In last night ’s episode of Continuum , the whole town of Vancouver work bonkers . It ’s basically a total political / societal nuclear meltdown , precipitated by the internetz . But really , all this madness is just various forms of future - shock , because the futurity is get onward of schedule . spoiler ahead …
The original logline for Continuum — which is still basically mentioned in the opening credit entry every week — is : “ Terrorists go back in time to change the dystopian futurity , but one cop also goes back in time to try and stop them , so the future she comes from will be preserved . ”
The show has mostly departed from that mission statement at this point . Various people are seek to bring about the corporate - overshadow hereafter that Kiera come from ahead of schedule , while the Liber8 terrorists seem to have multiple unlike goals and game plans .
In fact , the most interesting moment in last night ’s installment is when Kellog play mind game with Kiera , tell that he wants to provide people a crosscut to the future tense — meaning the corporate - rule hereafter that Kiera comes from . Kellog take that Kiera will be happy that Kellog is trying to bring about the world of 2077 ahead of schedule . But it ’s not that simple .
In fact , if Kiera still need to get home to the 2077 she comes from , then she would be just as opposed to create a corporate dystopia , ahead of time , as she would to creating a worker ’ paradise . Either means , it ’s not the “ original ” timeline , and Kiera ’s husband and son are improbable to be the same people she left behind . If pot take over the Earth before of schedule , then 2077 will look right smart different than the reading Kiera left .
( But in fact , Kiera is likely out of luck in any eccentric , at this point . assume she can only visit the 2077 of this novel timeline , then if she does jaunt onwards in time she ’ll by all odds find a earth that deliver almost no resemblance to the one she left . Just the fact that succeeding technology has been introduced and re-create in 2012 is a major shift , and that ’s just one of the massive change that are convey place , thanks to the time travelers . At this point , preserving the original timeline would be like close down the barn door after the b ’s been lay out on fire and all the horses have been thrown into the Sunday . )
Futureshock is madness
In any suit , the theme of “ Second Guess ” seems to be insanity — with Lucas Ingram as its bill youngster . Lucas has gone kookie due to temporal dislocation , and is ensure Head Kagame everywhere . Head Kagame is encouraging Lucas to chop all the figurer , using Alec ’s “ Arc ” code and some opus of time machine , and create entire chaos . electronic mail are made public , dealings lights block up working , ATMs spit out cash , etc . etc .
But there ’s no mark of Curtis , the other dead Liber8 member that Lucas was come across last week — and it ’s on-key that Curtis did seem to be frisk “ free lance ” tattoo , so maybe he ’s really back from the beat and on the freelance team now ?
In any case , Lucas ’ insanity is the electric arc that creates a wafture of insanity across the city , as multitude expose lots of nasty secrets and Vancouver croak from “ most grievous city in North America ” ( on this show , anyway ) to “ total madhouse . ”
( In fact , it turns out that Head Kagame is at least partly Julian , playing on Lucas ’ insanity and telling Lucas to “ make for the metropolis to its knees . ” How did Julian love that Lucas was going insane , and figure out what Lucas was capable of , and how to instruct him ? Your guess is as good as mine . )
The wave of cyberterror , and the ensuing realisation that nobody really has any privacy , are just one physical body of futureshock , as mass face how vulnerable the internet age actually makes them .
The rise of expectant Brother
The other bountiful manifestation of futureshock in this instalment comes from the rise of the collective police state . Now that the potbelly Piron is running the Vancouver PD ’s Liber8 taskforce , the cops feel free to violate everybody ’s civil liberties — and this time around , once everyone ’s e-mail account become public , the bull haul in anyone who ’s even express Liber8 sympathy in an e-mail .
Later , Piron ’s deal with the Vancouver PD becomes public as a termination of Lucas ’ hacks , and it ’s a vast embarrassment for Dillon , who ’s mostly starting to misplace his marbles a bit . But after stewing , Dillon decide to disregard Kiera ’s advice to do a press conference and come clean — alternatively , he doubles down in the hopes that the public indignation will move on .
And speaking of Big Brother , we also check , via a flashback to 2077 , that all of Kiera ’s storage ( and those of other future cops ) were being stored on SadTech ’s servers , going back decades . So Future Alec has the ability to spy on any of these police officers ’ memories of their personal or professional lives , going back to when they first signed on . Creepy !
By the end of the instalment , Escher , the apparent head of Piron and the mastermind of the police privatization , has also gotten wait of the only written matter of Alec ’s “ Arc ” program , thanks to his agent Emily ( who pretended to destroy it . ) Although Escher would need some time - automobile segments to make the Arc program body of work , he ’s apparently able to use it enough to spy on the entire urban center at once , while seat in his Evil Chair . ( It ’s ergonomically wicked . )
The only person who appear to stand in Escher ’s way ? Kellog , who basically wants the same things Escher does , and witness Escher as his principal rival — although , when Kellog face him , Escher does n’t even seem to regard Kellog as a worthy opponent . Kellog believe that now that Escher is in control of the most bright research into antimatter , he ’s close to being able-bodied to power a working fourth dimension machine , in addition to becoming the rich and most muscular person on Earth .
government ai n’t beanbag , whatever that imply
The other person who rises to office in this sequence is Jim Martin , who gets elected mayor despite wearing an “ I ’m crooked ” sign of the zodiac around his neck , publicly hanging around with Liber8 members , purchase lettuce wrap from a terrorist solid food truck , and having all his email conversations with Sonya leaked to the populace . ( ApparentlyRoaming Dragonwas willing to dish out with the import that its intellectual nourishment trucks are staffed by metre - traveling mass - murderers , as long as it meant some product positioning . )
When Jim Martin ’s dealings with Liber8 are exposed , he decides to try and trick Sonya and Travis into down each other , in a “ sneaky ” misdirect that feel like it come out of every romcom ever . It ’s like Jim is trying to goad Travis and Sonya into osculate and making up , by basically Parent Trapping them . ( He ’s not just the mayor of Vancouver , he ’s the Mayor of Romance . )
So Sonya and Travis do indeed kiss and make up , and bond over their share desire to obliterate the unexampled city manager .
Oh , and speak of Jim Martin — my favored scenery of the episode is probably when both Jim and Julian , who ’ve both been questioned by the police , meet in front of the elevators , and Jim tells Julian that they ’re both politicians . Julian tries to protest that they ’re nothing alike , and Jim responds that that ’s true , but only because Julian ’s social protest movement look like a temper conniption . Snap !
This episode felt as though it was sort of rushing to tie up some loose ends , like the Travis / Sonya rift and the “ Lucas is seeing matter ” plot line . Plus Julian is now formally a terrorist , putting an end to what could have been an interesting snatch of ambiguity . Oh , and Kiera now has a complete time machine — but no tycoon source for it , I guess .
But it ’s probably for the better that Alec has made some decision about whether he wants to follow in his own evil footsteps . It was never entirely clear why he thought it was a good idea to make a “ Big Brother ” computer programme to espy on the entire internet , or why he would endeavor to harness future engineering science to become all - powerful even quicker than the “ original ” Alec — who , after all , went to all this hassle to warn him against the peril of becoming all - powerful .
By grant Emily ( he thinks ) to destroy the Arc programme once and for all , Alec has ostensibly take to heart the lesson that when you invent a technology , you ’re not just responsible for what you do with it , but what everybody else does with it . ( As fight down to the real object lesson , which is “ do n’t put sensitive computer code on your phone and then let a psychopath swipe it . ” ) Learning to be responsible in the function and development of technology is , in the terminal , our best aegis against futureshock .
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