Continuum (UK)
- Thread starter MacLeod
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Agreed the last Torchwood was dire. It might have worked as a 5-parter like CoE but as a 10-parter, it felt as if there was just too much padding to draw the story out. Now could that be because whilst the BBC was happy to accept a 5 part story, Starz wanted it be a 10 parter?
Perhaps if Torchwood does come back for a nother series it might be an idea to return to the episodic format if they want to go much above 5 episodes.
Perhaps if Torchwood does come back for a nother series it might be an idea to return to the episodic format if they want to go much above 5 episodes.
You can't go backwards without seeming weak.
Which is when they'll eat you alive.
Which is when they'll eat you alive.
Doctor Who used to be 13 episodesBBC keep messing around with it so now we are lucky to get 6 at a time, I miss when it was on normally for all 13 episodes...
The only slight advantage to not having 13 episodes in a straight run, is that you have to wait less time between new episodes.
I guess, though it feels like ages to me!
I'm just glad Rachel Nichols has a job and I get to watch her do it. She never seems to catch a break, that one. Wish her first series, The Inside, hadn't gotten the axe. Or that she had taken over a revamped, less-WTF Alias.
Yeah I'm a huge fan of Nichols so I'm really glad she finally has a steady TV gig. I thought Criminal Minds was gonna be it, but they got rid of her very quickly. Which, in retrospect, I'm happy about because I like Kiera Cameron a lot more than Ashley Seaver.
She used to be too skinny.
Couldn't take her serious as an action star.
Whether its ten years, or a baby, I actually find it lot more believable that she can kick my ass today than it seemed she might be able to sorta on Alias.
Couldn't take her serious as an action star.
Whether its ten years, or a baby, I actually find it lot more believable that she can kick my ass today than it seemed she might be able to sorta on Alias.
Well I'm a little late here (three times I recorded the episode and it didn't take on the Skybox for whatever reason, fourth time is the charm) but I really liked this premiere episode. Granted I went in with low expectations - last time I saw a show that blended a mindscrewy SF premise with a cop show, it was Awake.
And while Awake's cop show was a painfully generic procedural, Continuum setting up its targets as high tech super-criminals with an anti-corporate agenda gives a lot more potential weight to this plotline.
It's as subtle as a brick, and its stylishness is a bit too self-indulgently showy for its own good (the criminals striding slowly into view as conveinent pigeons fly away was a bit on the nose), but definitely a strong start.
Random thoughts: The one bit of tech that didn't seem at all plausible to me - from a design standpoint - was the gun Nichols was carrying. Why does it unfold like that? Why is that a better way to build a gun than now? I can roll with the rest of the cyberpunky technology and the input memory is a nice touch, but an unfolding gun seems to exist for the same reason flying cars exist in sci-fi: Something so utterly impractical that it immediately signals that we must be in the future.
And while Awake's cop show was a painfully generic procedural, Continuum setting up its targets as high tech super-criminals with an anti-corporate agenda gives a lot more potential weight to this plotline.
It's as subtle as a brick, and its stylishness is a bit too self-indulgently showy for its own good (the criminals striding slowly into view as conveinent pigeons fly away was a bit on the nose), but definitely a strong start.
Random thoughts: The one bit of tech that didn't seem at all plausible to me - from a design standpoint - was the gun Nichols was carrying. Why does it unfold like that? Why is that a better way to build a gun than now? I can roll with the rest of the cyberpunky technology and the input memory is a nice touch, but an unfolding gun seems to exist for the same reason flying cars exist in sci-fi: Something so utterly impractical that it immediately signals that we must be in the future.
Because it looks cool?
It only unlocks for a registered user. If an unregistered user tries to use it when it is unlocked they get fried. We saw some one get fried in an early episode.
Well obviously. It's just one of those things that look cool until you wonder what the point of it is.
And as far as the cast goes, re: Judge Death... they're getting the job done. I can buy Erik Knudsen as some socially inept technical wiz (is it just me or does he look kinda like Frankie Muniz?), I can buy Victor Webster as the male rugged cop guy probable romantic lead, and Rachel Nichols is solid as the ass-kicking future cop. They're recognizable TV types, executed pretty well.
I suppose the only weak link this episode for me cast-wise was Omari Newton, who got just a little hammy in his self-satisfied explanation to Kiera what was going on.
But again, this really was a pretty good start. It could be the best sci-fi pilot I've seen since Caprica, to be honest... not that that is a competitive field.
Most recent episode, that is, the second episode of the show:
*Between the wiz kid who developed the technology that pretty much defines the basis of Kiera's job and this week's scientist guy whose university experiment has the potental of time travel (and also, it's briefly stated, is research into faster than light potentialities) Vancouver is quite the scientific mecca so far. It's easy to see why the city is a kind of an implied focal point of the North American Union over in 2077.
*The dissenter in the group kind of has a point. If you're going to try and change the future by going back into the past, a time when corporations have significantly less power - rather than just a couple of years in the past, which seems to be the original plan the rest are sticking to - is just a better starting point for them.
*While the show hasn't really done anything with it, yet, I like the implied moral ambiguity. Corporations being malevolent organizations that curtail human liberties and act with amoral indifference is hardly a new idea, it's not even unusual in the very specific niche of Canadian science fiction televsion (it was a major plot of the earlier Canadian-South African series Charlie Jade). But the show has set up the generic evil corporations dystopia, and then has thrown all its sympathy on the side of one of a cop working essentially for that corporate agenda against the terrorists, who are our main villains so far. The show hasn't shown much promise that it's going to have particularly nuanced writing, but - assuming Kiera doesn't just Realize Corporations Are Bad But Terrorists Are Also Bad And I Will Find A Third Way - there's real potential here.
* Romantic triangle. Because. This felt like kind of the most extraneous bit of the episode; a character who would have otherwise existed just to give exposition at key moments in your usual cop show kind of way is also the third wheel of our romance spoke because uh... why not.
*Between the wiz kid who developed the technology that pretty much defines the basis of Kiera's job and this week's scientist guy whose university experiment has the potental of time travel (and also, it's briefly stated, is research into faster than light potentialities) Vancouver is quite the scientific mecca so far. It's easy to see why the city is a kind of an implied focal point of the North American Union over in 2077.
*The dissenter in the group kind of has a point. If you're going to try and change the future by going back into the past, a time when corporations have significantly less power - rather than just a couple of years in the past, which seems to be the original plan the rest are sticking to - is just a better starting point for them.
*While the show hasn't really done anything with it, yet, I like the implied moral ambiguity. Corporations being malevolent organizations that curtail human liberties and act with amoral indifference is hardly a new idea, it's not even unusual in the very specific niche of Canadian science fiction televsion (it was a major plot of the earlier Canadian-South African series Charlie Jade). But the show has set up the generic evil corporations dystopia, and then has thrown all its sympathy on the side of one of a cop working essentially for that corporate agenda against the terrorists, who are our main villains so far. The show hasn't shown much promise that it's going to have particularly nuanced writing, but - assuming Kiera doesn't just Realize Corporations Are Bad But Terrorists Are Also Bad And I Will Find A Third Way - there's real potential here.
* Romantic triangle. Because. This felt like kind of the most extraneous bit of the episode; a character who would have otherwise existed just to give exposition at key moments in your usual cop show kind of way is also the third wheel of our romance spoke because uh... why not.
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The Future is a Utopia with a price, not a dystopia with a price.
Would you rather be a wealthy citizen of Rome in 60 BC, or a some what average Russian Citizen in the 1950s?
Would you rather be a wealthy citizen of Rome in 60 BC, or a some what average Russian Citizen in the 1950s?
Every citizen has to pay for the right to have children and then those children are born with a "life debt" against their identity of millions(?? the actual sum wasn't disclosed but it's not a little number, kiera had to be a soldier for ten years to clear hers.) of dollars, and I'm assuming that interest is constantly ticking up if you even think about ignoring your lifedebt and something bad happens if you piss off your loan officer or hit some too ridiculous number in the red. The life debt is how the government is still paying off the multi multi quadtrillion (I'm making numbers up again.) financial bailout form the Corporations to dodge the world depression that saved the planet from a new dark age after the balloon went up.
Second episode not bad, I'm hoping the 'bad guys' get a bit more ambiguous cos at the moment they just all seem quite murderous--and what happened to their leader? You know, T'ealc's mentor 
Nice to see woman from SGU whose name I don't know but I think is quite cute
Nice to see woman from SGU whose name I don't know but I think is quite cute
She was always present in the series of Stargate universe... But if you downloaded the Kinosodes (WEbisodes)she had a prominent role as the town bike. The girl reeeeeeeeeallly expressed her right to diversify her catchment of simultaneous sexual partners. They were doomed. It was her coping mechanism. Funny.
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