‘Continuum’ 1.02 Episode Recap And Review: Fast Times

Dissension in the ranks and future tech today on this week’s Continuum!

To catch up those who weren’t glued to the TV last night, I present to you the recap.

So Kiera’s getting all settled in with the Vancouver Police Department and her new partner, Carlos. There’s just one problem: Kiera’s been posing as Linda Williams of the Portland Police Department. A visit from a couple of detectives from the PPD is enough to reveal that there is a Linda Williams, and she definitely isn’t Kiera. Thinking fast and relying on Alec’s amazing abilities as a hacker on a science fiction show, she gets her new friend to lay a trail to a new identity, using her thumbprint as a base. Before the Vancouver PD can find her new identity, though, Kiera has to first go through Processing.

This would be all well and good, except that Liber8 is on the move again. Kiera leaves Carlos handcuffed in an elevator and gives chase. Liber8 is taking the time travel device to the local power plant to see if the grid has enough juice to send them Back to the Future. Sadly, Vancouver Electric isn’t quite enough to get the DeLorean Sphere up to 88 miles an hour.

So now the police are chasing Kiera, who’s chasing Liber8, who’s trying to track down Dr. Simon Fraser, a university physicist who might be able to provide them with a little more power. Dr. Fraser is in charge of the university’s “linear collider.” (Similar to the Large Hadron Collider, except this one looks like a really big sonic screwdriver.) The Liber8 team kidnaps Dr. Fraser and force him to help them power up the linear collider. Kiera catches up with the team, and leaves a hint for the VPD to track their location, but then steps back to let Liber8 do their thing. She wants to go home just as badly as they do, and is willing to work with them to get there, up to a point.

It looks like even the linear collider doesn’t have what it takes to get the time travel device working. The attempt causes a large explosion, all but destroying the collider. Ingram, Liber8’s resident science guy, grabs the device, but fails to notice that it’s no longer complete. Where is the missing piece? Getting stashed in some evidence locker back at the station. Oops.

Now that Kiera’s back in police custody, we can finally see what Alec’s been working on all episode. His carefully laid trail has led the VPD’s investigators to a heavily-redacted, highly-classified file, indicating that Kiera is a deep cover operative with the Feds.

All the dust has settled in 2012 for the moment, but the day’s events have led Kiera to a heart-breaking conclusion: there’s a solid chance that she may never get home.

Two episodes in and so far, so good. This episode didn’t have quite as much world-building as the pilot, but that’s only to be expected. It looks like the writers are going to take a couple of episodes to get Kiera marginally settled in this time period, and I’m perfectly okay with that. It’d be jarring if she suddenly had a fantastic condo and a working knowledge of Canadian culture circa 2012 (yes, I know it’s 2013, but keep in mind that Canada has been keeping Continuum to themselves for a year already. Kiera and Alec are still hanging in 2012).

I’m glad that we have at least one Liber8 member who’s cool with staying in the past. I’m really interested to see what Kellogg is going to get up to, and how (if at all) it’s going to affect what’s going on back in 2077. Continuum is being pretty close-lipped about its particular brand of time travel. I guess that’s something we’ll learn as the series goes on, right?

Things to Ponder:

• If the futuristic Linear Collider can’t generate enough power to make the time travel device work safely, what’s the next step for the trip home?
• So Alec has broken into government files. Is this a handwave to get around Kiera’s lack of authority in this time period, or is this going to come back to bite them both in the butt?