The premise for the series was always about Keira getting home, and what she would find when she does. Will it be the future she left, with the timeline intact? Will her husband and son be waiting for her? In most shows, the answers would be obvious and simple. This season recognized the complexity of time and introduced the idea of a time war with two different factions fighting to keep different timelines intact.
Episodes That I Liked
E05 brought home the reality of a time war and the time soldiers really started to shift Keira’s politics. Whose side is she on? Liber8 or the soldiers? Over the course of the series, Liber8 moderated some of their positions, as they began to see that the issues weren’t as clear-cut as they initially thought or that their tactics weren’t quite so justified, while Keira started to see some of their point of view too.
Episodes That Were Watchable
E01, E03, E04, and E06 were pretty solid outings, showing some of the shifting alliances and political viewpoints.
Episodes That I Didn’t Like
E02 had a blast of information from the future, but the context wasn’t clear, and it didn’t really integrate well with the other episodes.
At the end of Season 2, Alec had to make a choice, and it created consequences for everyone. Now there is semi-evil Alec and semi-good Alec, although it isn’t always clear which one is the good guy and which one is the bad guy. And other entities are interested in time travel for their own purposes.
Episodes That I Liked
The episodes that stand out for the season are E01 where Keira is looking for any sort of connection with anyone, feeling lost and alone; E09 where a new time traveller appears, feeling much like John Connor from Terminator; E11, where you see that the “real” future isn’t really as great as Keira might have been deluding herself into believing; and E13 where the two Alecs have to face off against each other. But are they changing the future? Or merely fulfilling it?
Episodes That Were Watchable
I rated 5 episodes as 4 stars (E2, 3, 6, 7, & 8), mostly ones having fun with double the Alecs and double the Keiras, and the introduction of the Gleaners as one of the other entities.
Episodes That I Didn’t Like
Three episodes fell to the “3/5” rating for me, and I didn’t think they really did much for the series. E04 had some student protests turning violent, E05 had Travis shifting tactics to go on national TV, and E12 had people asking who has Alec? And which Alec do they have?
List of Episodes from Season 3
EP #
EPISODE
REVIEW
RATING
S03E01
Minute by Minute
Any lifeboat in a time storm
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
S03E02
Minute Man
Double the Alec/Keira, double the fun
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S03E03
Minute To Win It
Alec vs Alec, Keira vs robbers
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S03E04
Minute Changes
Student protests turn violent
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S03E05
30 Minutes To Air
Don’t touch that dial
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S03E06
Wasted Minute
Biological weapons, (wo)man down!
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S03E07
Waning Minutes
Gleaners wake Keira from her sleep
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S03E08
So Do Our Minutes Hasten
New player in town
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S03E09
Minute of Silence
Oooh, a new time traveler
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
S03E10
Revolutions Per Minute
Small pharma is growing
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S03E11
3 Minutes To Midnight
The future isn’t that bright
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
S03E12
The Dying Minutes
Alec, Alec, who has Alec?
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S03E13
Last Minute
Alec vs Alec, and the whole band
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
The Bottom Line
A little more complicated politics than S01 and S02, with double the Alec.
At the end of Season 1, Keira found another time-traveller, one who has not fared so well. Everyone thinks he’s crazy, in fact. But most of Season 2 is about her trying to get home still, yet more on an advanced technological plan with Alec to find a way for him to power the device. She is also dealing with more of the separation from her family, including her husband.
Episodes That I Liked
Episode 8 (Second Listen) shows flashbacks to when she met the future Alec Sadler while in the company of Garza posing as a prostitute. Equally, the second last episode E12 (Second Last, yep) is pretty good as it basically looks like everything is coming together for Keira, just before it all goes to crap. Both EPs are outstanding, and I rated them both 5/5.
Another 9 episodes are solid 4s for me on the rating scale, and my rating of the season overall…E01 has Alec getting a message from the future; E02 is a prison break; E04 introduced another time-traveller, one of Keira’s partners from the future. Except she was sent WAY farther back in time and is now old and dying. E05 went in a different direction, with the suit and internal “implant” triggering a psych eval for Keira by hologram. Very Star Trek-like, actually, but quite cool. In E06, Keira finally decides to share some truths about her origins. Not that she is believed. E07 deals with some data nodes for info, E10 has Garza getting captured, and E11 has Lucas going a bit nutty. Liber8 is falling apart with a less-than-clear mission anymore.
And the final episode lays the groundwork for S3 and 4 — that there are other entities using time travel to either preserve time or profit from it.
Episodes That Were Watchable
E03 deals with free will and Keira, and whether drugs can be a temporary escape. But E09 asks questions about the original Theseus starting a revolution, and whether one should kill him in order to stop Liber8 from ever starting. The EPs weren’t exactly bad, but they never quite fit the rest of the storyline as well nor advanced the plot much.
Episodes That I Didn’t Like
Again, as with Season 1, there weren’t any episodes that I didn’t like. The series just continued to rock.
List of Episodes from Season 2
EP #
EPISODE
REVIEW
RATING
S02E01
Second Chances
Message from the future shakes Alec
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E02
Split Second
Prison break for Travis, Garza-style
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E03
Second Thoughts
There’s free will Keira and drugs
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S02E04
Second Skin
A second protector, a second suit
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E05
Second Opinion
Welcome to batcaves and pysch evals
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E06
Second Truths
So you’re a time traveler…riiighhht
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E07
Second Degree
Data nodes, ass kickers and court
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E08
Second Listen
Do you think I’m pretty?
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
S02E09
Seconds
Would you go back in time and kill Theseus?
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S02E10
Second Wave
Garza’s capture and new tactics
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E11
Second Guessed
Lucas goes nutty & attacks the grid
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E12
Second Last
Travel options, then life goes to crap
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
S02E13
Second Time
The business of time is travel
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
The Bottom Line
While Liber8 starts to fall apart, Keira starts to figure out options from other time travellers.
Keira Cameron is a police officer. It’s a pretty advanced time, the year is 2077. While she is overseeing the execution of 8 domestic terrorists, they activate a time travel device that sends them all back to the year 2013. She arrives with a bunch of her high-tech police tools — a special suit with lots of functions built into it, weapons that are keyed only to her DNA, and communications equipment to allow her to connect directly to her HQ. Except her HQ doesn’t exist in 2013. Nevertheless, she is a police officer and sworn to apprehend the 8 suspects aka Liber8, so she infiltrates the local police to work with them in combating whatever mayhem Liber8 is going to start as they try to change time and prevent a future ruled by corporations…which would also inconveniently wipe out all of their timelines, including Keira’s son and husband.
Episodes That I Liked
The first episode, A Stitch in Time, sets the show up almost perfectly. It shows Keira in her element in the future, struggling with some of the ways in which the world works but generally moving from a view that everything is black and white and she’s one of the white hats towards something a bit more complex or nuanced. When she arrives in 2013, someone contacts her over her headset — a kid named Alec Sadler (hey, just because he shares my last name isn’t the reason I love the show, but it was a perk) who goes on to become the Steve Jobs of the future, well beyond phones and music players. He has a prototype for a different kind of comms network, i.e., the one that eventually becomes the basis for the suit she’s wearing, and so they accidentally “meet” over the comms line. She eventually has to explain to him the situation — stuck out of time — and they start working together. Through subsequent flashbacks, you see how certain elements tie together through time. The show is basically TimeCop but with no redos, and no way to return home. I was in like Flynn.
The fifth episode, A Test of Time, is time travel at its most nerdiness. They want to test their paradox vulnerability — if someone kills their parents before they’re even conceived, will they disappear? There are multiple twists and turns to test the theory, with threats to multiple time travellers and even to those who aren’t skipping through time. The dialogue has some uber time travel theories built into it, and the twists and turns establish the basic rules for the show. One of the best time travel episodes of any show anywhere.
The season finale, episode 10, Endtimes, blew up the premise of the show big time. Some of the elements introduced kind of confuse things later, but at first, it’s amazing…up until this point, the assumption is that the Liber8 crew plus Keira are the only time travellers. But what if there are more? Including a crazy homeless guy who recognizes Keira as a futuristic cop. Mind blown, I couldn’t wait for the second season to come.
Episodes 2 (Fast Times), 3 (Wasting Time), 6 (Time’s Up), 8 (Playtime), and 9 (Family Time) were all episodes that I rated four stars as they dealt with an attempt to go back home, one of Liber8 wanting to play profiteer in the past, early signs of Liber8 taking on big companies who are doing bad things, the dangers of VR technology, and the origins of Alex Sadler, tech mogul.
Episodes That Were Watchable
There were only two episodes of the season that I rated at three stars, and it was more because they were setups for other episodes rather than full episodes on their own. Episode 4, A Matter of Time, has one of Liber8 arrive “late” to the party (time travel didn’t work as expected for him) and episode 7, Politics of Time, bogged itself down in union politics issues.
The series is starting to heat up, as the local police have created a taskforce to go after Liber8 — Kiera isn’t alone in her fight. It’s a necessary addition to the story, as Kiera is going to regularly need backup, and this round is no exception. Someone is killing people and stealing something from their spine, and Liber8 members are at the top of the suspect pool. The procedural aspects play second banana to the “tech” as Kiera and Alec use high tech solutions to get a lead, but it works for the most part. A far better part of the episode is Kellog, as he tries to play both sides against each other. A master manipulator, it’s hard to see his end-game, even when things “appear” not to be going his way. A great substory, and after pitching a truce with Kiera, he pits Kiera and Carlos against Curtis in hand-to-hand combat. Good action scenes follow.
