Time-Travel Stuff (#SFWApro)

I decided stuff related to Time Travel on Screen deserves a separate post, though there’s not much this week.
CYBORG 2087 (1966) has cyborg Michael Rennie arriving from a dystopian future (why yes, he is from 2087) in which telepathic implants allow the authorities to control everyone’s minds. His mission: Stop the inventor of “radio telepathy” from demonstrating the device to the military and thereby avert his future. Opposing him we have evil cyborgs sent by the future government; helping him we have the scientist’s assistant, Karen Steele (best known for Star Trek: Mudd’s Women). While Rennie brings his usual screen presence (I’m guessing his role as a previous savior in Day the Earth Stood Still influenced the casting here) to his work, the time-paradoxes undermine this: If Rennie’s success erases his own existence (as his original future is gone, so is he), why does the scientist now turn down the military? That aside, very drab, dull and listless. “It is a fact of history—a fact that must be altered!”

CONTINUUM is a Canadian TV show that opens in 2077, with the capture of terrorists/freedom fighters rebelling against the corporate-ruled dystopia. When the “Liber8” revolutionaries transport back to 2012 (when this began), they accidentally bring a cop, Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) back with them. In the first season, Liber8 begins planning to avert their future; with a husband and a kid to return to, Cameron’s determined to preserve it. This puts a little more thought into the time-travel issues, suggesting, for instance, that whatever Cameron and Liber8 do may already be part of their timeline. However, it’s a routine SF cop show aside from that—and given that Cameron comes from and believes in an era when the Bill of Rights no longer applies, it’s odd there’s not more of a difference in her idea of police work from the cops she partners with in Now.