“3 Minutes to Midnight” is episode eleven of season three of Continuum.
In the previous episode, “Revolutions Per Minute”, the John Doe who woke up knowing Kiera’s name in “Minute of Silence” was given some Flash by her, to help regain his memory. Previously, it was discovered that he was the one who had placed the strangely advanced technology that neither Kiera nor the Freelancers recognised in the safety deposit box in which it was discovered in “Minute to Win It”. Kellog’s name was also familiar to him, as being some sort of big deal, but he hadn’t heard of Alec Sadler. Given how big a deal Sadler was in Kiera’s time, that suggests that John Doe’s – whose real name, he has remembered, is Brad Tonkin – future is different to Kiera’s. He has also remembered why he came back.
Alec Two had also fully reconstructed the video from the CMR he took from Kiera Two’s body, a video that shows that John Doe/Brad Tonkin was shooting at Kiera Two in “Minute by Minute” when she died. Alec Two was going to give the recording to Original Kiera, but the latter discovered, just before Kiera Two’s body was spread across time, that Alec Two had removed the CMR (which he had used to get Halo working; Jason was the first person tested and initially everything seemed fine, but later it didn’t) and threw a major hissy fit, saying that she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. So Alec Two didn’t give Original Kiera the video showing that her houseguest was the one who killed Kiera Two.
This episode opens in the present with Alec Two watching an ad for Halo. Pre-orders for the technology are doing very well.
In Original Kiera’s apartment, more memories are starting to come back to Brad. He remembers Curtis shooting Kiera Two in Alec’s lab, her stumbling and turning around, to be shot in the head by Brad himself. When Kiera comes back to the apartment after buying food, there are signs of a struggle and Brad is missing.
Kiera goes to the Freelancers, assuming that they are the ones who took Brad, and we see the captive Original Alec for the first time since “Waning Minutes”. Brad is not there; they do not know where, or even who, he is, only that he is ‘temporally unsound.’ Which makes him a danger to the timeline.
Brad wasn’t abducted, he left voluntarily. He’s having more memories related to his and Chen’s killing of Kiera Two, something that wasn’t intended. It seems she surprised them. They are working together on something. As Brad walked away from Curtis, he stepped in front of the van that resulted in his accident and amnesia. He then goes looking for Kellog, and asks for help. Brad is definitely a new player, but what is he doing in the past? Brad had left the apartment because his memories of shooting Kiera Two worried him. Liber8 get involved as well, and Brad says what he is supposedly doing in the past.
Jason, who seems to be reverting to his old, less than stable, self, is looking for, and finding, the pieces of Original Alec’s time travel sphere. He sees someone approaching who he mistakes for one of the Freelancers and strikes out at him. It’s not one of the Freelancers; Jason is definitely losing it. This could mean that there is a problem with Halo – which is going to be available for sale very shortly. Jason, who seems to have been arrested for assaulting the man he hit, reports what happened to him to Carlos and Kiera – but it’s what he thinks happened, not what actually did. He’s definitely falling to pieces again, and even worse than before. However, whilst Jason was being interviewed he wasn’t wearing his Halo wristband. When he puts it back on again, his personality becomes more normal. Like an addict getting a fix is how Carlos describes it.
There have been a few people arrested recently wearing Halo bracelets, and they all had the charges dropped. So Kiera goes inquiring about Halo to Alec Two. Who is keeping secrets from her, something his knowledge of her technology enables him to do. Both Kiera and Carlos are concerned about Halo, and there are definitely cover-ups and payoffs going on. Kiera tells Carlos that Alec Two stole Kiera Two’s CMR chip. Carlos goes and looks up Julian, who is now working for Piron, and asks him to take a look.
Things are getting really complicated and some truths are revealed about the nature of time travel.
The episode’s title may be referring to the Doomsday Clock.