Continuum: Season 1 [Blu-ray]

I stumbled upon this after seeing ads on Syfy (still think they could've figured out a better way to trademark their name).The basic plot involves a future "protector" from the year 2077 who gets literally caught up in a plot by a terrorist group to travel back in time and change the future to their advantage. The future, in this case, is a cyberpunk-inspired corporate-ruled world where your phone company could also be the one you pay taxes to.The cast is largely unknowns unless you've caught Rachel Nichols in GI Joe or the Star Trek reboot, though there are some familiar faces, especially if you're a fan of Canadian (esp. Vancouver) originated TV series. Despite that, they're a great bunch. Don't expect Hollywood performances or high budgets here but even so, it still feels really slick with the future scenes well put together.It doesn't spoil anything to say the core of the series takes place in modern day Vancouver. Our main character, Kiera Cameron, with the help of someone with a surprise connection to the future, manages to slip into a modern day identity allowing her to mimic her original role as a protector and ally with the local authorities to continue her mission: to stop the terrorists from unleashing whatever their plans are before the future is completely changed.Each episode does what you expect, furthering the main plot while giving you a B plot that fits well into an episode. In a way, it becomes something like a procedural crime drama (but nowhere near one so don't try this because you like Law and Order and figure this is Law and Order 2077). Because of where the main protagonist and antagonists come from, it's never too straight-forward.I'm trying to think of a series to compare it against and it's really hard to think of a good one that doesn't tarnish the perception of what this series is or does. I suggest watching the preview since it's free. It's not as silly as Warehouse 13 or Eureka (though I'm a fan of both shows despite that), yet they don't take themselves too seriously either. Often enough, there'll be a situation where Kiera ends up using her tech or her new contact to help solve a crime that she has to explain away. I'm hoping with season 2 (which they've started filming so yay!) they'll let Carlos, the detective from the present played by Victor Webster that she's partnered up with, get the upper hand once in a while. With this season (so far), he ends up being this sort of straight-guy to Kiera's almost magical abilities: using truth serum on perps to get answers, getting classified or sealed documents, disabling a perp with a shock from her special 2077-issued uniform that doubles as a swiss army knife of tools for a future cop. It makes sense of course, and it eventually becomes a joke where he's writing it off with a "I'm not even going to ask!"All in all, it's an enjoyable romp and creates a nice mixture of danger and Law-and-Order type procedural drama with an ample dose of science fiction (with the inevitable discussion of time paradoxes and theories). Rachel Nichols plays the determined and rule-bending cop well even as she has to cope with the life she left behind...uh...in the future. It's an interesting play on the time travel plot and does seem to pick sides in the time travel paradox debate (i.e. if you go back into the past and interfere with your parents' meeting, will you disappear because you were never born or will the NEW future--or future in a new dimension--just be what follows in the current timeline?) though it leaves open where that might lead.I'm looking forward to the remaining episodes (we're about half way through the season on SyFy) and the next season. Note that the full season has played out in Canada already...we're getting it late but I see that as a bonus. If it wasn't that good, it never would've made it here. I ended up picking up in the middle of the first half of the season and needed to pick up the episodes I wasn't able to record. Even so, I suspect, maybe a year or two down the line, I'll be picking up the Blu-Rays for this series. Stay tuned!

The writers are on the right track by not leading the viewers to take a side. I want businesses to thrive but I also want a good and honest government, Continuum makes choosing a side in this storyline so far impossible. Do you go with the freedom fighters who are for the people but at the same time are anarchists and in the future having to resort to terrorism to bring attention to a corrupt government and people controlling businesses? Or, do you stand by free enterprise to grow and make a profit as a free society is meant to be? I understand the points of view of both sides in both time periods but the lost of virtually all Rights is something that we see happening in America today. And the taking over of small businesses by big money and large corporations is also happening in America today. Today and the future are working towards socialism in their own way and both demonstrates how the future of a once free with the potential to be prosperous society can be lost to regulations by a too big of a government and that government being in debted to and in allianced with just a few very large corporations. Control of the people by one entity or the other or a in a combination of both is unfolding right in front of our eyes today and the everyday person does not see it happening and would soon just accept things without question. That is when anacrchist and radicals start to destroy everything both the good and the bad and leaving the people, businesses and the government to take drastic measures inwhich no good can come of it. As I said, I can see both sides in both time periods and the writers have a great story here just as long as they do not start taking sides, villianizing one side in one time period and then the other in the other time period. No anti-business leanings, no environmental leanings, no government control leanings no politics leanings but show only the truth of today and magnify todays thruths with different senarios and outcomes for the future. That is what will lead to a very successful series. Keep their heads, show all sides and points of view without letting political correctness, corporation influence, unions, anarchist and world opinion of today's America dictate the storyline. I say America when I know this takes place in Canada but since I do not know Canadian laws and lifestyles I can only speak of what I see today in the U.S.A.

As described and good price

Personnel

Llego en tiempo y forma

I bought this DVD having watched all four seasons on Netflix because it was good enough that I wanted to watch it again. I have tried to avoid any serious spoilers in this review but some people may feel that my attempt to give an overview of what the show is about includes some mild ones.Continuum is a very clever time-travel series made and set in Canada, with most of the action taking place in Vancouver, about a group of terrorists and a police officer from 2077 who are all sent back in time to 2012..The story begins in the 2070's in a dystopian future. Governments have been replaced by a corporate police state run by very powerful and ruthless corporations through a Global Corporate Congress whose chairman and the most powerful man in the world is 82-year old Alec Sadler, an electronics genius who was founder and CEO of a vast mega-corporation called SadTech. Sadler is like a Bill Gates figure who instead of using his wealth for philanthropy used it to take over the world but he is an embodiment of the line from the bible, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul."Sadler is portrayed as an octogenarian in the first episode and flashbacks to 2077 by William Davis and as an idealistic teenage who is one of the show's main characters in the second decade of the 21st century by Eric Knudsen.The preface for the introductory sequence in Season one (and two) apart from the pilot episode, shows pictures of the central character, 2077 "Protector" (police officer) Kiera Cameron, played by Rachel Nichols, with her husband and son, and a voiceover which reads as follows:"2077. My time, my city, my family. When terrorists killed thousands of innocents, they were condemned to die. But they had other plans. A time travel device sent us all back sixty-five years. I want to get home, but I can't be sure what I will return to if history is changed. Their plan: to corrupt and control the present in order to win the future. What they didn't plan on was me."A group of terrorists called Liber8 kill thousands of people to try to get twenty - the Corporate Congress leadership - and are sentenced to death. However, they trigger a device which sends them back in time to 2012, and Kiera Cameron is, apparently accidentally, sent back with them.Kiera forms an alliance with Detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) of the Vancouver Police Department, to try to limit the harm done by the terrorists, who continue their war against the corporations of the late 21st century by attacking those of 2012 - some of which are forerunners of the corporations which formed the Corporate Congress.Kiera has various high tech equipment implanted in her body and in the "Protector" suit she is wearing which provides all sorts of opportunities for special effects SF trickery, and also when she arrives in 2012 these put her in touch with the 17-year-old Alec Sadler, who at this stage in his life is innocent and idealistic but a technical genius and already working on some of the communications devices built into Kiera's suit and implants . He and Carlos become Kiera's main friends and allies in 2012.One good thing about this series IMHO is that it isn't black and white - most people will not approve of the methods of the Liber8 terrorists but their criticisms of the Corporate congress of the future and often of the way those corporations are already operating in 2012 are entirely justified. Kiera Cameron always tries to work within the law, protect the innocent, bring the guilty to justice using due process and avoid using lethal force unless she really has to - but you gradually come to realise as the story develops just how evil the corporate system which her wish to protect people has led her to serve really is, and how little it deserves her loyalty.Another clever aspect of the series is the way it leaves you guessing about whether time travel can change the past. Throughout the first season and indeed and until not long before the end of the four-season story, what you see is carefully kept consistent with multiple possible ways that the consequences of time travel might work.This first season has ten episodes and seasons two and three have thirteen and thirteen episodes respectively, gradually getting more and more complicated as the answers to some questions are eventually provided but give rise to further questions about what is going on.The creator of the series had originally envisaged it as having seven to ten seasons, but the decision was taken by "Showcase" that the story would be finished in a fourth and final season of six episodes. The ending provided by those final six episodes works, but it does come over as a bit rushed, particularly in the final episode.I thought the acting in this series was generally pretty good, the special effects excellent, the treatment of time travel very clever and the handling of complex ethical issues more sophisticated than usual for a TV science fiction show.Overall I can recommend this series. But be aware, this season story is not stand-alone. If you buy this season one and like it, you'll have to watch the other three seasons to find out what's really going on and whether Kiera ever gets home.

Ich habe lange auf die Veröffentlichung der Serie gewartet - die Serie hatte ich vorher auf VOX geschaut und war sofort großer Fan.Die Serie ist ein absoluter Serienhit in dem SciFi-Genre. Die Serie beginnt im Jahr 2077, als Gefängnisinsassen auf dem Weg ihrer Hinrichtung sind; natürlich erwartet ihnen eine spezielle Art und Weise der Hinrichtung, die ins Jahr 2077 passt! Die Gruppe der Insassen werden in einen Raum geführt und stellen sich um einen Teleporter. Währenddessen werden sie natürlich von Protectors bewacht und die Hinrichtung wird von einigen Mitmenschen verfolgt. Doch in der weiteren Folge verläuft die Hinrichtung nicht wie geplant und den Insassen gelingt die Flucht durch das Teleportieren in die Vergangenheit ins Jahr 2012, wo sie sich fortan zur Aufgabe machen, die Zukunft ändern zu wollen, indem sie Ereignisse im Jahr 2012 zu ihren Vorstellung beeinflussen. Was nicht geplant war, dass mit ihnen ein Protector unfreiwillig in die gleiche Vergangenheit teleportiert wird, der wiederum sich zur Aufgabe macht, das Vorhaben der Insassen zu vereiteln, um die Zukunft unverändert zu retten. Darüber hinaus ist ein Ziel des Protectors, wieder heil in die bekannte Zukunft zurückzukehren. Es beginnt ein Kampf zwischen zwei rivalisierenden Gruppen und ein Kampf gegen die Zeit... im Verlauf der Staffel lernt man die Hintergründe der einzelnen Personen näher kennen und man muss unweigerlich erkennen, dass nicht alles so ist, wie es scheint!Eine spannende und abwechslungsreiche Serie, die süchtig macht. Die Haptdarsteller spielen hervorragend und glaubhaft ihre Rollen.Schöne SciFi Serie / Kaufempfehlung