INTERVIEW: ‘Continuum’ stars, creator talk about the future

The highly anticipated Canadian sci-fi series, Continuum, is set to premiere Stateside on Syfy on Monday, Jan. 14 at 8 p.m. The time-travel tale, featuring Rachel Nichols and Victor Webster, may largely take place in the present day, but it’s no typical police procedural.

Nichols plays Kiera Cameron, a law-enforcement agent who mistakenly gets catapulted from 2077 to the present day. She’s on the hunt for a murderous gang of terrorists known as Liber8. In the future, these “freedom fighters” battle against the corporatized world and lack of democracy. Because they disturb the status quo, they’re deemed a threat to the state. After a deadly explosion kills thousands, the group is sentenced to a collective capital punishment. But just as they’re about to check out of this futuristic world, they’re real plans come to fruition. The terrorists use a device to transport themselves back more than 50 years, and Cameron, who tried to stop the time jump, gets stuck in the whirlwind.

Now it’s up to this solo officer, with the help of a present-day detective (Webster), to save the future by changing the past.

Continuum’s inaugural season will air on Syfy, but the Canadian hit show has already been picked up for a second season.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox took part in a group conversation with Continuum’s creator Simon Barry, plus Nichols and Webster. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

Hollywood Soapbox: Could you, Simon, give … an idea of how far ahead you’ve thought about the mythology and the timeline for the series. For example, in the development stage, you probably were really focused on the first season. But now you have this second season. Are you really keeping track of everything so everything fits in line?

Barry: Yeah, it is certainly a full-time job managing just all the mini-threads that the show’s mythology introduces. And that’s half the fun, too, I’ve got to say. When we started the process, on the first day of the writing room, we as a group all made this decision that we needed to know two things off the top. We needed to know the rules of at least our version of time travel, which … was important. And also we needed to know where the show was going to end.

Because of the nature of television, you can’t really pinpoint that to an ‘x’ number of hours or years, but you can certainly aim high. And I’m an optimistic person by nature, so I certainly built in the possibility that there would be several, many years worth of mythology elements set up at the beginning that could play out.

But, you know, you also don’t want to get ahead of yourself too far. So it’s this fine balance of knowing that the universe and the mythology and the stories that you have have many, many stories within them. At the same time, you want to keep it contained so that the focus is on one major component that is manageable.

We certainly into season two’s announcement started opening that up, but in a way which I think makes the show better. But we’re always trying to stay focused on our central characters’ goals and obstacles, and that’s sort of where we can I think feel like the show is in a very safe place, but also gives us permission to expand beyond that.

Hollywood Soapbox: The genre has a lot of fans, and there’s some really great work out there. Are there some inspirations … or sci-fi you’ve enjoyed before signing up for Continuum?

Webster: I’m a huge sci-fi fan. I love all the Star Wars movies. I’ve watched TV shows since I was a kid, like Manimal, dating back to when I was in my early teens. I’m a big kid now and my imagination is very vivid. So I love shows that let me explore that and let me go out and see all that. So anything that deals with sci-fi, space, technological gadgets, super powers, I’m in.

Hollywood Soapbox: This vision of the future in 2077, it’s pretty dystopian, a little bleak with the corporations and such. Kind of Orwellian almost. Do you think that’s where we’re headed? I know it’s just one artist’s, one creator’s vision, but do you think that might be where we’re headed?

Nichols: I think that’s one of the really interesting things about the show, and the fact that the sci-fi genre allows you to go to these places and have this idea of the future. And people accept it, and then they do ask that question: Is this where we are headed?

I hope not, because I happen to really enjoy food and running water and live animals. The future looks pretty bleak, as far as I’m concerned. But you know there’s a lot to be said for some of the different events and issues that we take on in the first 10 episodes of the show. And I’m sure in season two, we’ll dive into even more. But yeah there definitely is that recurring question of, is this really where we’re headed? And what can we possibly do to prevent that from happening?

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Click here for more information. Continuum premieres on Syfy on Monday, Jan. 14 at 8 p.m.