Continuum Times Up is the 6th episode of the first season for the show. This episode sees Liber8 increase their influence in this present time stream by causing a violent protest, kidnapping a CEO and holding her to ransom. It is up to Kiera yet again to save the day with the help of Carlos and Alec of course. It’s all about Kagame and his new strategy or plan of attack. But does it all work out as a good episode?
The episodes places itself as one around Kagame and his strategy or his grand plan for what he is trying to do with Liber8 and their movement. As in the picture above the idea of Kagame as a strategist is emphasised by showing the viewer Kagame playing chess against Sonya. While it’s a very obvious use of symbolism for strategy one can also notice that Kagame is playing a woman. As Kiera is Kagame’s nemesis, the actual game is played with her in the end as his strategy unfolds. However does he get a check mate against Kiera?
With the writing for this episode I didn’t particularly like some of the dialogue said during the show. There was one moment where Kagame mentioned “every game needs its pawns” during one of his speeches. I didn’t really like this as it made the chess symbolism in the opening way to obvious. Yes, I get it, Kagame is a strategist. He does things with Liber8 in a planned way just like in chess, but I don’t think he should have mentioned it along with his actions. But this wasn’t the worst part of this episodes dialogue.
The second gripe I have with the dialogue is with one of Carlos’ scenes with Kiera. In the opening part of the episode”
Kiera: “Transparency? I didn’t know they had the technology for that now.
Carlos: “What are you talking about?”
Kiera: Transparency, to see through something…..
Carlos: “What are you living in a vacuum? In this context transparency means they are asking for transparent business practices from governments and corporations….”
I didn’t like this part of dialogue above because for Carlos’ mention of “in this context”. What does he mean in this context? He doesn’t know that Kiera is from another time. Also his response was so long that Kiera turned around and was looking at horses and talking to Alec while Carlos was still talking. Carlos noticed that Kiera wasn’t even listening though; so maybe he knows this, but it seems to me he just comes along to places but is frequently ignored. I wonder how long it will take for his character to actually do something! Why does he always step out of the room during the interrogation scenes? Carlos to me seems to come off as completely clueless continually.
Another part of this episode I didn’t like was to do with the character of Julian Randall (Richard Harmon). Julian has been a character that has been so minor in this series so far, yet in this episode his character finds itself right in the action. While he has been in the series here and there his interactions were always with Roland (Michael Rogers). We always saw them having these talks together, yet in this episode he is joined with a group of anarchists who end up being used by Liber8? How did he get to this point? How did Liber8 simply reach someone so close to another main character Alec, yet not even look for Alec in this time stream?
The episodes themes and messaging are very heavily based around anti corporation concepts as it is Liber8’s objective to be against corporations. It’s very against corporations being to powerful and corrupting. References are made to bailouts of financial institutions during the GFC along with the executive bonuses received after the bailouts. While it is a good theme for the show and makes the viewer question what is going on now and contrasts it to a possible future of mega corporations it does come off as way to obvious.
While this episode was okay, it didn’t really move to anything or stress its points very well in my view. The previous episode A Test Of Time was much better in its execution, writing and dialogue. This episode to me just felt slightly off and missed its mark by trying to be way to obvious in its stories and themes while having what I thought was messy and annoying dialogue between the characters.
