This week’s episode of Continuum tackles one of the age-old questions would you go back in time and kill someone, say Hitler, if you knew that it would save thousands, if not millions of lives?
Kiera (Rachel Nichols) is confronted with that very question when Julian (Richard Harmon) is released from prison and slowly but seemingly inevitably, begins to don the mantle of Theseus, and lead the people in revolt.
In Kiera’s original timeline, Theseus is responsible for the death of tens of thousands when he kills the workers in factory camps all over the Union.
We do get a look at these camps, and Theseus makes the argument at the episode’s end as well – can the existence these people have, with a computer chip subduing and controlling them, be defined as truly living? They work their shifts, we don’t even know if they get relief or just work constantly in an almost catatonic state.
He arranges their deaths, arguably freeing them from an unending servitude.
Now is that killing them, or freeing them?
I love when the show presents you with questions like this and doesn’t make it black and white, but just varying shades of grey.
And when given the chance to kill Julian once and for all, Carlos (Victor Webster) makes an impassioned plea about how our moral codes and guidelines make us who we are. If she kills Julian, than how can she be any better than any other criminal, madman, or threat that Julian may or may not become?
Then there’s the whole fact that Alec (Erik Knudsen) feels betrayed by Kiera when she grabs him right in front of her.
The two step-brothers spend some time this episode getting reacquainted, and one could almost see some hope for them, clinging to the ‘no fate but what we make for ourselves’ philosophy, but I think it’s fair to say Kiera’s actions push Julian to become what he does.
And while Liber8 watches from the corners, he is gathering his flock.
Not a bad episode, especially when they start bringing out big ideas like that, and actually making our characters confront them, making it into an actuality instead of a hypothetical.
Other interesting things we learned this week Escher (High Dillon) is now financing Kiera’s department, which also sees the reinstatement of Dillon (Brian Markinson). Of course Betty (Jennifer Spence) is still wandering around, completely free, with no one suspecting her Liber8 ties…
So the future seems to be hanging between two brothers, both of whom have their own agendas, and maybe in the long run, despite all of her efforts, Kiera will be nothing more than an impotent bystander as time continues on its set course…
If you believe that kind of thing.
What do you think? Fate? Destiny? Free will? Can we change the future?
Looks like the season wraps up next with an episode titled Second Wave.
Continuum airs Sundays on Showcase!
