CONTINUUM Recap: “Game Time” Episode 8, Season 1

In the future Lucas Ingram (Omari Newton) and prisoner Stefan Jaworski (Mike Dopud) are part of a presentation being made to a large room of well-dressed people. Also in this room are Kiera and one other armed CPS officer. The presentation is about how using light spectra can help to neutralize aggressive behavior. Jaworski, as a former soldier in prison, was the test suspect and Lucas, as a leading scientist in the field, was making the presentation.

As it turns out, the test worked for the most part, with Lucas controlling Stefan and giving one hell of the show to the audience. But there were still some ‘kinks’ to work out; namely the fact that Stefan seemed to break free of the control temporarily, attacking the corporate bigwig in charge of the presentation; but Lucas got him back under control. However, that didn’t stop Kiera from pointing her weapon at Stefan and questioning just what the hell happened.

In present day, a group of people are participating in a paintball match, but are interrupted by a young man who walks through the fake fight, calls out to one of the players – Greg Moretz – and then shoots him point blank before turning the gun on himself. This senseless murder lands on the desks of Kiera and Carlos and they begin to investigate what drove this young man to commit this crime. Not that much later, though, another senseless murder-suicide takes place with a man – Cole Bartley – behind pulled in front of a speeding train by a pretty young woman.

Soon enough, Carlos and Kiera figure out that the killers – named Mark and Yvonne – were both beta testers at Tendyne Systems, a company that specializes in “massively multi-player first person shooters in real time combat simulation” (thanks to Betty for that descriptor). The trio then pays a visit to the company to try to get to the bottom of what caused these game designers to kill. Betty and Kiera get a chance to step inside the game (hello, larping or cyberlapring) while Carlos does some more looking around at the company; but that backfires as Kiera is hurt while playing the game. If it weren’t for her CMR, though, that minor injury wouldn’t be a big deal; but her CMR is damaged.

This damage turns into an ongoing issue throughout the episode with Alec coming to Kiera’s apartment to reboot her system; which is almost successful until Lucas and Kagame use an adapted version of the future light spectra program to wrest control of her mind the same way they controlled poor Mark and Yvonne. Kagame and Lucas actually used codes created by Fred Nettinger (guest star Aaron Craven), the supervisor of Mark and Yvonne at Tendyne Systems, to hack into Kiera’s CMR in an effort to not only get rid of her and Carlos but to also eliminate Nettinger after they get what they needed from him. They almost succeed at ending all three lives, but Alec gets the upper-hand, short-circuiting Kiera’s CMR just in the nick of time.

It would seem that Nettinger wanted to eliminate his boss, Tendyne Systems CEO Gabrielle Cosgrove (guest star Venus Terzo) so he worked with Kagame and Lucas to control the minds of both Mark and Yvonne, having them take out two of Gabrielle’s rivals and pinning the blame on her. That, of course, didn’t work out; but Kagame and Lucas still have the codes, four people lost their lives needlessly and Kiera and Carlos still aren’t much closer to catching the members of Liber8.

But, one good thing came out of her necessary reboot, Alec was able to find a hidden file in Kiera’s CMR that contained memory traces that Kiera thought were deleted; one of them being a file with his name on it that was stamped “read me first”.

What we learned in this episode:

• Kiera doesn’t know anything about paintball, but did participate in “hundreds of hours of simulated training” in her time period;
• Lucas loves boxing; and Kellog can literally lie his way through anything; case in point: tricking Lucas into thinking he was at the boxing match on his own and tricking Carlos into believing that he works with Kiera in Section 6;
• Alec may have found a fail-safe in Kiera’s CMR that will help him fix her still damaged, but slowly self-repairing suit; and,
• Because of hacking into Kiera’s CMR, Kagame and Lucas now know that Kiera is working with someone outside of the police department and given how advanced that person’s tech abilities are they pretty much know that it is the young Alec who is working with her.

“Game Time” is the 8th episode of the debut season of Continuum and was written by Andrea Stevens and directed by Paul Shapiro. Continuum will be back with an all-new episode on the Canadian channel Showcase next Sunday, July 29 at 9 PM.

What are your thoughts on this episode? What are your thoughts on the light spectra program that control a person’s mind and how similar that technology is to what is currently available in the live-action role playing games? Do you think that Kiera can start to trust Kellog because of his trying to save her life or what ulterior motive(s) does he have? When will Carlos start to catch on to the truth about Kiera? What will Kagame and Liber8 do now that they know young Alec is working with Kiera? Please share your thoughts about this episode in the comments section below.