Extant: will it survive?

It’s been a long time since Halle Berry graced television screens, but here she is in CBS’s Extant, a new thirteen part sci-fi series co-produced by Stephen Spielberg and airing in the UK weekly on Amazon prime. Will this be the next big advertisement for streaming websites post-House of Cards? Will it change the face of science fiction forever? Probably not on both counts, but Extant’s first episode does open up enough story threads to keep you intrigued, even if it’s probably safe from being nominated for any Emmys any time soon.

source: mostlyfilm.com

The main thread revolves around infertile astronaut Molly Woods (Berry) who returns from a 13 month long solo mission in space only to discover she’s pregnant. It’s the big WTF moment of the opener, made even weirder by Molly’s recollection of a strange encounter on her ship that she now wants to cover up from her superiors. Why is she being secretive? The implication for now is that Molly just wants to be with her family, and fears what will happen to her if the top brass find out. Luckily the director of the company that sent her into space, one Hideki Yasumoto (Hiroyuki Sanada), seems to be a lovely, kind and understanding gentleman of high repute. Oh, come off it, this is sci-fi, of course he’s evil.

There’s a side plot about robots, which fares slightly worse at drawing you in as it is one of those familiar, tried and true sci-fi tropes. But who knows, it might amount to something in subsequent episodes. The gist is that Molly’s husband John has been looking after their son Ethan while she was busy being impregnated above the stars. But Ethan is no normal boy. He is a robot created as part of a new scientific project to blend robots with genuine human tendencies, a story that bears resemblance to more than one sci-fi flick even before Ethan begins to exhibit a bad case of “creepy child” syndrome.

To it’s credit, the first episode definitely bears the Spielberg Stamp in places, most clearly in Molly’s flashbacks to what really happened in her very spooky spaceship, which are probably the haunting highlights of the episode. Still, at times Extant definitely falls into the “overdone” category, with thumping loud soundtrack cues in peculiar places. In one segment Woods is essentially deleting a couple of files from a computer, but the music in the background grows so violent that you’d think she was being attacked by a particularly vicious online survey.

To it’s credit, the first episode definitely bears the Spielberg Stamp in places

While the visual and audio effects department have clearly been working overtime, the same amount of effort is not present in the acting. Sure, the enigmatic characters are suitably enigmatic, the obviously evil character emerges from the future equivalent of Dracula’s coffin, and the robot child’s temperament is placed firmly in Uncanny Valley, but that’s just it. No one really breaks beyond what’s expected of them, with the possible exception of Berry, who has a kind of vulnerability about her that could eventually morph into some kind of emotional payoff.

Nevertheless, it’s already clear from one episode that Extant is more likely to be a show with characters in service of a good plot, rather than the other way around. But a good plot is a good plot, and the central hook here could lead to all kinds of exciting Rosemary’s Baby or Alien-style scenarios later on. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t fall prey to predictability, or worse, monotony, before then.