Extant – A New World – Review

It may be “A New World,” but Molly Woods is stuck with the same problems as this week’s episode starts.

Kryger’s dead. Sparks and his wife have fled the scene with the entity. And with her offspring dispatching anyone who tries to apprehend him or harm her, Yasumoto orders Molly to bring the baby to him if she ever wants to see John and Ethan again.

The scenes of Molly and Kern searching for Sparks were a snooze, too much recapping and rehashing. A boring sequence with Molly and a young witness unsubtly rams home Molly’s maternal instincts. The pointless Dr. Mason pops back up only to be promptly murdered by Sparks. And a lazy deus ex machina is introduced when Kern suggests they can trust the acting director of the ISEA to help them. Which…what? Hasn’t Sparks only been AWOL for like a day? And someone has already taken his place? And given Kern has been spending his time running around with Molly and Kryger, when did he have a chance to catch up on office politics?

Back at Yasumoto’s, the kid gloves his captors have been using on him (and the lax security that seems to be a staple on this show) gives John the chance to snoop around. Cleverly translating a conversation and cracking a security code with his phone, John stumbles upon Yasumoto’s secrets – the life-sustaining substance and that he only has eight days left to life. Though Yasumoto gets off a great line about John being the Joseph to Molly’s Mary (hey…matching initials!), John soon turns the tables and leverages the last vial for his freedom.

Remanded by the ISEA and rapidly aging, Yasumoto finally offers up some answers about his origin and his agenda. Over 140 years ago, as a miner for Claypool Industries, he was exposed to a mysterious meteorite after getting caught up in a cave-in. The yellow substance saved his life (a nice touch – what I thought was a carving in his office was actually a rock on which he marked the month he was trapped) and he has spent all this time since trying to track down its source in space. But while Molly accuses him of being afraid to die (and I think that’s definitely true), it seems Yasumoto is also convinced that he and Molly were destined to bring the “architect of eternal life” to Earth. Is he right?

Still in the wrong is Sparks, who again spends the episode betraying those around him. At first, it strangely seems like he’s having second thoughts about helping the entity, which would have been a rather sudden shift in the writing. Yet the reveal that it was a ruse to get back into the ISEA for some reason doesn’t really explain the scenes we saw of him shaken by Kryger’s death while wife Anya was suddenly all in. Speaking of Anya, we see her left unconscious or dead by the entity. Did Sparks know that would happen?

Sparks’ latest scheme surely has something to do with what’s happening on the repositioned Seraphim. Astronaut Sean Glass (“Dollhouse” alum Enver Gjokaj, yay!) is stunned when he receives a transmission about a recovered ISEA escape pod. And who is its passenger? Katie. That was a real surprise. So is it really her and, if so, is she still pregnant? Is it possible she’s being hallucinated by Sean (he seems to know her personally). And is this what Sparks was after all along?

Over in the Odin subplot, he’s putting his own master plan into motion. Tricking Ethan and taking out his power supply, he then plants some kind of detonation device, presumably to make an example out of him in some public setting. Wouldn’t a sophisticated piece of technology like Ethan detect such an object? In any case, it’s starting to annoy me how easily Odin has managed to accomplish his mission. That, given how protective of Ethan they’ve always been, genius scientists John and Julie haven’t noticed how often Odin contrives to be alone with him. Or that Ethan usually has a weird emotional outburst after these interactions. I’ve been speculating that the jealous Charlie might stumble onto Odin’s operation and possibly be killed for his troubles, but I guess there’s still time.

Did you enjoy “A New World” or were you happy enough with the old one? Let me know what you thought.