Orphan Black and Extant

Abstract

Extant: The First Season (Mickey Fisher US 2013). Paramount 2014. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$27.00.Extant: The Second Season (Mickey Fisher USA 2014). Paramount 2015. Region 1. 16:9 (1.85:1). US$50.00Orphan Black: Season 1 (John Fawcett Canada 2013). BBC Home Entertainment 2013. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$30.00.Orphan Black: Season 2 (John Fawcett Canada 2014). BBC Home Entertainment 2014. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$30.00.Orphan Black: Season 3 (John Fawcett Canada 2015). BBC Home Entertainment 2015. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$30.00.Orphan Black and Extant have arisen out of a particular set of historical and political realities, as evidenced by the composition of their casts, their characters and the themes explored in each series. Together they reflect an overlapping set of contemporary social and cultural anxieties, both those originating from within the dominant culture and those originating on its margin. They also each represent a potential for boundary transgressions which can test those cultural anxieties in alternative speculative landscapes. In Orphan Black, the ethical and moral consequences of human cloning and its impact on human identity development are explored throughout the series from the perspective of the clones, all played by the same actress, Tatiana Maslany. In Extant, artificial intelligence and human-alien hybrids confront the characters with fundamental philosophical questions about autonomy, personhood, free will and the right to life. While Orphan Black seems to have achieved a level of cultural importance in the zeitgeist that Extant never did, each show adds to current conversations about diversity and representation in visual media, whose lives and bodies matter and, by extension, whose stories are worthy of telling.Set in the present, Orphan Black is a Canadian television programme created by screenwriter Graeme Manson and director John Fawcett, which aired in the USA on BBC America for three seasons and is now slated for a fourth season beginning spring 2016. Orphan Black takes its name from the status of the main character: Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) is a literal orphan, though her status as a genetic clone has been unknown to her throughout her life; she was living off-the-grid, hidden in black shadows, and therefore not tracked and monitored throughout her life like her clone sisters. Manning has grown up to become a small-time con artist and rebellious young mother, looking for one last score. The series begins when Manning assumes the identity of Elizabeth Childs, her doppelganger, after she witnesses Childs's suicide. Manning initiates the impersonation with a mind towards a payout that will allow Manning to start a new life with the daughter Kira Manning (Skyler Wexler) and her foster brother Felix 'Fee' Dawkins (Jordon Gavaris), whom she enlists to help her assume Childs's identity by faking her own death. But Childs turns out to be more than just a lookalike; she is actually Manning's genetic clone. Manning discovers she is in fact a living genetic experiment, one of an unspecified number of clones secretly implanted and born to various women in Europe and the United States via in vitro fertilisation beginning in 1984 as part of 'Project Leda'.Extant, which has a title that toggles with the word 'extinct', has the heightened and constant sense of an eminent annihilation threat. During the opening credits of Extant's first season, the voice over of astronaut and scientist Dr Molly Woods (Halle Berry) says, 'I went to space on a 13-month solo mission. I didn't come home alone. My husband created a life-like android called a Humanich. His name is Ethan: he's the prototype. This is a story about Earth, a story about family, a story about surviving.' Ethan (Pierce Gagnon) looks like a little boy and learns as a child does, through experiences in his environment and family - but he is not human. Now Molly has returned from space inexplicably pregnant; safety, autonomy and agency cannot be taken for granted by any of the characters, nor can the usual contours of American upper middle-class life. …