1 out of 5

Creator: Simon Barry

This is one of the laziest, most unoriginal, and uninvolving television shows I have seen in quite some time.  Television and movies are allowed to take plenty of plotting liberties, and I’m comfortable giving television even more leeway, as the aim is to rope us along for at least a season and thus loosey-goosey writing can be part of that plan.  Furthermore, sci-fi tv is like any other genre – cop procedural, law drama – there are going to be repeated tropes, nothing really new, but we can ask for some kind of hook to make it its own show.  But leeway is not the same as laziness, and tropes are not the same as unoriginality.  Continuum is about a group of corporation-hating terrorists from 2077 who escape condemnation by fleeing into the past.  They mean to jump back 6 years to mess with the roots of the businesses against which they rally, but things go wrong and they jump to 2012.  Whoops, cop Kiera Cameron got caught in that same time stream.  Stop the terrorists!  Get back to the future!  I have tech beyond your understanding!  Here’s a guy in the past who becomes a good / bad guy in the future!  Continuum very lightly plays with timeline explanations, and that’s all fine and good, but the machinations by which Kiera integrates into society are so ridiculously unrealistic, and our terrorists’ plans are so muddled that it’s like the writers / creator have never seen any other sci-fi or tv before.  If this was cheesed up to Torchwood levels, fine, but it takes itself oh so seriously.  If the characters were developed to any degree beyond standard templates, or cast / acted by actors with just a dash of personality – everyone does their job, but you don’t like or dislike anyone, which you SHOULD in tv… you’re ambivalent toward every single freaking character – then maybe I could understand the appeal.  And the unconvincing tech talk is unforgivable for a science fiction show.  Any other ‘un-‘ descriptions you want to come up with apply.  I would call this a mom or dad show, the kinda NCIS by-the-books fluffy fare, but even those shows have the ‘hook’ I mentioned, so Continuum doesn’t reach that quality either.  And SADTECH?  Are you kidding me??  Wheee tamoh penikett