverses billion, by billion will conjoin back into a single universe, which is possibly it's naked state before Timetravel started messing things up. But if in the 23rd century (just a guess) when Catherine's order is launched (totally a guess. Nothing to back it up.) a thousand years in the past, if every timeline, all infinite of them, each sends back a mission to the 11th century, that would mean that an infinite number of orders are going to be set up in the same point in space time on top of one another, which would destroy the universe by drowning it in too many people to fit comfortably. Bugger. This show still doesn't have enough cemented rules to lock down what is happening.
They explained that in the season premiere. It's not that he's "cosmically" special. It's that he was the one who sent Liber8 and Kiera back in time in the first place, so if his younger self removed himself from the timeline, then he'd never grow up to become the person who sent Liber8 and Kiera back, but it was the actions of Liber8 and Kiera that made it possible for Alec to remove himself from the timeline. So that sequence of events becomes an irresolvable paradox, and thus the timeline in which it happened collapses. Kiera and Liber8 can only exist in the past of a timeline where Alec Sadler has a future.
Something i am confused about...with Roger Cross' character now on TV because of Liber8, don't people in the future know about him, and can stop him preemptively? And so Liber8 has been around for 70 years? Wow...
The Police have had his picture for ages. Alec has seen Lucas a dozen times. Considering Alec "gives" Nagame (Or thesueus) the time travel device eventually, maybe the only reason he tried to kill the old Terrorist at this point was that with Kira now "thought" dead, there was no point in trying to repeat the time travel social engineering experiment. But once Kira resurfaces, and the Paradox is suddenly reunbroken, it now becomes dangerous to consider not breaking the paradox for the first time because the universe might shatter. Or the writers had a brain fart.
Lol, just been watching some episodes of Criminal Minds from 2011 and wondering, "where do I know that blonde from?" Rachel Nichols looks way different as a blonde. And now after looking on IMDB I find that she was the Orion girl from ST'09.
Not a bad episode. I wonder how long the Alec from the original timeline will be locked up? I thought it was pretty great that Liber8 actually didn't launch the attack, and only revealed the information about the chemicals. I love it when a show can surprise me like that, and manage to do it in a way that isn't totally out of character.
Black is white, up is down. The future is shite, and someone has to stop it. They've been moving in this direction since half way through last season.
Finally caught up. They have DE-scruffed Jason Okay he is still extremely nice to look at but I sure hope he ends up homeless fast because I want the scruff back.
Hmmm, it will be interesting to see where they go with Keira now. I liked the bit of back story we got for Sonya and Kagame here. Is this the first we've gotten an episode that was almost all in the future?
Yeah -- and naturally they could only afford that by setting it mostly in a low-tech enclave. Not crazy about the small-universe syndrome of Kiera just happening to end up in the same place that Kagame and Sonia were, years before she ended up following them back in time. Rather coincidental, that. And I don't quite get what led to Kiera's evident "awakening" at the end there. A flashback to something she remembered all along? I guees the idea was that Curtis's reference to her sleepwalking reminded her of the past incident and somehow let her see it in a new light. (I guess I was distracted by the fact that Curtis thinks the past tense of "sleepwalk" is "sleptwalked.")
i think you answered it by the previous paragraph -- saving money. I forget -- did they actually see each other? i'll forgive this small universe situation, since it gave some real depth to Sonia, and her role in Liber8. It also shows why Kagame is a very credible leader. (If only "Theseus" was as charismatic as Kagame)
Imagine 15 year old JFK trying to buy beer from the wholesaler? (Jeff was 15 in 1932, prohibition was repelled in 1933, but Jeff's dad was an infamous bootlegger. Nevermind.) Line from Glee...
I squealed when I saw Ryan Robbins. He looks FANTASTIC. I've been on a beard kick because of getting obsessed listening to John Grant over and over and boy does Robbins rock that beard. He looks great older and a bit thicker and.. also I'm loving the character though I suspect he will turn out to be Kiera's mortal enemy from the future. If this doesn't happen I'll be pleased. I loved the underground citizenship removal operation too.