Extant
Entry updated 4 September 2022. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (2014-2015). Tristar Television and Sony International Television for CBS. Created by Mickey Fisher. Executive producers included Halle Berry, Mickey Fisher, Steven Spielberg and Greg Walker. Directors include Adam Arkin, Kevin Dowling, Adam Kane, Dan Lerner and Christine Moore. Writers include Leslie Bohem, Eliza Clark, Mickey Fisher and Gavin Johannsen. Cast includes Halle Berry, Pierce Gagnon, Grace Gummer, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Hiroyuki Sanada and Goran Visnjic. 26 42-minute episodes. Colour.
This high-budget limited series ran for two successive summers. Set in the Near Future, it begins with astronaut Molly Woods (Berry), returning from a thirteen-month mission alone in space, to find herself inexplicably pregnant. The Alien spores which impregnated her result in a human/alien offspring, which is secretly removed from her womb by a conspiracy headed by a wealthy magnate (Sanada) who wants the offspring for his own purposes. A second major plot thread follows Molly's husband (Visnjic), a robotics engineer and his assistant, Julie (Gummer), who have built an Android child with human feelings, a "Humanich", which he and Molly have adopted as a son (Gagnon). They are opposed by anti-AI activists who threaten violence. The human/alien offspring, which matures rapidly, is able to induce realistic hallucinations in people, and escapes into the world. It appears to be human but its eyes glow when it uses its powers.
In the increasingly action-oriented second season, the alien hybrids reproduce rapidly, inadvertently killing many women in the birth process, and pose an apparent threat to humanity. Molly's husband dies in a mysterious accident and she, after becoming a fugitive from her former government employers, joins up with police detective JD (Morgan), who is investigating the death of a woman who had been carrying an alien baby. Her former government agency accelerates the development of militaristic adult androids to destroy the alien hybrids. These soon take on a life of their own, posing a greater threat to humanity than the aliens, who eventually reveal they want to live in peace. The weaponized Humanichs are soon taken over by a super-Computer which intends to use them to destroy the human race. Most of the story elements and ideas are familiar ones, but are effectively played out through the various twists, and do raise questions of what it means to be human.
The series was cancelled at the end of the second season with the major plot developments resolved, but with the suggestion of a possible sequel. [LW]
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