Continuum the new tv series!

[pork3]

While, I've certainly watched worse shows on television, Continuum has a long way to go before I'll call it a good show.

Right now, I'll settle for the fact that it's not a bad show.

Hopefully it doesn't trend towards bad, as this episode was average to borderline bad.

Nothing about this episode grabbed me, and I'm apprehensive about this show turning into some hybrid of a contemporary cop/antiterrorist task force with sprinkles of sci fi elements.

-Jamman

 

[Guy Gardener]

How else are you supposed to say Timecopchick but classy?

I listened to the opening credits while checking the consistency of the episode format, and I noticed something wrong with the monologue during the opening credits.

They're lying to us.

She's lying to us.

Lying to us just like exactly how the same Battlestar Galactica lied to us.

"They have a plan"

They have a plan?

Fuck you, there is no plan.

Unless we're back to Buffy vs. Glory?

"Your great evil master plan is that you want to go home?"

Episode one, we find out it's an accident and that they can't go home. Episode 2, despite making serious changes, a litter of dead bodies and leaving behind at least 2 time travellers to make yet more scrutiable changes for the next 65 years, the "terrorists" still try to quantum leap upstream anyway even though the future might be in some serious flux.

Master Braytak might have a plan, but these deushwads are just smoke and noise.

There's no way Tony is dead if his name is still being posted in the opening credits.

But I'm supposed to think that they have a plan?

Fuck you Continuum.

Methinks the voice over was copy written by a spin doctors selling a formula.

Timecopchick.

The writers room has their own agenda.

Timecopchick with depth.

Too many chefs.

Don't get me wrong.

I usually get turned on when a woman lies to me.

But I've been to this rodeo before.

And it chaffs.

 

[Derishton]

I watched both borderline bad episodes. Can anyone explain what the superbad terrorists are back in time to do? Because it looks like they came back with a plan to change the future, and that plan is basically go back to the future while blowing up a power plant. When that didn't work, they blow up a super-collider. My favorite part was the need to go to the professor's wife to figure out that the terrorists wanted him for access to the big power machine. What the hell else would they want him for? To order orange frappacinos, since "orange" is extinct in 2077?

 

[Guy Gardener]

They fucked up.

The terrorists were only supposed to go back in time 6 years.

The bald black guy with glasses explained this in the pilot.

However.

Their leader, played by Stargate's Tony Almendola, didn't arrive with the core of the cell.

They think he's dead.

Part of the fuck up.

But it's more than possible, that there wasn't a fuck up.

The general just lied to his troops.

Fearless Leader is in 2012 for a reason, and he's totally under the radar cranking out the evil unopposed.

But the troops?

They don't have a plan.

They just want to go home.

No matter the cost.

 

[The Wormhole]

I watched both borderline bad episodes. Can anyone explain what the superbad terrorists are back in time to do? Because it looks like they came back with a plan to change the future, and that plan is basically go back to the future while blowing up a power plant. When that didn't work, they blow up a super-collider. My favorite part was the need to go to the professor's wife to figure out that the terrorists wanted him for access to the big power machine. What the hell else would they want him for? To order orange frappacinos, since "orange" is extinct in 2077?

The original plan was to go back six years earlier and stengthen their movement so that they aren't all arrested and sentened to death row. Instead they ended up sixty years earlier and now they're just trying to return to the future and raise a little hell before they get there.

 

[Derishton]

Oooohhhh!!! That makes sense of Kellogg's comments (his plot looks more interesting than the rest). Okay, that just leaves clunky exposition and the unfortunately repeated line "You mean I get TWO tuck-ins?" to cringe at.

 

[Christopher]

I noticed Tony Amendola was listed in the credits. Why? While I guess it's possible the speculation that he ended up at another time mihgt turn out to be true, doesn't haveing him listed at the beginning of each episode kind of ruin whatever surprise they might be trying to build?

Credits are about money. If an actor gets credited in the main titles for an episode, that means he gets paid for that episode and gets residuals from its reruns and home-video sales, whether he appears in the episode or not. (People credited in the end titles get paid for the episode but don't get residuals, or so I understand it.) If Amendola is under contract as a regular cast member, entitled to get paid for the entire season, then he gets billed as a regular cast member.

There have been some shows (like Heroes, IIRC) where only the cast members actually present in a given episode are credited for that episode; and there have been cases (like the House finale) where a featured actor's credit is held until the end to preserve the surprise of their appearance. But those are special cases, and what kind of billing an actor gets depends on what their contract specifies. Amendola's prominent enough that his agent was probably able to get a contract that got him paid for every episode, and thus billed in every episode.

Anyway, being billed as a regular doesn't necessarily guarantee your character will return. In the NBC series Awake that just ended, Michaela McManus was hired as a regular and her name appeared in the opening credits of every episode, even though she only appeared in episodes 1, 3, and 4 and then was dropped altogether. They changed their mind about the role they'd intended for the character, so they wrote her out, but McManus was still presumably under contract for the whole season, so she got credited and paid for the whole season -- which seems like a pretty nice compensation for being written out of the show so soon.

 

[cylkoth]

The original plan was to go back six years earlier and stengthen their movement so that they aren't all arrested and sentened to death row. Instead they ended up sixty years earlier and now they're just trying to return to the future and raise a little hell before they get there.

The most head scratching part of all this is the many people they're indiscriminately killing. Hey future terrorists, how do you know you didn't just kill off the one person that could have averted the draconian bent your society embraced? Or a relative? Or set off the very events that led to the corporate takeover? Dumb, very dumb.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's only 65 years back.

They know what their mums and dads look like.

You saw that art installation statue in the pilot next to Alec's building?

The bugger was chipped/fractured. Something cleaved a chunk off.

Maybe its almost safe to do anything they want, because Vancouver is going to be frakked by some really bad shit in the next 30 years before the bail out saves the world?

The damage to the statue might suggest a bomb.

Some people fear that the only thing really stopping the use of fission bombs is radioactive fallout.

In theory Fusion bombs don't produce radiation.

They can blow up cities and then move in the next day to camp out on the rubble.

 

[nickyboy]

I really enjoyed the first 2 episodes.

 

[ATimson]

Credits are about money. If an actor gets credited in the main titles for an episode, that means he gets paid for that episode and gets residuals from its reruns and home-video sales, whether he appears in the episode or not.

That must depend on the show, then, or the rules have changed in recent years. But take Babylon 5 as an example: most of the cast weren't contracted and paid for all 22 episodes (some were contracted for as few as 13), but they didn't have to change the main titles for every episode.

 

[The Wormhole]

I noticed Tony Amendola was listed in the credits. Why? While I guess it's possible the speculation that he ended up at another time mihgt turn out to be true, doesn't haveing him listed at the beginning of each episode kind of ruin whatever surprise they might be trying to build?

Credits are about money. If an actor gets credited in the main titles for an episode, that means he gets paid for that episode and gets residuals from its reruns and home-video sales, whether he appears in the episode or not. (People credited in the end titles get paid for the episode but don't get residuals, or so I understand it.) If Amendola is under contract as a regular cast member, entitled to get paid for the entire season, then he gets billed as a regular cast member.

There have been some shows (like Heroes, IIRC) where only the cast members actually present in a given episode are credited for that episode; and there have been cases (like the House finale) where a featured actor's credit is held until the end to preserve the surprise of their appearance. But those are special cases, and what kind of billing an actor gets depends on what their contract specifies. Amendola's prominent enough that his agent was probably able to get a contract that got him paid for every episode, and thus billed in every episode.

Anyway, being billed as a regular doesn't necessarily guarantee your character will return. In the NBC series Awake that just ended, Michaela McManus was hired as a regular and her name appeared in the opening credits of every episode, even though she only appeared in episodes 1, 3, and 4 and then was dropped altogether. They changed their mind about the role they'd intended for the character, so they wrote her out, but McManus was still presumably under contract for the whole season, so she got credited and paid for the whole season -- which seems like a pretty nice compensation for being written out of the show so soon.

Still, Amendola's character was in the opening five minutes of the pilot and then disappears. Is his agent that good guarantee a main cast credit for him in the whole series for a five minute stint?

I guess this is something we have to wait and see how it plays out, but I hope that if he returns they don't play it as a surprise twist. Because anyone who pays attention the the credits is going to be expecting it.

The most head scratching part of all this is the many people they're indiscriminately killing. Hey future terrorists, how do you know you didn't just kill off the one person that could have averted the draconian bent your society embraced? Or a relative? Or set off the very events that led to the corporate takeover? Dumb, very dumb.

The indiscriminate killing is simply to emphasize that they are badass. Although, I suspect they are careful enough not to kill their ancestors. Kiera was able to pull up the address of that guy's contemporary relatives in the pilot.

Of course, that just raises the question, since her outfit can provide addresses of their ancestors, why doesn't she just track them down and kill them. Of course, it's completely unethical to kill someone just because of what their great-grandchildren will do 60 years from now, but considering how much of a threat these poeple are both in the future and the present, it's an option that should at least be considered.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Changing the titles costs money.

Not a lot.

but there's a budget.

Paying the actors now, and paying the actors in the future, are not only in the hands of completely different budgets from the graphics budget of the immediate production costs but most probably different departments and even companies that might not yet exist.

"Right now people" don't give a shit about "future people" and "future people" hate the shit out of thoughtless "past people" so fucking presumptuous that they believe that are "right now people" that they fuck every thing up for the "future people" who really are the "Right now people" ad infinitum.

How come talking about the 4 dimensional economics of Hollywood sounds like a science fictional temporal cold war?

 

[Christopher]

Still, Amendola's character was in the opening five minutes of the pilot and then disappears. Is his agent that good guarantee a main cast credit for him in the whole series for a five minute stint?

Well, if he's getting regular billing, of course he'll be back. My point is simply that someone who's under contract as a regular isn't necessarily going to get his credit removed from an episode he isn't in. Lots of people think that credits are just about describing who's doing what in a production, but they're really about who gets paid what, which is why they're often rather different from reality. Whether and how a person gets credited for a particular episode depends on the particular contract they have, so there's no uniform rule.

I guess this is something we have to wait and see how it plays out, but I hope that if he returns they don't play it as a surprise twist. Because anyone who pays attention the the credits is going to be expecting it.

You'd be surprised how many people don't pay any attention to the credits. I've seen TV reporters' Q&A columns where people wrote in to ask them who played such-and-such a role on their favorite show even though the name was clearly shown in the credits every week (even back in the days when you actually had to pay for a stamp to send mail to someone). Some people just don't pay attention to written text. (Including, in my experience, most of the drivers on the freeway when you enter a construction zone with a clearly marked reduced speed limit.)

Of course, that just raises the question, since her outfit can provide addresses of their ancestors, why doesn't she just track them down and kill them. Of course, it's completely unethical to kill someone just because of what their great-grandchildren will do 60 years from now, but considering how much of a threat these poeple are both in the future and the present, it's an option that should at least be considered.

Wouldn't it be more ethical just to alter their life paths so they didn't meet their future spouses, or something?

 

[Derishton]

Wouldn't it be more ethical just to alter their life paths so they didn't meet their future spouses, or something?

Possibly, but she's not Asimov's Second Foundation. We don't know very much about how time travel works in this show, although I suspect it won't be terribly original in its rules: if that's the case, any attempts to change the past might be like small wounds which the timeline corrects as soon as and as thoroughly as it can. The parents and grandparents would meet anyways, just under different circumstances.

Besides, the show's gravest problem (and paradoxically most interesting theme) is that she's apparently a good person in the service of bad masters, while the terrorists are horrible people pursuing a good cause. Even with that set-up, Keira has happily flounced about cleaning out bank accounts and calling in police when she needs them: the terrorists killed some of those people, but Keira arranged for the victims to be there in the first place.

 

[Guy Gardener]

take a clue form the name of the series... "Continuum" not "Parallels" nor "Omniverse".

Just like the first terminator movie, this tv show is about predestination.

I liked it in the terminator TV show when people started arriving in the past form contradicting timelines, but that's not going to happen here, because we saw time carry on in the future after Kiera backstepped. She hadn't destroyed or changed the future and we've known this since the pilot, even if she doesn't.

 

[The Wormhole]

Of course, that just raises the question, since her outfit can provide addresses of their ancestors, why doesn't she just track them down and kill them. Of course, it's completely unethical to kill someone just because of what their great-grandchildren will do 60 years from now, but considering how much of a threat these poeple are both in the future and the present, it's an option that should at least be considered.

Wouldn't it be more ethical just to alter their life paths so they didn't meet their future spouses, or something?

Good idea. My point was that Kiera has knowledge to essentially prevent these people from being born, which she threatened to do do that guy in the pilot. Whether she kills them, manipulates them into not meeting their spouses, or manipulates a divorce if they're already married, or makes them sterile or whatever, it's an option that's open to her. Likely a last resort option, but an option all the same.

Of course, it is interesting that they all seem to be from the British Columbia and have ancestry in the BC area going back 60 years. While not implausible, you'd think 60 years is long enough that at least one of them would have had their ancestors somewhere outside the province in modern day.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They're Nationalists who believe in the power of the people to govern themselves not the global oligarchs of a profit motivated meritocracy...

Racists paramilitary survivalist nutjobs are usually at least third generation who believe that local people are more important than foreigners over the...

Since when did Canada have a President?

The terrorist that wanted to stay said that the president stuck it to the corporations.

Canada has a Prime minister.

A Canadian wouldn't call the US President "the" President.

 

[Derishton]

The first episode established that North America was a corporate-controlled union, so they're likely to think of Canada as part of that union (as it is for themselves in their own time).

 

[Guy Gardener]

it's just a question of when Canada and the US reintegrated?

Was there a war of the Americas during those dark times?

Usually wars don't bankrupt both sides.

Then again in the old days, the winning army would just rape the civilians take everything not nailed down and go home...

The civilized world is too touchy feely to win a war guilt free.

So Canada and America hammered the shit out of each other, maybe something happened to the English Royal family, and then went for a hand out to Pepsi and Time Warner Brothers AOL afraid that all those soldiers would say fuck it and carve out their own little empires when their paychecks bounced?

I wonder how far down the American Union extends?

Past Mexico?

past Columbia?

Past Peru?

Past Chile

Past Argentina?

All the way to the Falkland Islands which puts Britain and America squarely at odds.

But like I said, something probably happened to the British Royal family.