In space, no one can hear you ovulate.
Or can they? In “Extant,” the new sci-fi series on CBS, Halle Berry’s an inexplicably pregnant astronaut, just back from a year-long solo mission in space.
Bearing the Steven Spielberg stamp of approval (he’s an executive producer) and set in the near-ish future, it looks primed to delve into extraterrestrial life, government conspiracy and our own fraught relationship with our increasingly sophisticated technology.
Upon her return from the space station, Berry’s Molly Watts is clearly unwell; our first glimpse of the impossibly gorgeous star is with her face over the toilet, dripping with sweat and drool. But she’s not too sick to attend her own welcome-home party, to the relief of her young son Ethan (Pierce Gagnon). This unnervingly composed kid turns out to be the latest creation of Molly’s scientist husband, John (Goran Visnjic), who specializes in humanistic artificial intelligence.
The series, created by newcomer Mickey Fisher, is rife with Spielberg-ian futuristic flourishes, like swipe-screens a la “Minority Report” and kids’ toys that hover gently around the house. But its central concerns sometimes veer into overly been-there territory, especially the mid-episode debate about the potential for robots to turn against humanity (an audience member at John’s presentation offends him by asking where the “kill switch” on his kid is located). It’s hard to watch this and not think back to “A.I.” or the myriad other techno-paranoia stories already out there.
As Molly gets her medical results back from her doctor (Camryn Manheim), she’s shocked at the news of her pregnancy — but her flashbacks to an “anomaly” on board the space station show her encountering and embracing a figure who appears to be her long-dead husband, Marcus (Sergio Harford). Now, this kind of visitation is pretty standard procedure if you’ve consumed as many space thrillers as I have, but Molly apparently doesn’t know enough to not open that door.
Back on Earth, she’s faced with an implausible pregnancy (she and John had no luck in that area before she left, which led him to create Ethan) and a creeping sense of unease. It’s well-founded, too; the man (Brad Beyer) who preceded her on the mission is now dead of an apparent suicide, and officials are starting to ask Molly questions about a missing section of footage from her mission.
Capitalizing on the astronaut-in-peril popularity of last year’s “Gravity,” and buoyed by Spielberg’s influence, the 13-episode “Extant” looks to be an enjoyable if not mind-blowingly-original summer series. Berry and Visnjic are good together, and a development late in the pilot promises to flesh out the promise of the title, which is defined as “still in existence; surviving.” I’d say our interest in being creeped out by the unknown certainly falls into that category.