Halle Berry’s Extant, the Blackest Show No One Is Watching
EntertainmentLast summer, I fell down the rabbit hole of the science-fiction drama Extant starring Halle Berry because, to me, being black means I must give black actors and shows a chance. (I can quit later, but only after I’ve supported.) Extant is the blackest mainstream sci-fi show I’ve ever seen.
When it premiered on CBS in 2014, the storyline was already a long shot. Berry played Molly Woods, a Mae Jemison-like astronaut genius who travels through space alone for 13 months to research organisms, only to return pregnant with an alien baby—by her dead ex-husband Marcus. It sounds crazy, but once I suspended reality, I let the storyline pull me in; woman returns from space pregnant to befuddled husband and robot son and trouble ensues? Totally.
When Extant begins, Molly is married to John Woods, played by Goran Visnjic, a scientist who created a human-like robot son called a humanix which he named Ethan. In the first season, the character arcs were par for the course in sci-fi as tensions between man, machine and alien drive the show. By the first season’s end, Molly’s alien son Adhu is taken from her by the government for research but he escapes and John dies mysteriously.
In season two of Extant, the stakes are higher—though the writing and dialogue unfortunately become cheesier. With independent detective JD Richter, played by the hot and scruffy Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Molly tries to find Adhu, Ethan, who’s been taken away from her, and solve her husband’s murder. When Molly locates Adhu, he is methodically sleeping with every human woman he can find to spread his alien seed and make human-alien hybrids, which happen to be a race of mocha-colored black people because their lineage begins with Molly’s immaculate space conception. As the series continues, the people of color on this show multiply like rabbits.