Continuum, the new time-traveling series, airs tonight – 27 September 2012 – on the Syfy channel and stars one of science fiction’s favourites, actress Rachel Nichols. She appeared as Rachel Gibson on Alias when Jennifer Garner could no longer go on missions; Conan The Barbarian‘s love interest Tamara, and cameo’d in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek as Gaila, the green roommate of Uhura and potential bed buddy of Captain Kirk.

Now, Nichols is heading up new Syfy series Continuum as cop Kiera Cameron, who involuntarily time-travels back from the year 2077 to 2012, and a group of terrorists have travelled back with her.

“Kiera’s just incredible,” Rachel Nichols tells us when we ask what drew her to the role. “She’s a fish out of water while trying to get home; she thinks fast, she makes friends, there’s nothing about her you don’t like.”

Like her Alias character, Kiera believes she’s fighting on the good side, but her experiences in 2012 will make her question whether the terrorists she’s fighting are really the freedom fighters they claim to be.

“She starts to realise that maybe things were so bad in 2077 that maybe she undersands what they were fighting for, even if they went about it in the wrong way,” Nichols continues. “So there’s a great distance for her to travel emotionally through the first season and at the end of the season there are so many questions about what’s going to happen.”

Helping her along the way is the futuristic technology that, fortunately for Kiera, still works. “We have CMR, which are Cellular Memory Review devices that are literally implanted in us and we can record everything we see in the future,” Nichols explains.

“Every crime scene can be recorded and downloaded to a main server so it can be used in trials. It’s very high tech and when I come back to 2012, the man who has invented all this tech, Alec Sadler, is a 17-year-old boy. My tech still works because the 17-year-old is still using the frequencies that he uses in 2077, so he becomes the voice in my head and my saviour so technically the tech in 2077 ends up saving me in 2012.”

Luckily for viewers who hate getting invested in a show only to find it cancelled (who wouldn’t?!), Continuum has been signed up for a second season already. The first season consists of 10 episodes, starting tonight on Syfy at 10pm.

Continuum airs Thursdays at 10pm on Syfy.