Zippy and meaningful
Time-travel thriller Continuum keeps viewers guessing,
Victor Webster is getting to know Carlos Fonnegra really well these days, perhaps more than he expected when the trippy, made-in-Vancouver time-travel thriller Continuum debuted little less than a year ago, last May.
Continuum features Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, a security services officer from the future — Vancouver in 2077, to be exact — who travels back in time to the present day to apprehend a cell of escaped terrorists. The show returns Sunday for its second season.
Webster plays Cameron’s police partner in present day, Det. Fonnegra, who understands what’s at stake, if not the details of how Continuum’s space and time continuum works exactly. The self-styled freedom fighters from the future call themselves Liber8, and are bent on altering the course of history and preventing a future dystopia run by corporations in a police state.
Webster’s list of credits reads like a timeline of contemporary prime-time TV, beginning with early appearances on Baywatch and Pamela Anderson’s V.I.P., followed by appearances in Sex and the City, CSI: Miami, NCIS, Bones and Criminal Minds, including a four-episode stint on Castle, a seven-episode stint on Charmed and the lead role in the filmed-in-Toronto Mutant X.
Continuum is fast becoming a career highlight, though, and not just because it returns this weekend as the most-watched series on Canada’s Showcase specialty channel.
Continuum’s hours are long — longer than the Calgary native expected — but Webster is fine with that.
“We shoot a lot in this show, sometimes up to 10 pages a day,” Webster said, taking a break between scenes in a glass tower overlooking Vancouver’s False Creek area. “Including long speeches. I think that’s a testament to how much they believe in us to get through all that. And not just the actors but the directors, the whole team — the cogs in the machine that work well together.”
On one level, Continuum is a zippy thriller, full of verbal confrontations, chase scenes and ticking time bombs, literal and figurative. On a deeper, more meaningful level, Continuum is a cautionary tale about the future and how big media and large corporations manipulate cogs in the wheel to do their own bidding, in the name of peace, order, good government and robust quarterly profit statements, not necessarily in that order.
Continuum was created by Vancouver-based screenwriter and University of British Columbia film-school alumnus Simon Barry. Continuum made its U.S. debut earlier this year on the Syfy cable channel, owned by NBCUniversal, and has since aired in Australia as well.
Webster says the series’ hard-to-define categorization — it’s neither a pure police procedural nor purely a sci-fi series — was one of the reasons he committed to filming a series six months of the year, in Vancouver.
Webster is from Calgary originally, but now makes his home in San Clemente, Calif. — when he isn’t working in Vancouver. Continuum’s filming is scheduled to continue until early June.
“I like the dark moodiness, the grittiness,” Webster said. “The way the show looks, dark and gritty, the use of shadows and natural light — it looks very documentary-like in style.”
Continuum is science fiction, but it’s unlike any other sci-fi show on TV, Webster says.
“You don’t feel like you’re watching a sci-fi show. When we go into the future, you’re in that world. When we come back to the present, it’s very much this world. When you watch certain movies, Blade Runner for example, you forget you’re in the future. You fall right into the characters’ lives. The basic structure of the show is that it’s a procedural drama with some sci-fi elements, with a lot of character beats. For me, that makes it a really interesting show to work on.”
Webster thinks he knows what will happen next with his character and with the story, but a new script is always a revelation, he says.
“I’ve been caught by surprise more often than not. They really like to play against the stereotype. For instance, when you get a script and see a new character, you have an idea in your head of what that character will be. Then, when they cast it, it’s the complete opposite of what you thought it might be. They’ve done a really fine job in casting the show, in finding truly talented actors.”
Webster says his character is strictly by-the-book — “He does things the way they’re supposed to be done” — whereas Nichols’ character is working on the fly, always reacting to new impressions and surroundings. Vancouver in Continuum’s future is very different from Vancouver in present day.
“I don’t know much I can talk about but it doesn’t end up the way that we, the audience, think it’s going to end up, or the way the perpetrators want it to go,” Webster said.
“It doesn’t go my way, either. It just goes its own direction and becomes a whole other character, almost.”
Continuum will “slowly start to address” its ongoing mystery, and answer “all those questions” that need answering, Webster promised.
“As an audience, you’re asking yourself those same questions and wondering how they’ll be resolved. We do address them, but not necessarily in the first couple of seasons. There’s an arc, a plan for the whole series. Those things will unfold eventually. We address some of those in the first season, some of the bigger points, actually. There’s a lot more where that came from, though.”
At its heart, Continuum is about humanity and what it means to be human, Webster suggests. He thinks that may be why it found a willing audience so quickly.
“It has moments of darkness, but it also has moments of levity. I think that’s a lot like real life. There are all these different balances. This show is very human in the way it shows these characters going through these trials and tribulations. These characters are relatable because of that.”
Webster believes Continuum has plenty of life in it yet. His longest acting job to date was in the Toronto-based Mutant X, which lasted for three seasons between 2001 and 2004.
“I love working in Vancouver,” he commented. “I love working with these people. I don’t want it to end. As long as it goes, I’m happy.”