Syfy starts airing the smash hit Canadian show Continuum this week. Here’s five reasons to watch
IT DEALS IN SHADES OF GREY
The year is 2077 in a big business-ruled Vancouver when a band of terrorists (they claim they’re freedom fighters) known as the Liber8 escape execution by time-travelling back to our present. “Because we were consciously tying two timelines together, we didn’t want to be so black and white in our representation of antagonists and who was fighting for what,” the show’s creator Simon Barry tells Red Alert. Future cop Kiera Cameron, played by Rachel Nichols ( GI Joe, Star Trek ), is accidentally transported with the insurgents and because she is aware of the next 65 years of history, “she can see things for the audience through her eyes that are good and bad about our world today.”
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Barry and his team held long discussions before the scripts were even written about how Vancouver would look in the year 2077. “A lot of times, the future is represented as one design idea but if you were to stand in Brooklyn and look across to Manhattan, you would see 200 years of architecture in front of you,” explains Barry. “We thought that with our future, we were going to broaden the notion into not just seeing 2077.”
THE SCIENCE IS REAL (ISH)
Cameron has an edge over her new colleagues at the Vancouver Police Department as she is fully equipped with cybernetic technology, wireless communication implants and a HUD/touchscreen suit. “None of the technology on Continuum is anything that hasn’t been conceived in 2012, except for maybe the time travel device,” Barry laughs. “We scoured Popular Mechanics , Popular Science and Wired for ideas.”
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA WAS AN INFLUENCE
Barry says he looked to Battlestar Galactica for inspiration because Ronald D Moore did such a great job of touching on themes and notions from far across the universe that remain relevant on Earth in the here and now. “Sci-fi has to meet a higher standard than most other genres because there is always going to be a layered component to it that justifies the genre in the present context,” says Barry. “Why do we care about the story taking place 1,000 years from now or even 100 years from now, if the relevance isn’t somehow connected to our present day?”
IT KNOWS WHERE IT’S GOING
Barry knows how Continuum ends. He just doesn’t know how many seasons Canadian network Showcase will allow for the production team to tell the story. “We needed to lock down certain concepts because we didn’t want to get lost in either the goals of the Liber8 or the goals of the other characters. We know where we are going to end up and how we are going to do it. But we have also allowed ourselves a little bit of room for evolution and ideas.”
Continuum – Brand New & Exclusive to Syfy, Thursdays at 10pm from 27 September
• Exclusive interview with Continuum star Rachel Nichols
• Continuum executive producer Tom Rowe interviewed
