Apple TV+ Extrapolations (2023) (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

Extrapolations (2023) is a new AppleTV+ show extrapolating the future of our world, societies, politics, personal lives assuming a global temperature increase of 2º by 2037. Based on watching the first two episodes, it’s a semi-anthology: each episode is set further along in the timeline (2037 and then 2046), each telling a standalone story that builds on the prior. It has a tremendous cast fill with great cameos and guest appearances. It’s a bit like: Black Mirror for climate change.

Extrapolations is a form of hard sci-fi: positing plausible changes to the world based on technological changes and then telling a story borne of the consequences. But it’s very modern scifi, being centered on emotional, human stories. The technology is all there, but it cares more about the feel of the story.

Extrapolations is strongly opinionated. It will be too preachy for some. The suffering environmentalists are good. The billionaire technologists profiting from the world burning are bad.

I love it. This is good, modern scifi. It is relevant: if anything this show is a decade late in tackling the story. The writing and actors are good, great. And it’s genuinely moving. The second episode, “Whale Fall” had me on the edge of losing it.

Extrapolations (TV Series 2023– ) - IMDb

Extrapolations: Created by Scott Z. Burns. With Simon Deonarian, Diane Lane, Eiza González, Marion Cotillard. Unanticipated stories of how the upcoming changes to our planet will affect love, faith, work and family on a personal and human scale.

www.imdb.com

 

[John Dirk]

Extrapolations is strongly opinionated. It will be too preachy for some.

Thanks for the warning. hard pass...

 

[jayembee]

I haven't watched any of the so-far-released (first 3) episodes, but I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I've been considering adding Apple TV to my current streaming platforms. Sounds like something I would enjoy. Big fan of speculative SF. Thanks for the impressions regarding the new series.

- Walter.

 

[DaveF]

I've been considering adding Apple TV to my current streaming platforms. Sounds like something I would enjoy. Big fan of speculative SF. Thanks for the impressions regarding the new series.

- Walter.

Foundation Season 2 comes out later this year. So you can have two big scifi series to enjoy.

 

[DaveF]

The third episode was only one year after the prior: 2047. It was tonally almost the opposite of 2046. It brought back a character from the first episode and told a story that was in some ways lighter, more comedic. But there was a heaviness that runs through all the episodes.

Also, since they’ve got Daveed Diggs, they worked in a song and dance. It wasn’t really necessary and only glancingly on theme. But, when you’ve got Daveed Diggs, you’ve got Daveed Diggs.

 

[jayembee]

My wife and I watched the first two episodes tonight. The first episode didn't completely work for me. Felt more like a "proof of concept" type of pilot, than a finished one. Did more to establish the backdrop than the storytelling. I was surprised that Kit Harrington's character wasn't a more extreme capitalist bad guy, and that Matthew Rhys's character was the moustache-twirling asshole.

It took me aback to realize that Rebecca's female colleague -- the one with the raven story -- was Cara Gee, who played Drummer in The Expanse, even though I've seen her in another show as well. I'm so used to seeing that heavy eye shadow she has as Drummer.

And it’s genuinely moving. The second episode, “Whale Fall” had me on the edge of losing it.

100% agreement. This episode was not only moving in ways we didn't expect, but it was as solid a piece of science fiction I've seen on TV in a long time.

 

[Greg.K]

Agree on episode 2. Such great writing.

 

[DaveF]

Episode 4: 2059

A decade jump forward and completely new characters for this vignette on the scientific and moral tenants of eco-engineering. A reminder too that this is Premiere TV with Apple Money behind it: Edward Norton starring and Diane Lane supporting.

There’s probably a proper descriptor for what I’m calling scifi-by-argument story. It reminds me of Contact (1997) where the heart of the science-fiction conflict is done by argument (dialog) between the main characters.

I loved it. Memorable characters were created, their positions established, and in plausible and smartly written conversations, presented the audience a “hard scifi” concept. A concept with serious questions about whether humanity should use the technology. And no answer asserted either way at the end.

I prefer “ show me don’t tell me” for TV and movies. But this is a case where telling is showing, that works excellently for an anthology series.

And I expect the next episode will continue this story to explore its consequences.

 

[DaveF]

2059 Part II: Nightbirds

To my surprise, the episode following 2059 was…in 2059. 2059 Part II is takes place parallel to and then immediately following the events of 2059. The intro gives us a mini-action scene, the exit of a theft from the Svaldbard Global Seed Vault. Then it moves to Mumbai, picking up with the characters witnessing the explosion of the plane at the end the previous episode. And who we learn as the episode progresses, are transporting the stolen seeds along this next leg of their journey.

Five episodes in, and Extrapolations is for the first time examining not the lives of wealthy white people, but poor people of color. Extrapolations has examined the lives of the global elite, the upper middle class, the powerful who could have but failed to effect any change. 2059 Part II considers the billions who are most profoundly affected by climate change.

We don’t learn why the seeds were stolen. We don’t know the plan for them. There is context given. A plant geneticists is involved. But it’s not explicitly described. It’s suggested that whatever this plan is can’t work.

But it all makes sense. If you’ve read any of the reporting the past decade or two on Big Ag, the ownership of seeds, this all fits into that context.

Part II ends on a positive note, for the first time I think an episode concludes with some hope.

Except the in-credits audio background adds a bit more context — I was waiting for this unintended consequence and it’s there — reminding us of the concerns voiced in the prior episode.

 

[DaveF]

Svalbard Global Seed Vault Virtual Tour | Explore in 360°

Stunning, interactive experience created by The Virtual Tour Experts.

virtualtourcompany.co.uk

 

[DaveF]

2066: Lola

Seven years after the geo-engineering terrorist attack / seed-vault theft, and 20 years after episode two’s Whale Fall, we’re introduced to Ezra as a young adult struggling against the cognitive decline caused by his Summer Heart condition, using the ever-more-costly cloud-storage of his memories.

2066 is the least climate-change-centric episode so far. The increasingly chaotic climate, and cost pressure it puts on blockchain cloud computer is the putative reason for Ezra’s stresses. But it’s really secondary insofar as his external pressure is he’s economically stressed while trying to pay for expensive support services for his medical condition. That is, it’s a climate change story. It’s a relatable story about real concerns we face currently.

Ezra works for Pack, a gig-work job where he is paid to assume the role of someone else for the customer. He performs as a father to a young girl a few hours a night, playing with her, telling her stories, attending parent-teacher conferences. The mother pays for this to help her daughter get through the consuming grief and depression the daughter had over the abrupt loss of her real father.

The roles, we learn as the episode progresses, range from being a corporation‘s heavy in serving eviction notices or firing legacy employees up to playing the role of a lover to a scared wife trying to convince her husband (who suffers from violent heat-rage) she’s dumping her affair to stay with him.

Ezra works this job to pay for the maintenance of his cognitive storage, struggling to preserve memories of his wife and child, to replay them to re-live them, to reinforce them, to keep them for when his mental decline robs them from natural recall.

2066 plays off a favorite theme of mine: Memory is who we are. See Dark City for the modern seminal movie on this.

2066 was challenging, difficult, unsettling. It was also beautiful in ways similar but very different from Whale Fall.

The more I think on it, the more I appreciate it.

 

[Josh Dial]

Every episode so far has been better than the previous. I don't mean to damn with faint praise, only to say that it starts off okay but has become something really great.

"2066: Lola" was a fantastic piece of speculative fiction. But for the call backs to previous episodes and characters, it would have fit right in with the best of the Black Mirror show.

Tahar Rahim and Gemma Chan were both wonderful and had really great chemistry.

It was interesting to see a non-Alpha company dominate the episode. Until we saw the Alpha building in London I thought there was a chance the company had collapsed (perhaps because of the geo-engineering eco-terrorism attack).

I look forward to this show each week. The first episode was definitely rough around the edges despite the absolutely stacked cast (the episode didn't quite know what to do with Matthew Rhys). But people are missing out on some great "near future" sci-fi if they stopped or haven't started watching.

 

[Greg.K]

"2066: Lola" was a fantastic piece of speculative fiction. But for the call backs to previous episodes and characters, it would have fit right in with the best of the Black Mirror show.

We were definitely reminded of Black Mirror with this episode, in a good way. And was the re-introduction of whales at the end the first actual sign of hope?

 

[DaveF]

We were definitely reminded of Black Mirror with this episode, in a good way. And was the re-introduction of whales at the end the first actual sign of hope?

Second sign of hope. And the first one - rain in India - was mixed outcome.

 

[jayembee]

The third episode was only one year after the prior: 2047. It was tonally almost the opposite of 2046. It brought back a character from the first episode and told a story that was in some ways lighter, more comedic. But there was a heaviness that runs through all the episodes.

Also, since they’ve got Daveed Diggs, they worked in a song and dance. It wasn’t really necessary and only glancingly on theme. But, when you’ve got Daveed Diggs, you’ve got Daveed Diggs.

My wife and I finally watched eps 3 and 4 Wednesday night. We both liked ep3 quite a bit. Of Alanna, we thought, "Wow, she is some piece of work!" but by the end, the interplay between her and Marshall turned out to be quite fascinating.

One of the bits I found funny was when Marshall was telling (in voice-over) the parable about the drowning man, and I'd heard a different version of it within the last year. I the version I heard it had to do with a man praying to God to keep him safe from Covid. The punch line was roughly the same.

Episode 4: 2059

A decade jump forward and completely new characters for this vignette on the scientific and moral tenants of eco-engineering. A reminder too that this is Premiere TV with Apple Money behind it: Edward Norton starring and Diane Lane supporting.

There’s probably a proper descriptor for what I’m calling scifi-by-argument story. It reminds me of Contact (1997) where the heart of the science-fiction conflict is done by argument (dialog) between the main characters.

I loved it. Memorable characters were created, their positions established, and in plausible and smartly written conversations, presented the audience a “hard scifi” concept. A concept with serious questions about whether humanity should use the technology. And no answer asserted either way at the end.

I prefer “ show me don’t tell me” for TV and movies. But this is a case where telling is showing, that works excellently for an anthology series.

And I expect the next episode will continue this story to explore its consequences.

This episode didn't work as well for us. Everything you say about it really does encapsulate it well, but it felt plodding.

While perhaps not on the same level as Norton and Lane, there were a couple of other very familiar faces for us: Cherry Jones and Indira Varma. And the FBI agent who talks to Norton is a recurring actress from Blue Bloods.

On the other hand, when Norton talks on the phone to the head of Ace Chemicals, I didn't recognize that person as Kit Harington's character from ep1 until I saw his voice credit pop up in the end titles.

 

[DaveF]

2068: The Going Away Party

The Going Away Party is clearly informed by a sub-sub-genre or trope that I’m aware of but not really strongly experienced with: the angry dinner party. It’s New Year’s Eve, and a middle-aged couple with some obvious and suppressed marital problems are hosting a NYE party. (It felt off that the “party” with a huge dinner of multiple courses and paid help to serve had an invite list of two people: an old friend and his girlfriend du jour. There should have been another couple or three: but, ok, TV budgets and storytelling needs.)

The air outside basically unbreathable, it’s far worse than Los Angeles in the ‘70s, and everyone wears oxygen masks. This big party costs six months of carbon credits to pay for actual animal proteins (rather than processed kelp fake meats). We learn the younger generation, echoing the socio-economic stresses of 2023, are struggling to get by with erratic gig-work, and have a hopeless view to the future. They’ve lost a lot of family to the environmental-borne diseases, fires, etc. The 20-somethings get chipped — possibly from dodgy grey market to afford it — to engage in Alpha’s augmented reality (AR) world that paints dreary reality, be it strangers’ living room or sex with your age-inappropriate boyfriend, Instagram-fun.

So then, the narrative twist: The hapless, ever-failing husband of the hosting couple, who was spent his career snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and kept them ever in mere middle-classdom rather than propelling into upper class comfort, to his harpy wife’s simmering anger, actually has a hidden success.

He invested in a company that does a full body scan, digitizes your whole self, and puts you in digital cold storage to be resurrected in a bio-engineered body one day in the future after “the earth heals itself”. The process kills you. It’s the new “cut off your head and have it cryogenically frozen” that Walt Disney was long rumored to have done. And as an early investor, he won the lottery and is undergoing scanning New Years Day. And he has the one ticket. And he’s leaving his wife behind. (This was passingly setup in the closing scene of the prior episode with a report of a bio-engineered / resurrected dog, I think.)

She’s upset. He’s surprised he’s upset. The guest is his protege who at 20 years younger, has always secretly had the hots for the wife. And the passing girlfriend watches all this with growing frustration. What seem to be deep problems to those 20 and 40 years older are to her luxuries she can only aspire to.

In the background is the gig-worker hired Maid / Server to the party. Played by Marion Cotillard, she is central to the story, and yet under-utilized in the episode. More than the girlfriend, she has lost everything: no friends, no family, can’t routinely afford the bottled oxygen to get from job to job, even her bicycle vandalized.

She gazes on the party’s implosion with the facade of hired help, just hoping to get paid, knowing there’s not even a tip coming from this debacle. But at least stealing some bites of rare, quality food.

The ending, as it had to be, in a Black-Mirror-esqe (or Twilight Zone if that’s still your guide star for this sort of story ) is the server steals the ”ticket” and the digital pass to a better future.

And being Extrapolations, we don’t know if this works. We are not yet in that future. Did she escape, stealing a better life from the owner? Or did she commit a sanitary suicide? Did she care, for the first time having hope in a future and escaping the her loathed present?

 

[DaveF]

2070: Ecocide

How do you end a thematic anthology? It’s not a strict anthology: Extrapolations is telling a story, with connecting themes and characters. It has a beginning and needs and end.

You put humanity on trial, via proxy Nick Bilton founder of Alpha.

Extrapolations has had much stronger episodes. Ecocide was adequate. It returned to the overly-preachy, and one-dimensional characterizations of the global elite of the first episode 2037: A Raven Story.

I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it.

I like what Extrapolations is doing, or trying to do, so much that I accept when it falters. I’m more interested in efforts of challenging and novel story telling than easy fan-service and cashing in on nostalgia.

If the finale had been exceptional, I’d recommend Extrapolations with the caveats I noted in my first post. But the final two episodes were middling, so I recommend it if you’re looking for interesting and new scifi, but I’m more qualified than I‘d hoped.

So, Nick Bilton: as we the viewers know, he has actively engineered long-term climate damage for short-term profits. He’s now on trial for this in The Hague international court, being judged by a trio of AI judges.

The interesting part is it uses Nick to argue the role of us the individuals: we accept our comforts and technologies and free Prime shipping and willfully look away from the long term harm caused by our choices.

The prosecution argues that Bilton with his wealth and influence lead us, the great masses, into these choices. And with his wealth and power and genius could have lead us to other choices. That we are followers yes, but he as a leader shoulders the true responsibility.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

 

[jayembee]

Finally found some time to get back into this show. I've had the time, but my wife hasn't, so I've been waiting patiently until she was able to continue watching with me. We were planning to watch eps 5&6 tonight, but her father called half-way through the first of those, so we only got through that one. Hopefully, we can see the last three tomorrow.

Anyway, it'd been long enough since we seen ep 4 that we didn't work out that the explosion in the sky was the plane from that episode until late in the episode. The episode in general seemed more picaresque than informative, but we didn't mind that. Just watching how "ordinary" people are dealing with the climate issue as they go about their lives was interesting enough in its own right. And the slow bonding between Gaurav and Neel was nice, and unexpected, as was the bonding with the villagers.