Continuum: Zero Hour

October 4, 2015 2:06 PM - Season 4, Episode 4

Kellog starts to realize that everything is not as it seems. Alec prepares to meet his destiny.
posted by zarq (3 comments total)

Called it: Future Kellog's gonna screw over Present Kellog. I never thought I'd see a more screwed up kidney stealing gambit than on Lost, but Continuum has come through.

It also looks like the Future Soldiers are pulling a Toclafane scenario, which seems like it would do massive damage to the timeline. (Seems like, given how bad the future turned out with Kellog just in charge of Piron on a more normal timetable, this invasion will just accelerate the whole dark future thing, or maybe result in something even worse.)

Other thoughts:
* Still not happy about The Traveler. I mean, it's nice to have the vaguest notion of what he's doing and all that, but the whole thing still feels really nebulous. Seeing Kiera duke it out with Kellog's future soldiers is fun because the audience has been given a pretty clear idea of what everyone can do, but the Traveler is just performing magic here. (I didn't much care for the explanation of Curtis' resurrection, even though it was clearly offered to justify Alec meeting Future Alec.)

The Traveler's talk about trying to undo the damage to the timeline has me concerned about a reset button ending for the show, too. I'm hoping they don't go there, but it certainly feels like his intention.

* Jason and Alec's interactions are pretty great. Going to meet Jason's mom was hilarious, and Alec deciding to not ruin her life - even though it means another Jason will never be born - feels like the responsible thing to do. Nevertheless, poor Jason.
posted by mordax at 2:36 PM on October 4, 2015

There was a lot to digest in this episode. I was confused when present-day Alex told future Alex to go ahead and invent time travel. I would have thought not inventing time travel would have solved a lot of problems. Or, maybe I missed something somewhere along the line?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:06 PM on October 4, 2015

There was a lot to digest in this episode.

I feel like the shortened season is really cramping the story at this point. There's just so much to wrap up, even allowing for various earlier plotlines getting cut short. (Like... I guess they really did just kill off the Freelancers, and Liber8's disbandment seems to have stuck, and I guess we don't need to know a whole lot more about what happens to Theseus, and so on. Even allowing for that, stuff feels pretty compressed.)

I would have thought not inventing time travel would have solved a lot of problems.

I suppose that as harmless and well-meaning as he appears, Alec Sadler's still the Alec Sadler: giving up time travel would mean losing agency over his own fate. Giving up power. (It's worth noting that when there were two Alecs, they were separated by all of a week and a single romantic disappointment - he's never very far from being that guy.)

Plus... Kiera's a fan of her 2077, but she's the only one, and her interest is purely maternal. I'm not sure anybody in the current timeline even knows her husband's name now that her old partner's dead. Future Alec, on the other hand, spent his entire life trying to change the course of history, and the goal was compelling enough that he was able to find a bunch of people who were willing to literally blow themselves up to avert it.

Telling (somewhat earlier) Future Alec Sadler not to go through with it would mean consigning the world to whatever was so bad about that instead of seeing through changing it.
posted by mordax at 8:53 PM on October 4, 2015