Extant

Work Title: Extant
Medium: TV Episode
Episode Title: [seasons 1-2 as a whole]
Year: 2014
Writer(s):
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: No

Summary:

Molly Woods, an astronaut with ISEA (International Space Exploration Agency) is assigned a 13-month solo mission aboard space station Seraphim. She returns home to her husband John, a robotics engineer who created their son Ethan, a prototype android called a "humanich". When Molly discovers that she has mysteriously become pregnant despite years of infertility, she begins a search for answers." (Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extant_%28TV_series%29). Molly's baby is a hybrid alien and it seems the threat to the human race is from them, but in season 2 it's revealed that an AI invention of Molly's husband and a colleague takes its mission to save the human race to unethical extremes and tries to use the Humanichs to exterminate humans and 'start over.'

  • Self-Written?: 1
  • Source Name:
  • Source URL:

Era/Year of Portrayal: near_future

Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

As today but lots of small touches that suggest one step ahead of today's technologies, including voice interfaces with computers, interactive gesture-input displays, effective and fashionable HMDs, automated cars, a range of AIs from toys to androids, etc.


Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: Humanichs
  • Description of the technology: Humanoid robots - Ethan (the 'child' of Molly and John) was invented by John as a prototype and brought home to learn what it is to be human; after John is murdered (by the AI created by him and his partner, revealed in season 2), first one ('sister') humanich (Lucy, who is black or multi-racial) was created and then an army of others based on her limited experiences and lack of 'ethics limits' Ethan's revealed to have a power-down panel in his back for charging. The humanichs are able to access the future equivalent of the internet and obtain information. They're stronger physically than humans. Ethan's body is destroyed by a bomb at the end of season 1 but his essence is uploaded to the cloud and installed in a new body at the beginning of season 2. They're programmed to stop functioning (i.e., die) at a predetermined date in the future, John's way of making them experience mortality as humans do; Lucy fears and tries to circumvent this death. Others interact with humanichs exactly as with other humans. At one point Lucy tries to seduce one of the scientists who oversee the humanichs project, so they can apparently have sex with humans. Humanichs were originally programmed to not be capable of killing a human, but Lucy and the soldier humanichs didn't have this limitation. No one can distinguish humanichs from humans unless they reveal it somehow.
  • Nature of task or activity: Initially they were intended to be 'equal' to humans but after John is killed the government uses them to fight the hybrid aliens. They're identified at that point as soldiers.
  • Performance of the Technology: They perform perfectly throughout, though Lucy rejects the commands of the AI at the end of season 2 and sacrifices herself. This might be interpreted as fulfilling the original design intentions of her creator; perhaps she had enough interactions with the right humans to learn about them as Ethan did.
  • Description of creator(s): Two middle-aged white men created the original humanichs and all the scientists who work on them are young and white. In season 1 a wealthy Asian male is shown to be funding the humanichs research but with ulterior motives hidden from John, apparently designed to fight the alien threat.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): To be equals of humans and help them accomplish a variety of human tasks/roles, including that of family member.
  • Description of users of technology: A variety of people, mostly government workers including military leaders, all white, various ages but nobody old.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: social_presence
  • Description of presence experience: Exactly as interacting with a fellow human being.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: Although humanichs seem to be human, they were rarely shown fooling people - those they interacted with knew their status.
  • Valence of experience: The interactions with the humanichs were pleasant except with the soldier versions who killed the hybrids, and eventually even humans, without remorse.
  • Specific responses: Main character Molly (and her husband, creator John) and scientist Julie all love Ethan and at one point contest parental rights (Molly wins). Another scientist, Charlie, becomes close to both Ethan and Lucy.
Long-term consequences:

Although the soldiers were created against the wishes of John and his partner and have a very dangerous willingness to follow the commands of the AI because they were created without the ethics limits and didn't have the human experience of Ethan, they are stopped at the end of season 2 and Ethan and Lucy play a major role in accomplishing the positive ending. This might be seen as a warning about how we should develop humanoid robots and androids.

Other:

Coder name: Matthew Lombard
Coder email: lombard@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University