"A Stitch in Time" is the premiere episode of Continuum.
Synopsis[]
Protector Kiera Cameron loses everything she has and finds herself on a new mission when she and eight dangerous terrorists are transported from their time in 2077 back to 2012 during the terrorist’s attempt to escape execution. She takes on a new identity and joins the Vancouver Police Department in order to stop the terrorists’ reign of violence. Along the way, she befriends Alec Sadler, the 17 year old who will one day grow up to create the technology her world is built upon.
Plot Overview[]
An old man casually sips a glass of water after flicking his fingers across a holographic touch screen. He begins his transmission: “We shall pay any price in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.” An armed law enforcement team blasts through his office door, declaring Edouard Kagame, leader of the terrorist group Liber8, under arrest. Kagame smiles wryly. “You’re too late.” The officers watch in horror as a massive skyscraper – home to the Corporate Congress - explodes and collapses in the sunset-lit sky, killing thirty-thousand people in a matter of seconds.
It is the year 2077 in Vancouver, Canada and the world is a very different place.
The government of Canada has collapsed financially and was saved by corporate intervention. In this new future, we meet Kiera Cameron, a Protector, who serves as law enforcement in this dystopian police state. As she and her husband, Greg, head to the first execution in forty years, their commute to another day on the job is interrupted when Kiera’s copper battle suit detects two juvenile suspects on the train. Its sophisticated system is integrated with her body and wired into her brain giving her unparalleled information access from Vancouver’s City Protective Services (CPS). After a quick fight, Kiera apprehends the two boys and tags them for booking.
She and Greg head to the Vancouver District Prison, as the members of Liber8 are led into the execution room. Kiera prepares with a group of other Protectors where she is reassigned at the last minute to the execution chamber itself to monitor the Liber8 members.
A small audience of onlookers is gathered, including Kiera’s husband, Greg. He chats briefly with his boss, an older gentleman. When Greg sees Kiera in the chamber, he pleads with an official to get her out of the room but to no avail: Greg’s elderly boss shakes his head when asked to get her out. Suddenly, Kiera spots Kagame toss something into a column of light in the middle of the group and runs toward them. The room erupts in a burst of blue light, vaporizing the Liber8 members and Kiera in the process. Greg stands there in stunned disbelief at the blackened crater where his wife was just standing. Greg’s boss smiles.
Kiera awakes, relatively unharmed in a pile of flaming rubble. Her battle suit flickers as she attempts to comprehend her surroundings, desperately trying to contact CPS. She sees two of the Liber8 members running away from the rubble and chases after them.
Still unaware of her exact location, she tries frantically to contact CPS for backup. She reaches an unlikely responder: a teenaged hacker confused as to who has accessed his experimental encrypted frequency. She spots one of the Liber8 members, Lucas Ingram, and chases after him, cornering him in an alley. After injecting him with truth serum, she demands answers. Shocked, she learns that they’ve time jumped sixty years back in time to Vancouver; they were supposed to only jump back six years. When Kiera demands Lucas to tell her how they get back home, he replies sardonically: “You are home.”
Kiera’s mysterious hacker has managed to track her location and sends police to her location. The police take Lucas into custody while Kiera’s battle suit cloaks her with invisibility camouflage. She wanders around the city, confused and taking in her new surroundings. As she wanders the streets, she learns her new friend’s name: Alec Sadler. He suggests that she needs food, money and shelter, so she uses her battle suit to commandeer an ATM for cash. As she settles in to her hotel room, she floods Alec’s computers with her CMR: cellular memory review, having recorded all of her visual and audio data captured during the day.
As Alec reviews her CMR footage, he sees something familiar: a corporate logo with the name “SadTech” that matches a doodle in the back of one of his notebooks. When Kiera shuts off their connection for the night, Alec heads from his computer room to his farmhouse, where his step-father leads a political meeting of some sort in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, Vancouver Detective Carlos Fonnegra surveys the scene where Liber8 and Kiera exploded into their new timeline. He spots Kiera wandering around the rubble and questions her about what she’s doing there. She shares some information about Lucas when Carlos asks for her help. Kiera assumes the identity of Portland detective investigating gang violence and heads back with Carlos to interrogate Lucas.
Alone with Lucas in the interrogation room, he explains that they can’t undo what’s been done and they can’t go back: “This has always been a one-way ticket.” Lucas encourages her to hide and become a ghost. After threatening Lucas’ mother – who will be born in just a few years from 2012 – he agrees to cooperate with Vancouver police to reveal the location of the remaining Liber8 members.
Having survived the time jump, the remaining Liber8 members are armed and ruthless, ambushing a police cruiser and killing two officers while stripping the car of its weapons and ammunition.
Kiera meets with Carlos’ boss, Inspector Dillon, and her assumed identity is nearly found out when he receives a call that two of his officers have been killed. Suddenly, the precinct is flooded with calls as bank alarms trip around the city. Kiera explains that this is part of their tactics and leads a team of officers to the correct bank.
A firefight ensues and Kiera chases the Liber8 members into an abandoned building. Just as she’s about to be overtaken, Carlos bursts in and engages in another firefight as the Liber8 members flee. Kiera realizes that this exchange of fire was yet another distraction and tells Carlos to get back to the precinct immediately. When they get back to the station, they find it a bloodied warzone. The other members of Liber8 have begun their new war on their own timeline and terms, having shot up the precinct and freeing Lucas. Carlos is devastated at the loss of life and unsure of this strange new companion with an inordinate amount of knowledge about this new gang that has appeared out of nowhere.
As she leaves the precinct and heads back to her hotel, Alec checks in with her, asking to know about the man he becomes in the future. As she walks, she flashes back to a memory in her timeline when she meets her husband’s boss for the first time: Alec Sadler of SadTech.
- ~ Special thanks to Syfy for providing the recap.
Cast and Characters[]
Starring[]
Guest Starring[] |
Co-Starring[]
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Quotes[]
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- Kiera: Get out of my head, Alec.
- Alec: You can't shut me out. I built the system we're talking on, remember? But I understand you think by telling me what I'll become, it'll create some sort of paradox whereby my knowing, it won't actually happen? But what you may not know is that there's actually two schools of quantum time travel theory. On the one hand, you've already changed the future by going back in time. The damage is done, you can't stop what's already been started.
- Kiera: What's the other?
- Alec: That this journey is part of your own timeline from the future. That is to say that all these events have actually happened before, and you're just simply going through the motions, again.
- Kiera: Does that mean I'll get back to my time?
- Alec: If that's what happens, or happened. It's a little confusing, even for me.
- Alec: (watches Kiera, who is looking at herself in the mirror, through her CMR) You're so pretty.
- Kiera: Not cool. Turn it off, Alec.
- CPS Sergeant: Curtis Chen, Jasmine Garza, Lucas Ingram, Stefan Jaworski, Edouard Kagame, Matthew Kellog, Travis Verta, Sonya Valentine, you have been convicted of crimes against the Union and sentenced to death. All appeals have been exhausted. There will be no commutation.
Featured Music[]
- "Piano Concerto No. 22 in D Minor" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- "Pins on a Line" by Christopher Smith
- "Nuclear Family" by Sweatshop Union
- "Pillars and Pyre" by Christopher Smith
Notes[]
- Lexa Doig (Sonya Valentine) is best known for playing Andromeda Ascendant/Rommie in Andromeda and Dr. Carolyn Lam on Stargate SG-1.
- Tony Amendola (Edouard Kagame) is best known for playing Bra'tac on Stargate SG-1.
- Jennifer Spence (Betty Robertson) is best known for playing Dr. Lisa Park on Stargate Universe.
- Mike Dopud (Stefan Jaworski) is best known for playing Varro on Stargate Universe.
- William B. Davis as (Older Alec Sadler) is best known for playing Cigarette Smoking Man on The X-Files.
- Brian Markinson (Inspector Jack Dillon) is best known for playing Police Chief Bill Jacobs on Da Vinci's Inquest and Da Vinci's City Hall and Jordan Duram on Caprica.
- John Reardon (Greg Cameron) is best known for playing Blake Laviolette on Arctic Air alongside Stephen Lobo.
- David Nykl (Sergei) is best known for playing Dr. Radek Zelenka on Stargate: Atlantis.