What do the planet Earth, a giant eyeball, a beating heart and a fetus have in common?
I have no idea. But it seems if you cut from one to the next in quick enough succession, the result is a nifty little teaser for the upcoming CBS sci-fi series Extant. The teaser, along with its aforementioned, vaguely 2001-like imagery, also tells us exactly what Extant is… were one to look it up in a dictionary. The word means both “Still in existence” and “The opposite of extinct,” two definitions that seem more than a little redundant but probably make sense once we’ve actually, you know, seen the show.
So for all those who enjoy relentlessly picking apart clues for upcoming cryptic sci-fi stuff, there’s an plenty to be found here. Even more so once you’ve read the series’ synopsis, which describes star Halle Berry as “an astronaut whose experiences upon her return home lead to events that change the course of human history.” It seems like Berry’s space exploits led to her un-extinctifying some long-extinct alien. Or maybe she’ll indirectly cause humanity to become almost-extinct and reach “extant” status. Or maybe “extant” just happened to pop up on the right Word of the Day Calendar at the right time.
Whatever the case may be, Extant has a little extra oomph in its corner with the presence of Steven Spielberg in an executive producer role. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope Extant veers towards Close Encounters and away from stuff like Terra Nova (which Spielberg also executive produced, and which failed to make history’s coolest anything- the dinosaur- seem particularly exciting). Check out the teaser below.
Extant premieres on July 2 at 9 PM on CBS.
