By: Kay Kellam

Extant on CBS Summer 2014

This is a show I had, admittedly, been waiting for.  The premise, though few details were given in the commercials airing during other CBS shows, sounded interesting.  An astronaut goes off on a 13 month solo mission, and when she comes back her post-mission medical check-up reveals she came back pregnant.

In one commercial her son says she / the family were on the ship so they would be safe.

It was those little bread crumbs that tempted me into watching.  They didn’t reveal large amount about the plot, honestly I wasn’t even sure if the show would start on earth before the mission, on the ship during the mission, or on earth after the mission.   What I knew was the commercials were playing with the words Extinct and Extant, with extant meaning basically surviving, or still in existence.  (In the case of this show, perhaps the opposite of extinction given the way they commercial has been playing with the two words?)

I try to avoid spoilers when writing about shows before they’ve aired their arcs, and this is a 13 episode serialized drama, so it will be a few months before I get to dive into it for others, but what I’ll say now is the pilot was well paced, kept me guessing and wondering, had surprises those commercials hadn’t tipped me off to… and by the end I knew I do indeed want to watch the next 12 episodes.

Fans will quickly recognize Halle Berry who is surrounded by a very talented cast. Her husband is played by Goran Visnjic of ER, Red Widow, Pan Am, and a nice version of Spartacus back in 2004.  Camryn Manheim of the Practice, Ghost Whisperer, and recently recurring on Person of Interest, rocks as her doctor, while Pierce Gagnon of One Tree Hill and Looper continues his on-screen career of charming the camera.

For those wanting to delve deeper, check out the CBS website, where they have Molly’s Mission Diaries.

CBS.com Extant Homepage Screenshot