Second Look: Continuum Season 1, Episode 6 – “Time’s Up”

Continuum Season 1, Episode 6 “Time’s Up”
Written by Jeremy Smith & Jonathan Lloyd Walker
Directed by Rachel Talalay
Aired July 8, 2012 on Showcase

“No gain came without risk – and no profit ever came without costing another man everything.” – Edouard Kagame

Continuum hit the halfway point of its first season in fine fashion in its previous episode, cracking open the time travel elements of its premise – and injecting a whole lot of life into the show’s 2012 and 2077 narratives in the process. That acute feeling of momentum is not only maintained in “Time’s Up”, it is elevated with the show’s most ambitious, sprawling (and risky) hour yet, revealing the genesis of Kagame and Liber8’s plan to change the future – and more importantly, observing Kiera’s reaction to it, as she contends with the reality of a history she never even knew about.

When “Time’s Up” begins, it opens with another flashback to 2077 – and at first, appears to be another day in the life of a CPS office for Kiera Cameron, as she heads to break up a riot forming outside of Piron, one of the future’s mega corporations. But what she thinks is a group of “people who don’t respect private property” (her words!) are actually starving citizens trying to take withheld food provisions, she finds herself in a contradictory position: who is she really there to help? And if it’s not the starving people, what is she really doing?

“Time’s Up” opens with the seed of an idea being planted in Kiera’s mind in 2077; and from there, moves back to 2012, where it presents a number of characters taking actions to catalyze their very futures. Beginning with Julian, who decides to attend his first protest with the intent to turn up the temperature on Occupy Exotrol, a movement protesting a presumably corrupt corporation (its parallels obviously to those of the Occupy movement in the United States around the same time) – and continuing with Kagame, who uses the riot as a front to kidnap one of Exotrol’s executives, to then put her on a live internet feed to admit to her crimes. As Kagame tells Sonya, his plan is to rewrite the prologue, to conquer the hearts and minds he talked about last episode by cultivating the anger and distrust already forming in the public in 2012.

For large portions of “Time’s Up”, it feels like Continuum trying its hand again at the case of the week structure, centered on a high-level security detail and fellow executive who survive Liber8’s assault on the Exotrol executive. But what it does better in “Time’s Up” than it did in “A Matter of Time” is establish those stakes fairly early; as we learn through Sonya, the people of the future never even learn about the corporations actions of the early 21st century, as they scrubbed it from the history books once they bailed out the government and took over the country wholesale.

This reveal gives Kagame’s drastic measure some pathos, but it also helps explain a bit why Kiera Cameron was who she was in 2077, an object of the state willing to use its extraordinarily invasive powers (as we see in 2012, when she injects a potential suspect with truth serum when nobody is looking, an egregious violation of his rights) as a show of power against the populace. Kiera doesn’t even think when she needs to lie to Carlos or drug a suspect to cut corners in her investigation; she’s never known anything else but her CPS work to be righteous, and “Time’s Up” uses the Exotrol case, and her discoveries in 2077 – which includes her husband knowing about Piron stockpiling the food rations to drive up stock prices. As she asks him – “CPS polices the citizens. Who polices the corporations?”

It’s an interesting question, bookending an episode where Liber8 holds an online vote for the fate of the Exotrol executive’s life, and convinces them (and the police) to park a van in the town square with $20 million in it, which he eventually demands be released to the growing mob forming around them. Kagame convinces the police to acquiesce, all in order to save one particularly corrupt executive – which all turns out to just be an excuse to get people to click on Liber8 manifestos and propaganda materials, providing the catalyst for a grassroots movement to begin forming around them.

But as “Time’s Up” so eloquently shows through Julian, revolutionary political movements are not the safest way to form an identity. Tired of his father’s constant meetings and discussions about corporations putting their boots on the necks of the general population, Julian wants the movement to start moving – and is willing to cause some civil unrest to do so, putting him in the direct path of Liber8, a revolutionary organization prepared for a level of political violence that could utterly consume a young, impressionable mind like us. As he bristles against Alec and his father, “Time’s Up” makes it clear that Julian’s discontent, which stems from recently watching his family lose their multi-generational farm, runs dark and deep through him… exactly the kind of moldable mind Liber8 is looking to find, as it begins its war of “minds and hearts” against powers of state and capital already consolidating their power against people.

Though they leave the Exotrol executive alive at the end of the episode (despite the internet’s vote for her to die), Kagame notes they turned $3 million of stock options into $20 million of funds by shorting Exotrol stock, providing a basis of funding for their revolution (and showing us that Kellog is not the only one with some skills in manipulating financial markets). And as the first bits of Liber8 spray paint finds its way to the Vancouver streets, it’s clear Kagame’s attempts to spark something in the population has worked – what he couldn’t predict, of course, was for the Protector to start looking inward at her own potential culpability in the world she came from.

Those parallel stories make for Continuum‘s most consistently entertaining episode yet, able to tease out some of its larger ideas while still embracing the small-scale, investigative stories it uses to fill out the mosaic of 2012’s world and perspectives. There really isn’t a dull moment in “Time’s Up”, even in its more archetypal moments – a clear sign season one’s story is kicking into high gear, and an important show of confidence from a young series finally moving from its preamble into the heart of its story.

Grade: A-

Other thoughts/observations:

• Kiera’s never seen a horse before – I don’t know, that seems bad.
  
• Ok, yes, the whole “drop $20 million in public and actually let people take it” is a ridiculous notion – but it works in the context of the story “Time’s Up” is trying to tell, and I’m fully ok with it. It’s a show with freaking time travel, we can let reality stretch a bit here when it’s done well.
  
• Though Kagame promised doing less violence, seeing Travis off two security guards before the opening credits roll runs a bit counter to that notion.
  
• Carlos has some sass for the Exotrol security guard: “And yet your queen was kidnapped from your own castle!”
  
• Kiera can’t understand the concept of shorting a company’s stock (basically – borrowing stocks to bet on a company to fail) – and is dumbfounded when Alec points out it’s a completely legal tactic.
  
• Just noting that Alec hacks into social media accounts and people’s cloud storage in this episode. He may eventually be a revolutionary technological mind, but boy he has some issues with respecting the privacy of people. Explains a lot about how the future turned out, huh!
  
• Julian’s father: “How can an honest man defend himself these days when they keep hiding their dirty practices behind a justice system that supports them?” Still a relevant question!
  
• Sonya: “We forgot our history, and they repeated it.”
  
• Kellog doesn’t seem to bothered by the death of his young grandmother; at least, he’s not bothered enough to break into Kiera’s hotel room, and steal the piece of the time travel device she stole from police evidence earlier this season. Foreshadowing!
  
• VPD is able to find the Liber8 streaming warehouse with Betty’s help; this is a hint towards a story that will surface later this season. For now, it’s just her being a techno-nerd!
  
• Kiera’s smarmy husband thinks corporations are fine to police themselves. Again, still relevant!