With bits of Caprica and AI, Extant is a muddled conspiracy sci-fi series that tries to give credibility to its storyline. Molly Woods (Halle Berry) is a astronaut just returned from a long solitary space mission, whom it turns out is inexplicably pregnant. Meanwhile, her husband, John, is a robotics designer, who apparently has designed the first AI in the form of their son, Ethan. Meanwhile again, it seems that the government or the company that sent her up in space are in on some conspiracy to maker her the brood mother for some extraterrestrial species. Meanwhile, once more, Ethan is about to go ballistic (Didn't we learn anything from the creation of Skynet, I Robot or even R.U.R. and when is THAT going to be a major motion picture coming to a theatre near you?) Obviously, the Woods are very wealthy in order for John to build robots from scratch, let alone ones that have self awareness and learn. I'm not sure how many happily married people would volunteer for a year-long space mission, or why John, having been left to his lonesome, wouldn't have built a hot 22 year old looking female robot instead. Maybe the guy's just a saint or a wannabe Catholic priest. Anyway, the coincidence of both of them being involved in conspiracies—her with the pregnancy and him with the robot kid that has been taken over—strains the plot beyond Andromeda. The aliens appear to Molly in the form of her ex-husband, whom only she and her ovaries can see, and wasn't this sort of kind of used in Contact? The kid premise started out really good, but then he turned into Damien. I'm sorry, but, with the exception of occasional comedies, American television has been formulaic and basically sucked for decades. The days of Rockford Files, The Fugitive, Route 66 and Ben Casey, when there were talented writers writing are long gone. Extant needed Halle Berry to survive, but as a space opera, I don't know that she, along with the special effects, is enough to launch it into renewal. because Battlestar Galactica it ain't. Oh, and one more thing. Why all the flashing lights on the space station computer? Does YOUR computer look like a Christmas tree?
Review of Extant
