This is the fourth episode of the first season for Continuum and does a lot to attempt to move the story into something of worth both stylistically and character wise. In this episode Kiera and Carlos investigate the death of professor Ames who was killed by some type of unknown weapon. Kellog makes quite a lot of money in the stock market. The leader of Liber8, Kagame, finally presents himself in this time stream and makes moves to be reunited with his comrades.
There are many things to discuss about this episode other than character developments. First I’d like to mention that there are quite a few more fight scenes in this episode compared to other episodes from the viewpoint of Liber8 and their movements in the city and contrasting with Kiera’s fight scenes as well. I thought that the fighting scenes in this episode were particularly good and aided by good sound and music choices for these scenes. I also felt that sound editing in this episode was a particular step up from previous episodes in terms of its use for conveying emotion in scenes like the end rain scenes, Kagame’s arrival, the fight scenes, Kagame’s imagining of the city in the future. There was a very distinct use of sound in this episode and it really helped to make the show a better emotional story telling experience.
As for the acting I feel that the character of Carlos is a bit lacking in his role, maybe he needs an episode to develop his character a little bit. But in watching Carlos played by Victor Webster, he seems to be portrayed as somewhat clueless at times while other times like in the ending of epiosde 3 he obviously looks out for Kiera and isn’t clueless at all. At the moment though and particularly in this episode Carlos seems not very well portrayed and not really serious as a character. Like many of the villains his character is very underdeveloped and two dimensional.
This episode also brought in Kagame played by Tony Amendola who I think performed well for his scenes. He had good musical overlays for his arrival and his walk throughout the city, while his fight scene with Kiera (Racel Nichols) showed he doesn’t mess around. His flashback speeches where he made his big speech provided quite a lot of important insight into his character motivations. He appears to really oppose the corporations who run his world. At this time I’m not really sure if he’s really as bad as he’s made out to be. We haven’t been given many glimpses of the future world so it’s hard to know if his character motivations are evil or good at this point; which for me makes it difficult to judge him, for now.
There is also the changing character of Matthew Kelog (Stephen Lobo) who in this episode gets quite rich through his knowledge of the stock market in the future. The only thing I wonder is how he remembers what happens each day? I never saw any of the villains have a computer like Kiera does, how in the world does he pick things decades before his time? Other than this Kelog appears to be doing good, he helps his grandmother with some treats and is doing well for himself. I wonder what will happen to this character over time?
Kiera played by Rachel Nichols is interesting in this episode as well as her character has an ethical dilemma. Kiera frees the murder suspect Melissa Dobeck (Mayko Nguyen) because she knows that in the future she will do great things for the world. In contrast to the villains Kiera is now messing with timelines as they are, but does it match her database history? Has she changed Melissa Dobeck’s fate?
What is also interesting is in the final and best scene of this episode which is with Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen). Sadler confronts Kiera about her interference with future scenarios. At first impression he seems to be making a point, but if you analyse and consider Sadler’s position he’s been writing down almost everything he can about the future world. His logo in the first episode, Kiera’s makeup product in this episode where questions are asked about its design. He’s also in her apartment trying to figure out how her suit works. Sadler in the future is ultra rich and powerful, is he the corporation liber8 hates? Either way; while Kiera’s decision was an ethical one based on doing good, Sadler is recording things for his own profit!
Overall I thought this was quite an entertaining episode of the show with a lot of things to think about. It also had a lot of interesting stylistic action sequences and entertaining musical score. It was a step up from the last episode and something that may be one of the better episodes of the season. Hopefully the writers can sustain it as episode 3 was nothing to admire.
