Extant Review: Season One, Episode One – “Re-Entry”

The site is currently being occupied by Count Spatula and his vampiric utensils. This being the case, the team and I have been doing everything we can to retake what’s rightfully ours. It is our sincere hope that this transmission of a regular sci-fi piece manages to break through their jamming technology.

Go Germany.

–The Editor

First aired July 9th, 2014.

Molly Woods (played by Halle Berry) has come back to Earth after a thirteen-month solo mission in space. She’s stunned when medical tests prove that she’s pregnant, since she was unable to conceive in the past and was supposedly alone the entire time.

Molly begs her doctor friend Sam Barton (played by Camryn Manheim) to keep the pregnancy out of the report, fearing she’ll be quarantined. The entire mission was documented by video footage except for a thirteen-hour gap when everything shutdown. During that time Molly saw a vision of her deceased first husband Marcus (played by Sergio Harford) and they got intimate. When she reviews the security footage later, Marcus doesn’t show up on any of the cameras. In a panic, she erases the video so nobody will know.

I liked how Molly was actively involved in covering up what happened to her as opposed to just waking up pregnant on the ship. Immediately my mind went to aliens taking the form of her dead husband to create a human/alien hybrid baby. The way ‘Marcus’ was speaking in broken English and repeating what she said was enough to convince me that it was an alien. Something like this happens in space, the only explanation is aliens and I will be SO disappointed if there is another reason.

The mystery gets more complicated when it’s revealed that her boss, Alan Sparks (played by Michael O’Neill), knew something happened on her mission. The same thing happened to astronaut Harmon Kryger (played by Brad Beyer), who went on a solo mission. It was believed that he committed suicide but he faked his death. He and Hideki Yasumoto (played by Hiroyuki Sanada), who’s corporation funded the trip, expected something to happen to her and might know what it was. They do everything they can to keep tabs on her. Hideki even decides to fund the research of Molly’s husband, John (played by Goran Visnjic), on giving robots human characteristics to get closer to their family.

Whenever there’s a corporation involved, it always turns out they are evil and looking for a big payday. My guess is that they want to use whatever is growing inside Molly to create some kind of weapon or medical cure they can market. The twist that Molly wasn’t the first astronaut sent up to be a guinea pig was good and adds another layer to the mystery. The robot storyline looks promising too, especially with how the show weaved it into Molly’s family life.

John and Molly’s ‘son,’ Ethan (played by Pierce Gagnon), is a humanoid robot and the prototype of John’s Humanichs program. Ethan was created because the couple wasn’t able to have children. John’s goal is to create robots who can learn and feel and be almost human. Naturally, people are concerned about an uprising, since these robots would essentially have free will. Those concerns seem warranted after Ethan shows violent tendencies throughout the episode. There’s a chilling scene toward the end where Molly finds him next to a dead bird, which he calmly says he found that way.

The way Extant took the story of Molly trying to reconnect with her family and added the element of having a robot son was a great twist. There are all sorts of hurdles that will add to the relationship within the family, such as how they will handle raising a robot child that will never grow up. I think the robot story as a whole will make a great secondary plot for show. Sure, that idea has been done several times before, but who doesn’t love the idea of possibly homicidal robots? Overall, I was impressed with the pilot for Extant. It’s shaping up to be a great summer sci-fi show.

Quotes & Thoughts

“He doesn’t love me. He executes a series of commands that you’ve programmed into him.”

I like the idea of having a kid I could control with a remote.

“When her tests come back, I will personally write her a prescription for margaritas.”

I wonder if the robot kid will get jealous of the alien kid.

If you enjoyed Manny’s review and would like to read other pieces like it, you can find the rest of his work HERE. You can also follow him on Twitter @KN_Manny.

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