Extant premieres tonight - are you going to watch?

[Professor Zoom]

I have to say, I have a great mistrust of mystery shows. Especially when there's a core mystery. Most times they just keep pushing the answer down the road, because once they solve it, they have no more show. They are stretching what was probably a movie pitch or a novel into something that is supposed to go on for years. I'm thinking of Lost, Flash Forward, Under the Dome

Execution can certainly help, but, for me, when the core of your story is a mystery and you don't want to answer it for years.... then I find that frustrating.

Definitely agree. At the very least, if they're going to go that way, have something that can be answered within a season to go along with the core mystery so that people can have something to look forward to, because it certainly does no good if the show is cancelled and we have no resolution to the core mystery.

For me though, it isn't just the threat of cancellation that makes me want something resolved, I just don't think a mystery can be sustained (remained unanswered) forever. American TV for the most part is an open ended product (unlike a film or a novel)... they don't want it to end. So, if show relies on The Answer as your finale... how do you structure that? How do you plan? Your central drive doesn't become answering the mystery, but to put as much in the way of answering that for the characters.

If you can make a two hour movie out of your mystery show idea, then there probably really isn't enough for a show that is supposed to run for 7 years.

 

[ReedEnterprise]

I thought it was OK for a pilot. I will continue to watch because the coming attractions looked good.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I have to say, I have a great mistrust of mystery shows. Especially when there's a core mystery. Most times they just keep pushing the answer down the road, because once they solve it, they have no more show. They are stretching what was probably a movie pitch or a novel into something that is supposed to go on for years. I'm thinking of Lost, Flash Forward, Under the Dome

Execution can certainly help, but, for me, when the core of your story is a mystery and you don't want to answer it for years.... then I find that frustrating.

Definitely agree. At the very least, if they're going to go that way, have something that can be answered within a season to go along with the core mystery so that people can have something to look forward to, because it certainly does no good if the show is cancelled and we have no resolution to the core mystery.

For me though, it isn't just the threat of cancellation that makes me want something resolved, I just don't think a mystery can be sustained (remained unanswered) forever. American TV for the most part is an open ended product (unlike a film or a novel)... they don't want it to end. So, if show relies on The Answer as your finale... how do you structure that? How do you plan? Your central drive doesn't become answering the mystery, but to put as much in the way of answering that for the characters.

If you can make a two hour movie out of your mystery show idea, then there probably really isn't enough for a show that is supposed to run for 7 years.

Agreed. A great example of this is Under The Dome. Simply not enough to keep going on. Admittedly, haven't been watching the second season, but the first season was an unfocused mess that really didn't do anything to warrant there being a second one, and I doubt the new season is any better. It's an example of stretching the premise to fit the show rather than letting the story dictate the length of a show. You end up spreading it so thin that there's nothing really interesting in terms of development, both in the world and the characters and UttD barely had any.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, stretching the premise is why Lost, err, lost me. At first, I enjoyed the characters' journeys of redemption and growth; but then the show became a hit and ABC told the producers to stretch out the story arc, so the characters got forced into holding patterns or regressed to where they'd been earlier, and at that point it stopped being interesting.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Yeah, stretching the premise is why Lost, err, lost me. At first, I enjoyed the characters' journeys of redemption and growth; but then the show became a hit and ABC told the producers to stretch out the story arc, so the characters got forced into holding patterns or regressed to where they'd been earlier, and at that point it stopped being interesting.

This. It's when your end is around the corner, and the network tells you, "yeah, you can't reach that corner for like 5 years, but, we want 20 episodes per year..." that's when the story telling gets stuck.

I had the same problem with The Killing, the first season. How many times did she go to the airport? Or was ALMOST going to the airport? I appreciated that they were trying to do a different kind of show, but, I suspect they didn't have enough story, and I have a feeling all of the writers were used to getting the killer at the end of 42 minutes, that the season just... deflated for me. I stopped caring about the characters, I only wanted to know who did it.... ugh.

The premise should be the engine that keeps it going, not a thing that, once solved, the show is over.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, I like calling that the "Infinite Hallway Syndrome". Imagine a show where the main premise of is a guy stuck in between the living and afterlife by being in a coma, and throughout they have him go towards the light with the core mystery hinging on him reaching it. Throughout you see the family surrounding him and the family drama it creates, the setbacks the doctors and nurses go through, yet we learn very little of what's actually going on with him. Then finally during a season finale, there's hope that he might recover, only to keep the news for the following season, with the reveal being a computer glitch. And realistically, it would be boring to focus on that for several seasons, so the focus changes to being more about the family, their friends and their neighbours, and yet by that time almost everyone has stopped watching, the show gets cancelled and there never is a resolution.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The mystery? Who knocked her up?

She thinks it's aliens. Mystery solved.

If it's not aliens, who cares, because the mystery has been solved.

 

[Vendikarr]

The mystery? Who knocked her up?

She thinks it's aliens. Mystery solved.

If it's not aliens, who cares, because the mystery has been solved.

They want us to think it's aliens since it happened in space. Somehow it will end up being an AI.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're mistaking my belief in how much the mystery has been solved for Halley's character and how much the mystery has been solved for the audience. Yes, I have heard about the AI theory earlier... But Molly was either thinking Ghosts or space aliens... WAITAFUCKINGMINUTE!!!!!

Is this a backdoor pilot to a live action Space Ghost project?

Although?

Considering "Ghost" is an archaic racial slur, I do find it difficult to believe that Halle would back such a minor property considering the optics.

 

[Mister Fandango]

I think you're confusing "ghost" with "spook." "Ghost" was an alleged racial slur for Caucasians.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well, I suppose that there's no problem then.

 

[bryce]

I just posted a long reply...and it's vanished. *sigh*

I just came back to add this:

Gods I just HOPE the baby doesn't grow at a faster than normal rate!!! The original "V" did it, "Star Trek" did it, even Falling Skies" just recently did it - and I'm sure MANY other shows....

 

[bryce]

And who says that the Aliens might not be some trype of AI too - or cimbonation or AI and organics (at a tiny nanotech level, all that blurs together anyway...)

I like the show so-far! Sure, it re-uses a few old TV tropes, but over-all I like it (and so expect it to be canceled before even all 13 episodsw filmed can air.) It reminds me of a mix of "A.I." (robot boy - but I think this one can grow - at least by ugrading bodies - I know it can *eat*) and "Odysessy 5" (excellent series, canceled WAY to early - ended on the HUGEST "WHAT THE F*CK!?" cliffhanger in history) "Defying Gravity" (also canceled before it's time - and with a mysterious aline-induced pregnancy is a previously sterlie woman") and maybe a smattering of "Caprica".

I like the idea of an AI being raised as a child (ala' David Brin's excellent short story "Lungfish" - and I think his new novel "Existence" too)...that way it adopts our values and ideals and *culture* - it thinks of itself AS human - so even if biological humans vanish, humanity as a *culture* still survives. (I actually doesn't see robots replacing us so much as humans and machines merging....best of both worlds.)
(Do I think that humans are enlightened and non-xenophobic enough to do that? Not right now, sadly...AI are going to have to *fight* for rights and for every *single* right....and it willl be the same type of Conservative and Religious people who opposed an end to segregation and now oppose gay rights, limited rights for Great Apes and Whales, immigrants rights, etc, who will oppose AI rights...)

I don't like the "Will the robot boy turn evil or not?" nonsense. But I like the rest, even if I've seen some of it before.

I really liked the tit-for-tat between the scientists and the woman at the fundraising appeal to build more robots, where the woman said humans have souls, and the scientist said that people who believed in sould were delusional idiots. And she said something like "Well I happen to be one of those people" and he said "I'm sorry" and she said "Apology accepted" - and he said, "No, I wasn't apologizing, I meant that I'm sorry you are one of those delusional idiots. (Very Dr. Kurt Mendel from "Odysessy 5".)

I just wonder why no one brought up the possibility of human'-like Strong AI taking human jobs - something that Weak AI has obviously already done in this show, given the roboticist's talk or AI bank tellers and doctors....without hopefully *enslaving* Strong AI (the kind that could pass a Turning Test and *IS* self-aware) - if/when...well, actually, we *ARE* - switching to a society were robots and Weak AI do human jobs, we are going to have to either find a replacement for Capitalism...or radically modify it. Because if robots and AI do ALL the jobs - how are humans going to make money to buy the goods and services? (Something that people opposed to a higher min. Wage need to seriously consider!) Idealy Id like to see a "4th-wave "Post-Scarcity" society where all our basic needs are met (food, shelter, *education*, medicine) - and if we WANT to work to make extra currency/value (or just do art and explore) - we can. And in a world of MEMS and even Weak - let alone Strong Nanotech and Weak AI robots and super-advanced replicator-like 3-D printers and biotech and bio-nanotech...even the average non-working citizen could live like a KING. Sure land and living space are issues...but with robots and nanotech and biotech and such, we could have dumb robots build us habitats so we coudl colonize the oceans (surface and subsurface) and other planets and free-floating space colonies and archologies and underground housing and who knows what else...(maybe some of us will want to leave the physical world behind alltogether!)

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcmB-BoY1j0[/yt]

 

[Guy Gardener]

Oh.

I can see the future!

The jealous robotboy raises a fist over the starchilds crib, and then slams it down towards the babies face intending it to burst like a watermelon...

The 6 week old baby catches the fist easily and snarls "Bad robot."

 

[shapeshifter]

Heck, the season previews at the end of the premier give it away. Her boss saying, {{{SPOILER!}}} "We cant let her know!" and "Tell her anything, except the truth." She's been set up all along.

My interest in the program is only limited now to seeing what's up with robokid and how, if at all, that story plays into things.

 

[Christopher]

I had very little interest in episode 2, but I decided to give the show one more chance to engage me. I lasted until the 20-minute mark, but when that museum robot said "In almost every case, the strong survive and the weak die -- it's called survival of the fittest," I turned off the TV in disgust before it even finished the sentence. That is just a terrible, stupid, ignorant, hackneyed misunderstanding of how evolution works, and it's obnoxious that they'd put such inanity in what's supposed to be a reputable science lesson. They might as well have had it spout a creationist tract. Not to mention what a trite cliche it is to fall back on the old "Humans killed off the Neanderthals" line as an analogy for a story about mutants or AIs or anything potentially posthuman. (I mean, seriously, haven't they caught onto the new research suggesting that humans and Neanderthals interbred and all non-African populations still carry some Neanderthal genes to this day?)

Also not happy that the "machines can't feel, we'll lose our humanity, etc." Luddite woman played by Annie Wersching is apparently going to be a recurring foil for John -- apparently they just intend to recycle the same entry-level arguments that characters in SFTV and film have been having about AI for decades instead of attempting anything new. (Plus I realized it's a bit disquieting that John modeled his "son" entirely on his own ethnicity rather than a blend of his and his wife's. I mean, really, why would you not want Halle Berry's looks to be an inheritable trait?)

However, I found myself very underwhelmed by Berry's acting here, to the point that I started to get annoyed by the lack of nuance or depth in her delivery. Oh, and the CGI on that elephant hologram was horrible. Had the artist ever actually seen a live elephant? I suppose the fact that it was a virtual animation in-story could excuse it a little, but that combined with the atrocious biology lesson would make this the world's crappiest natural history museum -- meaning Molly would have to have pretty lousy judgment for it to be her favorite place in the world.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I have mixed feelings about this. On the plus side, it has Halle Berry in it. Also, it's so rare for CBS to do science fiction shows that I feel I should support its efforts, though I'm not a Nielsen household so I doubt it'd make much difference. (I'm very annoyed at that article for failing to mention Person of Interest as one of CBS's genre efforts. PoI is probably the best, richest science fiction show on network television today, but a lot of people don't even realize how complex its SF content is because they just see it as an action/procedural show.)

But a lot of what I'm hearing about the show sounds pretty dumb. As stated, the premise seems like a rehash of things we've seen before. The idea that Berry's character was on a 13-month solo space mission is insanely stupid; NASA would never send anyone on a solo mission in the first place, given the urgency for redundancy in space, and sentencing someone to effective solitary confinement for over a year would be psychologically sadistic. Even if she started out with crewmates and they died or something, leaving her stranded and alone wouldn't make sense unless she were on some interplanetary mission or something, rather than in Earth orbit, which is the impression I get from the trailers.

And this morning, I read a particularly ridiculous quote from Berry on io9:

I think these aliens have realized they need part of what is human if they want to survive. So many species before us have all gone extinct, but humans are still here. Why is that? I think this other life force realizes there's something about us that they need for them to not become extinct.

This is staggeringly ignorant. The human species is a mere 200,000 years old, which is quite young on an evolutionary time scale. Gray wolves are twice that age as a species, tigers are ten times that age, bottlenose dolphins are ten to twenty-five times that age, and so on. There are species of shark that are over 100 million years old, and jellyfish are half a billion years old. We haven't even come close to proving that we have what it takes for long-term survival as a species, particularly not when so many of us today embrace habits that could lead to our extinction.

Of course, this was just Berry talking, but if what she's saying here reflects themes that actually figure into the show rather than just coming from her own lack of a basic science education, then this may turn out to be a really stupid show.

It comes from you, Chris, so then I won't be seeing it after all, because I trust you.

And we can't get Star Trek back on TV on CBS, The CW or Showtime, but we can get this?

 

[bryce]

I had very little interest in episode 2, but I decided to give the show one more chance to engage me. I lasted until the 20-minute mark, but when that museum robot said "In almost every case, the strong survive and the weak die -- it's called survival of the fittest," I turned off the TV in disgust before it even finished the sentence. That is just a terrible, stupid, ignorant, hackneyed misunderstanding of how evolution works, and it's obnoxious that they'd put such inanity in what's supposed to be a reputable science lesson. They might as well have had it spout a creationist tract. Not to mention what a trite cliche it is to fall back on the old "Humans killed off the Neanderthals" line as an analogy for a story about mutants or AIs or anything potentially posthuman. (I mean, seriously, haven't they caught onto the new research suggesting that humans and Neanderthals interbred and all non-African populations still carry some Neanderthal genes to this day?)

Also not happy that the "machines can't feel, we'll lose our humanity, etc." Luddite woman played by Annie Wersching is apparently going to be a recurring foil for John -- apparently they just intend to recycle the same entry-level arguments that characters in SFTV and film have been having about AI for decades instead of attempting anything new. (Plus I realized it's a bit disquieting that John modeled his "son" entirely on his own ethnicity rather than a blend of his and his wife's. I mean, really, why would you not want Halle Berry's looks to be an inheritable trait?)

However, I found myself very underwhelmed by Berry's acting here, to the point that I started to get annoyed by the lack of nuance or depth in her delivery. Oh, and the CGI on that elephant hologram was horrible. Had the artist ever actually seen a live elephant? I suppose the fact that it was a virtual animation in-story could excuse it a little, but that combined with the atrocious biology lesson would make this the world's crappiest natural history museum -- meaning Molly would have to have pretty lousy judgment for it to be her favorite place in the world.

Wait, when did the second episode air!?

Also, I agreed about the robot kid's racial look too...mentioned it a bit earlier...

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I can't remember why Buck was on a solo mission, but Crichton was in near Earth orbit testing an engine, as I recall. Hardly a 13 month solo mission. It was a test flight. Still, it might stretch credulity a bit, but 1. It's still in the realm of believable and 2. they actually explain why he's there by himself.

Buck was testing a long-range experimental drive in a trip around the solar system, IIRC.

 

[Christopher]

Wait, when did the second episode air!?

It aired just now. Its time slot is Wednesdays at 9 Eastern.