By Dani

With the success of Kerry Washington in Scandal, we continue to see more black women leading network television series. This summer, CBS and Steven Spielberg brought us Extant, starring Halle Berry, which premiered July 9. The L.A. Times describes the series as a “futuristic drama [with] Berry as astronaut Molly Woods, whose life is turned upside down when she returns home from a yearlong solo mission to discover she is inexplicably pregnant.”

I’ve watched several episodes, and while the show has a muted tone, the themes explored are very interesting. There are questions like, “What exactly is a soul? What defines being human? Should machines be allowed to develop on their own, or do humans need to closely shepherd artificial intelligences? Is there a risk of machines replacing humans as the dominant APEX species?” With a bit of NASA (named “ISEA” in the series) and U.S. government conspiracy thrown in, I became hooked.

So what do you all think? Is anyone watching Extant?