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Extant: Season 2
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (17th January 2016). |
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The Show
 In season one of the Steven Spielberg-produced CBS summer series Extant, astronaut Molly Woods (The Call's Halle Berry) went on a thirteen month solo expedition into deep space and, despite having previously been infertile, came back mysteriously impregnated by alien spores. During her pregnancy, she experiences hallucinations and other unnatural side effects. When her alien child is extracted and taken from her for scientific study. She already has a son in the form of Ethan (Tomorrowland's Pierce Gagnon), a Humanich (a human-like robot programmed to learn right and wrong and other moral ambiguities through experience) designed by her programmer husband John (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Goran Visnjic) and his prosthetics developer partner Julie Gelineau (The Homesman's Grace Gummer), and his development is just as charted and manipulated as that of the alien offspring by sinister government entities. Molly's offspring escapes the lab and rapidly grows into a young boy (Empire's Shannon Brown), but Molly soon discovers that he does not come in peace and Ethan sacrifices himself to destroy the alien spores before they can contaminate the human race. Season two commences with Molly lying to a congressional panel about her certainty that the alien spores have been destroyed and no longer pose a threat to humanity. She does so at the urging of General Tobias Shepherd (Drowning by Numbers' David Morrissey), Head of Global Security Commision and an old flame, after he tells her that the offspring did survive the explosion but died shortly after of a massive seizure. When John discovers that Ethan managed to upload his memories into the Cloud, he and Julie rebuild his human shell and bring him back online. No sooner do they have Ethan back safe at home than Molly discovers that John and Julie were having an affair while she was in space, and their marriage is further strained when Homeland Security agents raid their home and take Ethan on a directive to de-activate AI robots above a certain intelligence threshold. They appeal to Shepherd but he is unable to help, explaining that the government feels Ethan is a threat due to the autonomous actions he took to destroy the alien spores and save humanity. Having lost both of her children, Molly falls into a depression. John discovers that the Humanichs project has been taken away from him by ruthless government operative Anna Schaefer (One Tree Hill's Hilarie Burton) and given to Julie with the new goal of weaponizing the Humanichs, he vows to stop them only to then be killed in a mysterious accident when his smart car stops itself in the path of an oncoming train. After a nervous breakdown in which she burned down John's home workshop and attacked Julie with a shovel at his funeral, Molly was committed to a psychiatric facility for six months. When the review board extends her evaluation period by another thirty days, Molly is convinced that the government is trying to shut her up about her husband's death. Learning about a grisly murder she suspects was committed by an alien, Molly escapes the facility to investigate the crime scene only to be apprehended by bounty detective JD Richter (Heist's Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Although Molly claims that she has information about the case, Richter lets the facility guards take her away but then gets her temporarily released as a material witness when he discovers that the victim was pregnant. Richter follows Molly's leads and discovers other victims whose fetuses have been extracted. When they question a pregnant woman (The Walking Dead's Alexandra Breckenridge) who reported her unusual symptoms (accelerated growth of the fetus, hallucations) on an AI medical advisory website, Molly reveals to Richter that she experienced the same symptoms when she was pregnant with an alien child. When Richter scoffs at the idea of an alien serially impregnating women, Molly goes off investigating on her own and traces the victims to a local club where she meets the alien Adhu (The Bleeding House's Henderson Wade). What Shepherd did not tell Molly is that the offspring shed its husk in the morgue, emerging as the young man who has been able to evade them and has used his telepathic powers to turn the soldiers sent after him against each other. Despite seeing Molly establishing contact with the alien, Shepherd orders a drone strike that kills fifty-two innocent people; Adhu and Molly having survived the blast when he lured her outside after disabling surveillance cameras. Richter arrives just before the blast in time to see the alien but Molly realizes she is his "mother" and stops him from killing Richter. In the aftermath of the blast, Molly learns the truth from Shepherd and he brings her onto the department's efforts to create a virus that will destroy the alien organism without killing the human host. Although both Shepherd and Molly warn Richter off of the investigation, he returns to Molly for help when his estranged daughter Kelsey (Secret in Their Eyes's Lyndon Smith) shows up on his doorstep pregnant. While working on cracking the genetic code of a preserved sample of the alien spores, Molly discovers not only that Julie has custody of Ethan (given to her to get her to agree to work on the Humanichs project) and has erased his memories of her. She also discovers that Julie is working on circumventing the Humanichs programming that give them free will in order to weaponized them to battle the aliens (the most immediate of "threats"). Although the next generation model Lucy (Transparent's Kiersey Clemons) outwardly appears to be the perfect weapon, she unnerves and undermines Julie with subtle rebellions and persuades Julie's chief coder Charlie (Walk the Line's Tyler Hilton) not to reprogram her; but there appears to be more to her motives than the desire for free will as she influences Ethan's own defiance of Julie and has plans for the other Humanich models yet to be activated. Molly meanwhile has been experiencing strange blackouts, promiscuous behavior, and hallucinations that has her at first believing she is suffering from radiation poisoning but she soon realizes she has been infected with alien spores. When messianic Adhu confronts Molly with his flock of human-alien hybrid children and warns her that a time will come when she must pick a side, even he may not realize that the battle will not be between aliens and humans but aliens and Humanichs as Shepherd and pragmatic Global Security president Fiona Stanton (Big Trouble in Little China's Kate Burton) realize too late that they have abdicated crucial decisions to the mysterious Taylor whose threat assessment in the name of global security may negate human life as we know it.  Although the middle of the season is somewhat bogged down in the middle by two tiresome love triangles between Molly, Shepherd, and Richter and Molly, Shepherd, and his glowering chief of staff (Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce's Necar Zadegan) – the chemistry between the actors does more than the longing glances, "will they, won't they" scenes, and people arriving at inopportune moments – a range of human insecurities from scorn to jealousy render the characters (and the Earth at large) vulnerable to takeover (more so than invasion). Both good and bad characters maintain their principles in spite of their fears and acknowledged weaknesses. The characters who occupy the grey area are mostly likeable in spite of their flaws. Shepherd has a past with Molly and is guilt-ridden over what has happened to her. Although he favors a virus to kill the aliens without harming their human hosts, he ultimately okays a drone strike that kills several innocent people seemingly for the greater good. Julie genuinely cared for John and wants to be a mother to Ethan. Although she is touching in scenes where she tries to explain the contradictory nature of human emotions to Ethan who is mourning his father and missing his mother, she ultimately decides to "erase" his memories rather than help him cope with his pain (even though he is programmed for experiential learning). Fiona is fair-minded when it comes to the custody issue of Ethan even though he was given to Julie for her compliance on the Humanichs project, but she blithely remarks on being free of the stress that come with making the kinds of decisions they have Taylor for. Like less derivative works of science fiction, Extant meditates on what it means to be human and ultimately exalts in "human" emotions and the capability of other entities to experience them (sometimes more so than the humans who have used technology to distance themselves). 
Video
Paramount places three episodes on each of four BD50 discs (technically four episodes on the second disc since two episodes were stitched together when broadcast). The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 transfers are stunning as expected with the combination of highly-detailed sets, excellent digital visual effects and CGI, and crisp photography. Although there are technically thirteen episodes in the second season (as there were on the first), episodes 6 and 7 & 12 and 13 aired in two-hour slots and are presented on the disc as extended single episodes (Paramount's case groups 6 and 7 together in the episode listing but suggests 12 and 13 are separate episodes). 
Audio
Audio options include a full-bodied DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (state of the art, as expected from a Spielberg production) and a serviceable Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo downmix. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included. 
Extras
Deleted and extended scenes are available for the episodes "Change Scenario" (1:19), "Cracking the Code" (0:30), "The New Frontier" (0:37), "Arms and the Humanich" (0:53), "The Other Side" (1:21), and "Zugzwang" (0:38). They are selectable below the play options for their respective episodes instead of a submenu on the fourth disc. Most of them contain redundant information like the establishing of characters more effectively introduced in the final cuts of the episodes. In "A Look at Season 2" (17:55), producers Craig Shapiro (Necessary Roughness), Elizabeth Kruger (Pan Am), producer/creator Mickey Fisher (The King of Iron Town), and executive producer Berry - along with actors Morgan and Gagnon - look at the developments in season two, including the transformation of Molly from mother into warrior and Ethan as he becomes aware of his free will among other themes new to the second season.  "A Tour of the Sets" (6:01) finds production designer Kenneth Hardy (The West Wing) discussing how the scope of the sets was enlarged for the second season while also expanding upon the characters' environments previously explored in season one as demanded by the script (the greater emphasis on Julie's apartment now that Ethan was living there and Molly's new house and the contrast in its modern style with the family home she burned down). "The Carnival of the Mind" (4:58) looks at the surreal carnival setting for Molly's near-death coma dream. In order to control the lighting from shot to shot, an entire circus set (complete with forty-foot Ferris wheel) was built inside a sound stage. "Chemistry: Molly & JD" (6:10) looks at the interplay between the characters played by Berry and Morgan while "Two Humanichs: Ethan & Lucy" (7:02) contrasts the conception of the first and second generation humanich characters with talking head input from the actors. "The Season Finale" (8:12) is heavy on the spoilers as it looks at the sets (and how director/former cinematographer ">Adam Kane was suited to take advantage of its visual possibilities), choreographing Berry's fight scene against her character's double, and shooting the final scene. Lastly, the "Gag Reel" (3:47) is a combination of funny gaffes, blown lines, and actors cracking up during tense scenes. The extras are reasonably informative but would have been better served with some deeper discussion of the seasons' themes touched upon in the featurettes.
Packaging
The packaging is rather puzzling, a four-piece foldout of thick laminated magnetized cardboard that clamps shut but barely holds the four discs in place. 
Overall
Season two of Extant is a very entertaining series that may have been overlooked by viewers since it was relegated to the summer while CBS' regular series were between seasons. 
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