History Series / Continuum

* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: Liber8 storms a VPD police precinct to free one of their comrades. A few officers were killed trying to stop them.

* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: In "Waning Minute", Sonya is shown to have initially gone off-the-grid when she was given the opportunity to run the SuperSoldier project. The offer was such that refusing was basically impossible without ruining her life, but at the same time the work was so morally repugnant that she couldn't accept. Kagame convinces her to go along with it as a mole for Liber8.

* AntiVillain: The WellIntentionedExtremist organization Liber8 [[VillainHasAPoint is actually quite right]] about how bad the totalitarian NAU government is. Flashback sequences also give several members sympathetic backstories.

* BadFuture: The main timeline future is this for Liber8. Brad Tonkin's future is this for everyone.

** Throughout Season 1, Kiera wishes that that the police in 2012 were more like the CPS in 2077, who use harsh and draconian measures in the pursuit of justice and to hunt down terrorist suspects, innocent or not. Come Season 2, the police start adopting more of these measures, only to turn them against Kiera, believing her to be the Liber8 mole in their department.
** Liber8 wants nothing more than for the public to wake up and see the corporations for what they really are. [[spoiler:Come "3 Minutes to Midnight", they get to learn the result. Instead of the Crapsaccharine World of 2077, you get the pure Crapsack World of 2039, where civilization has collapsed from all-out war between the corporations and the people, and humanity is going down the drain.]]

** Between Kellog and Kiera, though it's largely one-way as [[NoYay Kiera is (mostly) keeping faithful to her husband from 2077]]. Originally FoeYay, but Kellog defects from Liber8 fairly quickly and becomes Kiera's ally, albeit one with his own agenda. [[spoiler:She actually does sleep with him once, but things went right back to the status quo afterward.]]

** For Kiera and the VPD during Seasons 1 and 2, Liber8. For most of Season 3, [[InspectorJavert Inspector Dillon]] is even more convinced of this. [[spoiler:Even Kiera stops being so sure about it after some pointed discussions with Carlos.]]

** Also, for most of the third season, the [[spoiler:Freelancers]] are this for the main cast, as [[spoiler:Liber8 tries to avoid them, and Kiera has to join them in order to gain some measure of protection.]]

** [[spoiler:Kellog's]] ultimate plan in the series finale is to [[spoiler:go back in time to when Liber8 and Kiera first appeared, kill them all and basically take over the world with his future knowledge and technology, with no one to oppose him]]. Luckily it fails spectacularly due to sabotage from Alec and Kiera, because they figured he'd betray them.

* BloodKnight: Plenty among Liber8.

** Both the season one premiere and finale episodes begin with the Liber8's bombing of the Sadler skyscraper in 2077. Although the premiere showed the tower falling from Kagame and Kiera's point of view, the finale shows the same from the point of view of Travis and Chen just as they're leaving the tower.
** Also, [[spoiler:the second season starts with Keira dreaming that she's imprisioned in an industrial style facility, and ends with her and Liber8 all actually imprisoned in exactly such a facility]].

* ChekhovMIA: The Liber8 leader, Kagame, is present for the time jump in the series premiere but doesn't arrive in the past with everyone else. It turns out [[spoiler:he was a little further away from the device than the others, leading him to arrive several days later during the fourth episode, "Matter of Time".]]

** Kagame, who literally plays chess in "Time's Up". His showing up causes Liber8's plans to become much more elaborate and subtle, making it that much harder for Kiera to pull even a Pyrrhic victory over him. But even Kagame is dwarfed by the man who plotted and instigated his trip back in time, [[spoiler:2077-era Alec Sadler]]. Escher proves himself a good one in the second season, [[spoiler:but his plans fell through at the last minute and he ended up [[DroppedABridgeOnHim getting unceremoniously murdered]] in the next season]].

* ChildSoldiers: Downplayed, but present; a band of teens inspired by Liber8 (including Julian Randol) turn up in the ninth episode of the first season, preparing to set off a van full of ammonium nitrate as part of "Operation Theseus".

** Dillon makes a deal with Escher to better equip the police force to deal with Liber8. [[spoiler:As a part of that deal, the police force is gradually being converted into CPS.]]

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Kiera has difficulty acknowledging that in the present, protest in the form of civil disobedience is not actually a criminal offense - a point on which she is reminded by Carlos when she wants to crack down on peaceful protesters who just happen to have some Liber8 sympathies.

* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Most of Liber8]] seems to cross this in "3 Minutes to Midnight".

** In "Minute to Win It", we're introduced to [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed "Sonmanto"]], a corporation targeted by Liber8. They're shown in the episode to be willing to sic a battery of lawyers on anyone who impedes corporate profits, and are obviously hiding some sort of big secret [[spoiler:which turns out to be chemical weapons sales to Middle Eastern terrorists]].

** [[spoiler:Jim Martin]] is implied to have killed himself after [[spoiler:his association with Liber8 comes to light and torpedoes his career]].

** Kiera reluctantly accepts help from Garza in "So Do Our Minutes Hasten" when dealing with a case where Liber8 is being framed for the murder of a company's entire board of directors.
** In "Last Minute" Kiera allies with [[spoiler:Liber8]] in order to prevent Alec from setting in motion the events that lead to Brad's BadFuture. She even admits that while she may not agree with their methods, they share the same goals.

** When Liber8 kidnaps a CEO, they force her to read statements denouncing herself as a criminal, though this isn't really taken seriously. [[spoiler:Later, they strap a bomb to her, which will only be disarmed when she admits to the fraud she and her company's board engaged in. That ruins her company.]]
** Later, Liber8 [[spoiler:forces Jim Martin to "confess" to a variety of crimes and malfeasance, some true, some not true. His political career is dead in the water after that, as is [[AteHisGun the man himself]].]]

** Flashbacks to Liber8 members' lives often reveal that they cared for people.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Liber8 are ruthless {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s doing everything for their belief in the greater good. As such, they focus their attacks on their perceived enemies and won't go out of their way to hurt regular people.

* FaceNodAction: In the pilot episode, two members of Liber8 do this before creating a time vortex to the past.

** A multi-layered one in the season two premiere. The mayor is assassinated, which on the surface seems to be Liber8's MO. However, the mayor's stance against organized crime makes the VPD consider that it might have been a hit by the gangs themselves to frame Liber8. Then it's revealed that Liber8 actually is responsible, having anticipated that deduction and framed the gang, all to hide the real reason: moving their own favored candidate into position for election.
** In "So Do Our Minutes Hasten", Liber8 is framed for an attack on a corporation's board of directors. [[spoiler:It turns out their rival, Sonmanto, arranged the hit and framed Liber8 for it so they could drive down the stock price then buy them out.]]

* GambitPileup: The second season has this in spades. Kellog, Liber8 (both splinter factions), Escher, the Freelancers, Jim Martin and Julian Randol are all running their own agendas. it's actually called attention to in the third season, which dropped a few more gambits in for good measure.

* GovernmentConspiracy: What is suggested on how the first season is being played out. Some in Liber8 suggest this possibility, which is [[spoiler:how they were able to escape CPS custody for instance]].

** The same happened to Kellog, who was ''not'' originally a member of Liber8. [[spoiler: His sister was, before she was killed]].

* HumansAreBastards: When a corporate CEO is captured and apparently held for ransom by Liber8, the rebels set up an online poll for the public to decide whether she lives or dies. By the time the poll closes, almost two-thirds of the votes are for her death, out of several hundred thousand in total. This dips into FridgeHorror when one realizes that the reason why Liber8 were forcing her to admit her corporate indiscretions was because ''very few people knew about them'' -- so basically, the people are voting for her death simply based on her position and status in society.

** Kiera points out that if the Freelancers were honest about their talk of sacrifice then [[spoiler:Curtis Chen]] should've let Liber8's execution proceed as scheduled.

* IHaveYourWife: Liber8 holds Kellog's grandmother hostage to force his cooperation in finding Kiera's grandmother. He turns this back on them by finding Kagame's mother instead.

** Even if Kellog is self-serving, he nevertheless is a valuable source of information for Kiera and seems genuinely uninterested in Liber8's revolutionary agenda (and thus somewhat interested in her continued existence to help keep the rest of Liber8's shock troops from finding him and blowing him away). In spite of this, it's surprising how often she blows him off when he's trying to reach her with critical, time-sensitive info. This is actually lampshaded in season two, when Kellog points out ''exactly this''. Kiera still gives him the cold shoulder.

** Carlos hits the bar after a hard day in "Minute Man". [[spoiler:Learning that there are two Kieras (the younger version dead), two Alecs (both alive), and about Jim Martin's association with Liber8 would be hard for pretty much anyone to swallow.]]
** Kiera, Betty, and Carlos all have this reaction at the end of "So Do Our Minutes Hasten", after a rousing day of Liber8 being framed and Dillon refusing to budge on Liber8 being guilty. [[spoiler:Makes for major Mood Whiplash when Betty is assassinated for digging into it when she steps outside to meet a source.]]

** Kiera obviously has no recognizable jurisdiction in 2012, so she pretends to be a detective from Oregon. The police inspector in the Vancouver Police Department is naturally livid that a US cop is trying to butt in on his investigation. However, once cops start dying he does not hesitate to ask for her help. By the end of the pilot he is demanding that she stay and help them catch the killers. Thanks to Alec's hacking skills, Kiera stays with the VPD to catch Liber8 disguised as a member of a top secret government group.
** Kiera invokes this when the VPD inspector suggests that the US Department of Defense could help them track down the ex-military members of Liber8. Kiera replies that since they did not start their criminal activities until after leaving the military, they are a purely civilian matter. Of course, her real reason for invoking jurisdiction is that the military would have no record of these people ever serving in the armed forces (or existing at all).

** Liber8 pulls one in the series premiere. After stealing a variety of weaponry, they raid a series of banks and Kiera thinks she's deduced that Liber8 has used the early break-ins as a distraction and are going after the final bank that they hit. Kiera and her 2012-era partner thwart the terrorists there, but when Kiera returns to the police station, she finds that the gang used the whole operation as cover to raid the precinct and retrieve their imprisoned comrade.
** In "Time's Up", Liber8 kidnaps the CEO of a 2012-era corporation. As Kiera is trying to rescue the victim, she tries to determine what their real goal is: are they in it for the ransom money, or are they trying to make a political statement and earn street cred with the local anarchist groups? In the end, [[spoiler:it turns out that the plan was to expose the fraud the CEO was involved in, ruin the corporation, and in the process make a fortune short-selling the corporation on the stock market to fund their next operation.]]

* Letters2Numbers: "Liber8". This is apparently a reference to the fact that there are eight members of the group in 2012, their earliest appearance.
* LivingLieDetector: Kiera, thanks to her implants being able to conduct detailed medical scans simply by staring at a person. That said, it's not entirely accurate. When [[spoiler: Julian]] is tortured for information about Liber8, Kiera states that he was lying when he claimed not to know where Travis was. Since Travis had paid him a visit earlier, but was then asked to leave, [[spoiler:Julian]] technically knew where he had been, but was in no position to give up his current whereabouts, creating a false positive. Later, in "3 Minutes to Midnight", [[spoiler:Alec is able to reprogram her CMR so he reads as telling the truth, even though he was lying]].
* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Carlos, of course. The worst part is that he knows Kiera is lying, he just has no idea what the truth is. [[spoiler:She eventually tells him halfway through the second season]]. Even Liber8 feels bad for him.

* LoveMakesYouDumb: Lampshaded in "3 Minutes to Midnight" when Liber8 gets the drop on Kiera in the middle of the day out in the open. Travis figures she must have strong feelings for Brad to be that distracted.

* MadBomber: Liber8 not only blows up an office building as part of their terrorist campaign, but also like to leave explosive "surprises" for the police.

** Liber8. While on the surface, an obvious pun of "Liberate", it can also be seen as representing Liber, the Roman god of Freedom and 8, the number of members within the group.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Liber8's actions are said to have caused the deaths of 30,000 or so people in an effort to bring down the comparatively small number of Corporate Congress board members. Though these numbers might be inflated by propaganda, the urban cataclysm in the first scene of the pilot cannot have had a small number of casualties (and who knows what else occurred off-screen).
* MindControlDevice: A chip exists in the future which allows remote control of a human or animal's brain. Travis had one when he was a SuperSoldier, debtors get them when they're enslaved to repay what they owe, Curtis makes bugs and a police dog into his servants using them, while Liber8 uses them to turn various white collar criminals into bank robbers using them.

** [[spoiler:Chen]] is one for the Freelancers, planted in Liber8.
** Dillon plants [[spoiler:his own daughter]] into Liber8.

* NewspaperDating: After Kiera and Liber8 arrive in 2012, there's a shot of a newspaper box where the front page mentions austerity measures in the Canadian federal government's 2012 budget.

** Liber8's activities in the past have led to the police department teaming up with Piron and throwing out the book, seemingly laying the foundations for the future privately-owned police state.
** Kiera accuses [[spoiler: Curtis Chen]] of this because of his failure to give up his own life to prevent Liber8 from time traveling in the first place.

** And Liber8 gets another with the arrival of Brad Tonkin. [[spoiler:While they may have averted their future, his is even more terrible in the opposite direction. No control instead of too much has left humanity on the brink.]]

** Liber8's activities lead to the creation of CPS. Because they are so beyond the ability of the police force to handle and have such a specific agenda against the corporations, Piron ends up funding the VPD to transform them into the CPS.

** Lucas, when the VPD (acting on intelligence provided to Kiera by Alec) break through his electronic security measures and pinpoint the location where Liber8 are holding a corporate CEO.

* OnlyAFleshWound: Travis and some of the other members of Liber8 can shrug off wounds with ease, though this makes some sense since several of them are super-soldiers from the future.

* PapaWolf: Dillon [[spoiler:deeply regrets letting his daughter become The Mole inside Liber8, and in an emotional moment asks Kiera to do everything she can to retrieve Christine, his daughter.]]

** Liber8 figures out how to hack into Kiera's cybernetic implants, controlling her in order to kill a video game company executive (who can identify the members of Liber8), followed by Carlos and then herself. This results in a [[DuelingHackers struggle between Alec and Lucas]] to wrest control of Kiera's mind from each other. [[spoiler:Alec wins, but in the process, Kagame and Ingram deduce that he's the one they are up against.]]

* PoliceBrutality: As the VPD [[spoiler:becomes more militarized and targeting anyone who even expresses the loosest ideological sympathies with Liber8, it's implied that this becomes increasingly common.]] Kiera's use of the JackBauerInterrogationTechnique on [[spoiler:Julian]] ''really'' doesn't help matters.

** Kiera thinks so, with good reason. The VPD in 2012 thinks they are dealing with a standard street gang muscling in on new territory. Instead, Liber8 are ruthless revolutionaries, including former military specialists and super-soldiers, who have no qualms about killing cops and leaving a high body count. The police are completely unprepared for this and are easily outmaneuvered.

** Most of Liber8, though it's [[ZigZaggingTrope zigzagged]] somewhat as they actually (to varying degrees) believe in the message that Kagame is preaching. That being said, it's strongly hinted that without Kagame, their group would tear itself apart. [[spoiler:Which it almost immediately does once he dies.]]

* PurpleProse: Sonya’s preferred writing style, to the point that in "So Do Our Minutes Hasten" Kiera is able to determine that a Liber8 press release wasn't written by Sonya because it wasn't pompous enough.

** The Anti-Liber8 Taskforce become increasingly this over the course of Season 2, taking drastic measures to hunt down those suspected of being criminals to the point where "guilty until proven innocent" seems to be their new mantra. [[spoiler: The Season 2 finale has Dillon reviewing Escher's plans to turn them into the CPS]].
** In Season 3, [[spoiler:active censorship on university campuses and security and police crackdowns over even relatively minor events (pro-Liber8 dances and peaceful protests) are apparently regarded as normal. Granted, a building ''did'' get bombed by Kagame, but even so, this kind of heavy-handed response is more characteristic of an emerging police state rather than a reasoned law-enforcement response to seeking out the principal backers of Liber8.]] [[InspectorJavert Kiera's]] behavior toward Rebecca, one of Julian's lieutenants, does not help.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Liber8 is willing to blow up buildings full of people just to kill a few members of a corporation. Kagame tries to shift to a more peaceful method following their trip back in time, [[spoiler:but he still blows himself up and takes a building with him]]. After that, [[spoiler:Sonya and Travis end up forming separate groups, Travis being the violent one while Sonya uses more subversive methods]].

** Lucas shows signs of this. [[spoiler:He starts hallucinating conversations with the dead Kagame. In the end of season 3, he breaks down the hardest when Liber8 become convinced that their efforts have been for nothing]].

** Travis, the SuperSoldier who spends the most time commanding Liber8.

** Liber8's intended goal, though they end up a lot further back than they had assumed they would go, [[spoiler:and things are soon revealed to be more complicated]]. In the second season, it's revealed that [[spoiler:Alec himself desires the same, and left a message for his younger self telling him that only he could avert that future. Doubly strange is the fact that he sent Kiera even though he should know she's dead-set against changing it]].

* ShroudedInMyth: Theseus, the man who inspired Liber8, is a famous revolutionary by 2077. To those protecting the establishment, like Kiera, he is almost literally Hitler. To those fighting against it, he's basically Jesus. [[spoiler:He's Julian Randol]]. Even Sonia, normally quite composed and in control, is nearly in tears from a chance to talk to him face to face.

* StableTimeLoop: In a fourth-season conversation between young Alec and old Alec, young Alec encourages his future self to continue to work on time travel, and also name-drops Kiera, leading old Alec to make sure she's sent back with Liber8.

** When Dillon loses his job thanks to poor progress in stopping Liber8, he makes a deal with Escher to get it back, starting him on a dark path that never stops getting darker.

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: A literal ''male'' example. In one early episode, Liber8 are casually preparing for their next operation in the kitchen of a normal suburban house. Shortly thereafter, the viewer sees that they have murdered the resident and left his body in a freezer in the garage.
* SuperSoldier: Travis and several of the more militant members of Liber8.

* ThisMeansWar: Explicitly invoked by Dillon in the first episode after Liber8 have blown through the VPD station to retrieve Lucas.

* TimeTravel: Of the SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong variety for Liber8, as well as for the alternate 2039 which sent back Brad.
* TimeyWimeyBall: By the third season, so many competing timelines have piled on top of one-another that [[spoiler:Kiera and Liber8 have basically decided it isn't worth fighting anymore]]. There's too many variables now to just pull certain strings for the outcome they want.

** Kiera starts to have real problems with this in season 3, when the CorruptCorporateExecutive angle is really played up while Liber8 segues away from violent terrorism to more Robin Hood-esque social activism. [[spoiler:Kiera ultimately decides that her future is no longer worth fighting for, joining up with Liber8 to stop Past!Alec from setting it in motion.]]

* TrappedInThePast: Kiera and Liber8. Within that, the Liber8 members thought they would be going back six years, not sixty five. [[spoiler:Kagame, though, was well aware that they were going back to 2012.]]

* TrueCompanions: Subverted by Liber8. At first they seem to be extremely loyal to each other and willing to go to great lengths to rescue each other from the police. However, we are later shown that there are deadly divides within the group that are kept in check by the group's leaders. They are also willing to sacrifice one of their own in order to kill Kiera. [[spoiler:Without Kagame, the group fractures in short order.]]
* {{Turncoat}}: Kellog offers to betray Liber8 in exchange for Kiera letting him stay in 2012. The end of season 2 sees [[spoiler:Carlos and Betty]] become arguably ''heroic'' examples of this.

* VillainHasAPoint: Liber8 is correct about the future being a brutal police state that steps on the rights of its citizens. Even our heroes are alarmed as they see more authoritarian measures begin to take hold in 2012.

** Liber8 itself, depending on your point of view. Despite being a terrorist group, it's suggested that they have a certain amount of Robin Hood-esque popularity, particularly in the present day.

** Liber8 is fighting to take down pro-corporate governments and restore true democracy. However, they are willing to kill 30,000 people in order to assassinate the twenty corporate leaders in charge of the system. In 2012, they have no problem murdering police officers simply to obtain weapons and create a distraction.

** In 2077, Alec Sadler masterminded the plot to send Liber8 back into the past, as part of a gambit to avert the current future.

* WildCard: Kellog. First he is a willing part of Liber8, then he decides to strike out on his own and seek a quiet and rich life, then he provides key intelligence to Kiera, and then he is seen [[spoiler:searching Kiera's apartment and stealing her recovered fragment of the time-travel device]].

** "3 Minutes to Midnight" is, both in-universe and out, simply mind-boggling. Kiera's future friend comes from a future where Liber8 won, and they are practically ecstatic at their victory. Then he clues them in on the reality of it. What the corporations didn't get through manipulation, they instead tried to take by force. The end result? 2039 Vancouver '''is a complete hellhole''' and Kellog is a revolutionary trying to fix things by sending him and Chen back. Combined with Kiera outing Garza as working for Alec (after a fashion) and the alt!Chen a Freelancer, Liber8 falls apart at the sheer pointlessness of it all.

** Liber8's plan in "Time's Up" is engineered so a CorruptCorporateExecutive must admit her corruption, or otherwise die when her fate is decided by people voting online. [[spoiler:She chooses to confess, but either way her company is in ruins and Liber8 makes a fortune off of short-selling the corporation's stock in advance.]]
** "Second Degree" has [[spoiler:Julian's]] trial. Liber8 kidnaps the family of a juror to get him to vote innocent, which Kiera discovers. To keep the family safe, they can't reveal the fact until they've performed a rescue, by which time the trial is nearly over. The presiding judge, also in their pocket, then delivers a bench verdict that clears him anyway, making sure Liber8 won either way.
* YouAreTooLate: Invoked by the Liber8 leader/spokesman, Edouard Kagame, when he is arrested in the first scene of the pilot after broadcasting a speech outlining the group's manifesto. Kiera arrives with a number of officers to apprehend him, but moments later, they can only watch as a large office tower explodes in the distance.

** Liber8 is a group of murderous, violence-addicted terrorists... who are fighting against the world's oppressive corporate overlords in order to restore human rights like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the right to peaceably assemble, and pretty much the rest of the Bill of Rights. And remember... the hero of this story, [[ActionGirl Kiera Cameron]], is trying to '''''stop''''' these rampaging democracy-advocating, liberal-minded monsters out of a combination of loyalty to the job and a fear that their meddling may negatively affect her personally.

''Continuum'' is a [[Main/CanadianSeries Canadian]] science fiction series that ran for four seasons from 2012 to 2015. It was created by Simon Barry, who also acts as one of the show's executive producers. It aired on [[Creator/CorusEntertainment Showcase Television]] in Canada and [[Creator/SyFy Syfy]] in the UK and the USA.

* NippleAndDimed: It received several forms of censorship for the American [[Creator/SciFiChannel SyFy]] broadcast, including this; see SexyShirtSwitch, below. Surprisingly, despite that example being censored, Sonya got away with being braless while dressed as a HotScientist.

Kiera Cameron (Creator/RachelNichols) is an ordinary police officer -- ordinary, that is, for the corporate-run, vaguely dystopian future of 2077 in the Vancouver District of the North American Union or NAU. She's assigned the routine job of guarding captured terrorists belonging to Liber8 during their very public execution. However, the group has an escape plan that involves TimeTravel and Kiera is pulled along with them back to 2012.

Underground, motivated and very dangerous, the surviving Liber8 terrorists are determined to wage their war against the forces they believe will destroy the future in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia and it's up to Kiera to stop them. Luckily, she's not alone: she's quickly pulled into the orbit of [[FriendOnTheForce Detective Carlos Fonnegra]] (Victor Webster) and the Vancouver Police Department, who think she's an expert on this "new street gang up from Portland," and Alec Sadler (Eric Knudsen), a [[TeenGenius young tech prodigy]] who will shape the future Kiera and the terrorists come from.

''Continuum'' is a [[Main/CanadianSeries Canadian]] science fiction series that ran for four seasons from 2012 to 2015. It was created by Simon Barry, who also acts as one of the show's executive producers. It aired on [[Creator/CorusEntertainment Showcase]] in Canada and [[Creator/SyFy Syfy]] in the UK and the USA.

''Continuum'' is a Canadian science fiction series that ran for four seasons from 2012 to 2015. It was created by Simon Barry, who also acts as one of the show's executive producers. It aired on [[Creator/CorusEntertainment Showcase]] in Canada and [[Creator/SyFy Syfy]] in the UK and the USA.

''Continuum'' is a Canadian science fiction series that ran for four seasons from 2012 to 2015. It was created by Simon Barry, who also acts as one of the show's executive producers. It aired on the Showcase channel in Canada, SyFy UK in the UK, and SyFy in the USA.

* AuthorTract: The series is already pretty {{Anvilicious}} with its RippedFromTheHeadline plots, but the [[spoiler: Zero-growth economy utopia in the form of the CrystalSpiresAndTogas Vancouver at the end]] takes the series' AuthorTract elements UpToEleven, recalling Edward Bellamy's ''Literature/LookingBackward''.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: There are plenty of them in 2012 and things will only get worse in the future. Apparently in 2077 the people in charge do not see it as much of a problem that a corporation is withholding food shipments, causing food riots, and not even trying to hide it. [[spoiler:And by 2035, ''[=SadTech=]'' owns an entire factory (if not the entire gulag-style system of complexes) devoted just to using [[MindControlDevice zombified debt slaves]] to turn out more chips to control even more people.]]

** A more cynical viewer might read elements of this trope into the older characters' description of the {{Utopia}} at the end of the series, which they founded, but the {{Utopia}} appears to be more or less played straight, in spite of begging a number of questions about how society has been reorganized, and whether competition and ambition have been suppressed in the name of an egalitarian utopia a la ''{{Rollerball}}'' or ''LogansRun''.

** A more cynical viewer might read elements of this trope into the older characters' description of the {{Utopia}} at the end of the series, which they founded, but the {{Utopia}} appears to be more or less played straight, in spite of begging a number of questions about how society has been reorganized, and whether competition and ambition have been suppressed in the name of an egalitarian utopia a la ''{{Rollerball}'' or ''LogansRun''.

** A more cynical viewer might read this into the older characters' description of the {{Utopia}} at the end of the series, since they founded the new world, but it appears to be just about played straight.

* ManipulativeBastard: Alec in 2077 knows both his own past and future, as well as that of others, the man is very good at getting anyone to do what he wants.

* TheMenInBlack: The Freelancers' uniform is a black suit with a dark shirt and black tie. {{Averted}} with the few CSIS agents we see, who, despite working for a government intelligence agency, are considerably ''less'' spooky or intimidating and are usually shown wearing a friendly shade of grey (that's just good corporate PR, no doubt).

** [[spoiler:Chen]] may be one for the Freelancers, planted in Liber8… or vice versa.

** Chen appears to know much more about the effects of all the time-travel than anyone and what is really going on, but his unwillingness to ''actually tell anyone'' has caused many problems. His statement that [[spoiler:Kellog will get what's coming to him]] and that both he and The Traveler expected to see [[spoiler:the lights going out and even more future-travelers showing up]] may mean that some things ''have'' to happen before they can take action, potentially averting this in the long-run.

** Also, having changed the future so many times can lead to an unwanted outcome. [[spoiler: Both Liber8 and Kiera learn that the hard way.]]

** Carlos doesn't believe Kiera's initial claim to be a time traveler, and she lets him walk away instead of showing him any of the future-tech gadgets she has on her person at that very moment.

* ISeeDeadPeople: [[spoiler:Ingram, first implied with Kagame then confirmed with Chen. It's suggested to be a side-effect of time travel, similar to how Jason is kinda crazy.]]
** [[spoiler: Although his seeing Chen is now up the air, since the Season 2 finale reveals that Chen is now inexplicably ''alive'' again]].

* PapaWolf: Dillon [[spoiler:deeply regrets letting his daughter become TheMole inside Liber8, and in an emotional moment asks Kiera to do everything she can to retrieve Christine, his daughter.]]

** A multi-layered one in the season two premiere. The mayor is assassinated, which on the surface seems to be Liber8's MO. However, the mayor's stance against organized crime makes the VPD consider that it might have been a hit by the gangs themselves to frame Liber8. Then it's revealed that Liber8 actually is responsible, having anticipated that deduction and framed said gang, all to hide the real reason: moving their own favored candidate into position for election.

* GreyAndGrayMorality: On one side, we have a bunch of psychopaths trying to avert the total control of the NAU by the corrupt Congress of megacorporations. On the other side, there is Kiera, a good cop protecting law and order-which are, at least in 2077, dictated by said corrupt megacorporations. Overlapping the entire conflict is a possible BigBad seeking to exploit the timeline for his own mysterious ends, as well as yet another WellIntentionedExtremist faction who capture and imprison those who tamper with the timeline (''whether on purpose or by accident'') and have no hesitation killing anyone who gets in their way.

** In "Time's Up", Liber8 kidnaps the CEO of a 2012-era corporation. As Kiera is trying to rescue the victim, she tries to determine what their real goal is: are they in it for the ransom money, or are they trying to make a political statement and earn street cred with the local anarchist groups? In the end, [[spoiler:it turns out that the plan was to expose the fraud the CEO was involved in, ruin the corporation, and in the process make a fortune short-selling said corporation on the stock market to fund their next operation.]]

''Continuum'' is a Canadian science fiction series that premiered in May 2012, which was entirely filmed in Vancouver. It was created by Simon Barry, who also acts as one of the show's executive producers. Four seasons have aired, with the series finale airing October 9, 2015. ''Continuum'' is aired on the Showcase channel in Canada and SyFy UK [[CaptainObvious in the UK]], and began airing on the SyFy network in the USA in January 2013.

* ArcWords: a meta-example. Each episode's name of one season has a certain word in it. [[spoiler: Time for One. Second for Two. Minute for Three. Hour for Four.]]

* BadassGrandpa:
** The 65-year-old Kagame is able to briefly hold his own in hand-to-hand combat against Kiera, a highly trained and much younger Protector. It helped that her Protector suit had been damaged previously.
** [[spoiler: Future Alec Sadler]] could also be said to qualify, though less of a physical badass and more of a GuileHero.

* BittersweetEnding: The final minutes of the series finale has this in spades. [[spoiler:The future army and the time-line they're from is destroyed, Kellog's own plan is thwarted by being sent into the distant past (and presumably killed), and Kiera finally is sent back to her own time. She meets Kagame and at first thinks that everyone has failed, but he is a kind old man who remembers her from the stories "Uncle Julian" told, and warmly greets her. Old!Alec appears and explains that over sixty years have passed since he saw her last and that they've all made a better future. She asks to see her son and he takes her to see him, but holds her back from going to him... unfortunately, ''another Kiera'' is there who is from that time-line and the boy's real mother. It is the closest Kiera will ever get to going home or seeing her son again, and she and Alec are saddened and stand together in silence as the credits start to roll. The end.]]

** Mostly averted as Valentine rarely fights anyone and Kiera and Garza usually end up fighting (and beating up) men.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: The second season ends with Kiera, Jason, and [[AssholeVictim Garza]] imprisoned by the [[KnightTemplar Freelancers]] while Carlos and Betty appear to join Theseus' branch of Liber8.]]

* ArcWords: a meta-example. Each episode of one season has a certain word in it. [[spoiler: Time for One. Second for Two. Minute for Three. Hour for Four.]]

* CastingGag: Perhaps an accidental one -- [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 Tahmoh]] [[{{Series/Dollhouse}} Penikett]] appears as a somewhat-crooked union politician who eventually wins a by-election to become the new mayor of Vancouver. His father, Tony Penikett, was the Premier of Canada's Yukon Territory from 1985 to 1992.

''Continuum'' is a Canadian science fiction series that premiered in May 2012, which was entirely filmed in Vancouver. It was created by Simon Barry, who also acts as one of the show's executive producers. Three seasons have aired so far. ''Continuum'' is aired on the Showcase channel in Canada and SyFy UK [[CaptainObvious in the UK]], and began airing on the SyFy network in the USA in January 2013.