“Extant” (8 p.m. Central Wednesdays on CBS) unveiled a tasty hodgepodge of science fiction ideas in its premiere episode. For now, they are comfortable clichés, but I hold out hope that the show will coalesce into something more original as it moves forward.
The biggest hook in this near-future world is that the son of Molly (Halle Berry) and John Woods (Goran Visnjic) is a robot. Perhaps this is a continuation of the ideas producer Steven Spielberg started in his 2001 film “A.I.,” although the creator of “Extant” is newcomer Mickey Fisher. John tinkers with human-shaped robots in his basement lab, and Ethan is his first successful model. (We don’t get a flashback to his failures, which could’ve been creepily fascinating.) John can’t secure funding to mass-produce it, though: His presentation to potential backers turns into a shouting match over whether robots have a soul or not. John argues that Ethan has a soul as much as any human kid has a soul – after all, the existence of a soul can’t be scientifically proven (at least not now or in the near future of “Extant”).
Later, Molly comes upon Ethan standing over a dead bird in the woods and saying, blankly, “It was like this when I found it.” Somewhat humorously, this inspires her to rant against her husband, arguing that there’s a flaw in Ethan — as if a similar situation couldn’t have happened with a biological kid. Still, this is a rich sci-fi playground. I don’t doubt that robotics engineers will overcome the uncanny valley and produce authentic-looking human robots before we get them to behave completely human, and that will lead to debates about what to do with the flawed robots. Do they deserve equal protection under the law? Or are they not eligible for natural rights? I say the former, because if we expect robots to behave like humans, we have to treat them entirely like humans, not just partially. (A more humorous angle on this theme was explored in Fox’s sadly canceled “Almost Human,” where robot cop Dorian was quirky, not dangerous.)
The second plot thread is so bizarre it makes the Woods’ struggles with raising Ethan seem like small-time family drama. During Molly’s 13-month solo space mission for ISEA (a near-future stand-in for NASA), she became pregnant. She (and we, the audience) knows how this happened – she was visited by the ghost of her ex-lover and he magically impregnated her. But she is embarrassed and scared to tell this to her supervisors – indeed, she deleted all the space station’s camera footage, which shows her hugging and kissing empty air – perhaps out of fear of losing her job, perhaps out of fear of acknowledging possible psychological problems. (It’ll be really interesting later in the series when a DNA test reveals that the kid is her deceased ex-lover’s. I recommend that Molly tell her husband what happened before he hears it from the lab reports.)
While I wanted Molly to let the cat out of the bag so everyone could move forward with possible solutions, by episode’s end, we learn it was a good thing that she played it close to the vest: ISEA is apparently an evil organization. Molly’s discredited and presumed-dead former colleague, Harmon, peeks out of the dark shadows around her home “X-Files”-style and says “Don’t trust them. Any of them.”
A preview for the new movie “Lucy” – which aired during one of “Extant’s” commercial breaks – suggested one possible path for this series. In that film, Lucy gradually is able to use more and more of her brain, and she evolves beyond humanity as we know it today. Perhaps “Extant” will likewise deal with the next major mutation in human evolution – perhaps Harmon’s and Molly’s brains (as some condition of time spent in space?) develop the ability to communicate with the dead. Or perhaps it’s more mundane, and less scientific than that – perhaps the souls of the dead inhabit outer space, and they have the ability to visit loved ones.
The design of “Extant” is on-point from the start: Near-future garbage disposal consists of a sanitary box that can be placed in another sanitary box by the curb that whooshes the garbage away. Future Power Point presentations have the words and imagery floating in the air of the auditorium. And bathroom mirrors double as TV screens. However, houses and furniture and clothes look the same as today, so “Extant” can’t be too terribly far in the future.
The ideas of “Extant” will sort themselves out in coming episodes and we’ll learn whether the show is groundbreaking or just a collection of clichés, or – most likely — something in between. But the pilot episode convinced me to stick with the ride for a while, at least.