Continuum: Season Three

This season of the Syfy-aired Canadian sci-fi crime drama goes for broke with its time-travel conundrums. In the opening episode, young genius Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen), the nice boy who will create the corporate oligarchy that rules the future, uses time-traversing technology to stop the death of his girlfriend (which occurred earlier) and creates a rift that alters history irreversibly and results in two Alecs, one of whom suddenly transforms into a coldly ambitious character. When future cop Kiera (Rachel Nichols) races to stop him, she discovers that he's killed an alternate version of her. The whole idea of separate time strands and changing realities is a bit murky and often confusing, but also interesting, and the show shuffles allies and enemies around as they all try to prevent the new, cold-blooded Alec from taking power, and stop a group of cops from imposing their will. Whether or not the narrative is completely successful, it's more conceptually challenging than earlier runs, and as the characters reassess exactly what they're fighting for and why, repercussions from their actions ripple across temporal dimensions. Compiling all 13 episodes from 2014, extras include episode commentaries, webisodes, and a behind-the-scenes featurette. A strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)