Sunday, September 27, 2015

Continuum Season 4, Episode 4: Zero Hour



Alec is all angsty over his break up and Jason tries to tell him that Emily isn’t his mother so not the woman he’s supposed to be with. Alec is angry that Jason drove Emily away and lashes out –he isn’t the man Jason remembers, he isn’t Jason’s father, that isn’t him and he doesn’t actually want to become him.

On to Lucas’s funeral with Kiera and Alec discussing the whole complexity of what Lucas was fighting for and how Kiera has swapped sides and he went from an enemy to a missed ally and the general hugeness that is the development of this show.

Brad comes to the funeral and Kiera and Brad argue – he blames her, she blames him. Kiera finally starts asking some questions about what Brad’s people are doing. He says he knows nothing – but wants the key Kiera stole and Alec now has.

Uh-huh this sounds like a terrible idea – give him the key to their tech when he doesn’t know what it does.

Kiera goes to see Carlos after yet another high tech theft. More distrust. More secrecy. They hope Alec will have more information while Alec is busy trying to patch up with Jason (and the general awkwardness of “parenting kids twice your age”). Alec wants to know who his mother is but Jason is reluctant because it’s not the time yet... it’s a whole matter of whether Alec’s destiny is fixed or not

Brad and Soren raid a blood bank to steal… blood. Still lots of distrust going round. Of course, Brad on the security camera makes Carlos angry and adds to the distrust between Kiera and Carlos. Carlos finally has a time limit for Kiera to actually come up with something in the next day. Looking at the synopsis of what Alec things the future soldiers are building (a time travel device) Alec makes it clear he also doesn’t trust Brad. But he does worry that the future soldiers have made a super weapon

Kiera confronts Brad about this but he assures her that it’s not a bomb and they totally wouldn’t do that. He does have an address of a storage facility where they were storing something unknown. Mission talk then goes on to relationship talk – all watched by Curtis.

She checks the warehouse with Carlos – inside which is a dialysis machine.

Kellogg is also getting tired of his bodyguard, Vasquez, not telling him anything and tries to seduce her. She decides to strangle him since future him had already warned her that he is hella creepy when it comes to women.


Kellogg also insists on seeing what they’re building – and Soren refuses to tell him what the device is and even pretends Marcellus is still alive. He’s deeply suspicious (you can’t con Kellogg) and he’s not following any more intructions unless he gets more

Meanwhile Alec and Jason go stalking Jason’s future mother, along with the hasty revelation that his mother died when he was a child due to being ill and he doesn’t really remember her. She’s a waitress and, despite Jason’s objections Alec decides to have lunch at her café and talk to her.

Alec meets up with Kiera and has a lot of angst about the fact his choices change the future – and he’s not paralysed by every decision having dire consequences. Which is when Curtis steps in – which he has a habit of doing whenever someone gets all time travel scared. He talks about how he comes back from the dead by moving his consciousness from on alternate reality to the other – thanks to the Traveller. We get some exposition on this guy

The Traveller is from waaaaay in the future sent back to record history without changing it. Which he then screwed up by changing the past and destroying his future. He then formed his own cult, the Freelancers, to try and stop time travel. But now he thinks he can fix the whole time line here and now – fixing time. Alec isn’t buying it so the Traveller pulls some whammy – touching his head and showing him, trapping them in a room together.

Yes, he’s used magic to have Alec meet himself – future Alec from before he invited time travel. They decide that they’ve altered the time line by meeting his future wife Amy long before he should. Oh and she didn’t die of a disease, she committed suicide to try and escape him and his corporate evilness. Which is what prompted the whole rewriting he time line in the first case. Alec is suddenly moved by this and tells his older self to definitely invent time travel and change the past, presumably banishing his doubts.

Alec returns to the presence full of confidence with their new path. First step is seeing Carlos who is really sick of all the secrecy. He also sees Jason to explain that, no, he’s not going to have a relationship with his mother because he doesn’t want to become himself. Which is all kinds of complex. But Jason has also examined the future soldier tech and has the answer

Back to Kellogg who is having Dylon dig up all the information he can about the super soldiers, which includes getting his hands on classified police files (which makes his usually very silent and non-existent conscience all sad). He insists that he needs his access with the police to be revoked since the police haven’t done it yet. Of course he doesn’t do it because he’s a terrible person.

Kellogg also learns from Vasquez that his future self is dying from kidney failure which they can’t treat in the future – suddenly all the dialysis machines et al make sense. This makes Kellogg super nervous (probably suspecting he’s going to be harvested for spare organs) and he calls Kiera appealing for help and offering her time travel in exchange.

Brad has another tense talk with Soren and he finally reveals the big plan – to build a portal. They’re going to bring back the people from the dystopian future to the present. Including his sister and her children.

So when he confronts Kiera, both of them have had enough and Brad sums it up with “maybe we don’t want the same things any more”. He promises her that their plan is awesome and she needs to not interfere – but refuses to tell her what the plan is

But Carlos has followed Kiera (thanks to Alec) and points a gun at Brad. Kiera distracts Carlos – because she needs Brad to get home.

Carlos, Kiera and Alec gather to finally share information: Jason knows they want to make a portal and Alec tells them – and why they need to build a portal in that location. Though Kiera has heard them stealing blood and medicine and decides that this is an invasion. Oh and they can use the portal to send Kiera home.






Alec and Jason are… difficult but I like the difficulty of it. Their age difference yet the parental element – it’s yet another complicated relationship from Continuum. I also loved Alec’s speech about the pressure of time travel – of being so blatantly confronted by the epic consequences of your actions.

Which is part of why Brad and Kiera is so annoying because it came out of nowhere and has no foundation. I don’t believe it, it hasn’t been established for me, there isn’t sufficient chemistry there… but this relationship is now the cornerstone of the show. All the conflict that most of the characters are involved in at least touches the future soldiers and the whole storyline of dealing with those soldiers keeps running aground on Kiera and Brad’s unsold relationship. But from that other relationships are breaking and I still don’t buy Brad and Kiera as being close enough or important enough that Kiera would value this over any other relationship.


And looo the Traveller has broke the world – we’ve gone from sci-fi to weird weird woo-woo. Worse,   think this may be the answer to my question in the beginning of the season – how do they wrap up all the storylines in the last season. Answer? Woo-woo.