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A Test of Time (Continuum, 1x05)

I have recently begun watching this show, so I can't comment (nor score) the entire series's approach to time travel yet. But I will comment individual chapters that seem to tackle the time travel specifics of the story. The show's premise is that in 2077 a law enforcer (Kiera) ends up unwillingly travelling along with a gang of terrorists to 2012, where they intend to change things so that they end up winning their war against corporations, which at the moment they were losing.


In the opening sequence of all chapters (so far) Keira narrates how she felt worried that if she suceeded to get back to 2077, the world may be different from how she left it, due to the changes their presence in the past may cause. So the characters of Continuum are aware of potential disastrous consequences time travel can have, but they do not seem to know exactly how: in chapter 5 (season 1) both Kiera and the gang members are exposed to a test in which several of them meet & kidnap each other's grandmothers and one of the grandmothers dies in the showdown. To everyone's surprise the grandson didn't disappear...


This means that interestingly, the characters themselves are learning about time travel as the series progresses, not just the audience. I think this makes the show quite unique already. From this chapter we see they assumed that the ("grandmother") paradox would fix itself by rewriting history, as happens in many other shows or movies, but this assumption is proven wrong and they start to think about alternate timelines and other options... more soon!


Scores for this chapter: Genuine Time-travel: 3; Explanation: 0; Paradox: 2; visualisation: 0. Final score: 302.0

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