This is a new segment where I air my grievances with certain issues happening in the film industry. Don't agree with me? Good. Leave a comment below and let's chat about it! But for my first segment, I feel like this has to be discussed somewhere or I'm going to lose my mind.

You've all seen the promos for Extant right? Starring Halle Berry? You've probably even seen the pilot episode that aired July 9th right? Any other time, I would have been the first one to watch this show. That's not the case with this. I still haven't seen nor do I plan to in the near future. Maybe if it makes it to season two, I might take a peek at it. But for now, I just can't get over this thing that has been bothering me.



With all the recent success of Scandal starring Kerry Washington, (even though it's been on the air for three years), Hollywood has finally decided it was time for a little diversity. More TV shows are going to feature black leads in primetime slots this upcoming fall season. This has never happened before, so when it does happen, you gotta take notice.

When I first heard about Extant, I thought the concept was a little cool. It's pure sci-fi, my catnip right? As I was thinking about it some more, mulling over if I was excited about it or not, I started to realize something. Hollywood isn't ready for jack spit! And you can tell them I said it!

Yes we have more diversity on TV and films than ever and I can appreciate the effort that took to get us there. But reading the premise for Extant just made my toes curl. An astronaut goes into space for like 14 months and she's all alone. But when she comes back to earth, she's carrying an extra passenger. While cool, I couldn't help but think why she had to be pregnant? They could have done this any number of ways. Maybe an alien overtook her body. Maybe she's a robot. Maybe they're hitching a ride in her brain. But why does she have to be pregnant? I'm not saying this is directly tied to Halle being black or a woman, but I can't help wondering what would happen if there was a male lead. He definitely wouldn't be pregnant, would he? No. They probably would have had him abducted and his DNA messed with as he slowly sank into dementia and his alien side took over.

Finally, there's diversity in sci-fi but it is still so heavily dominated by young, blond heroic men. Not that there's anything wrong with that but I can practically hear some of you shaking your heads and murmuring about Nichelle Nichols in Star Trek, Will Smith in I, Robot, or Zoe Saldana in the Star Trek reboot, but out of those three instances, where else?





And now we get one of the arguably biggest movie stars of all time on TV, coming to us weekly, and....she's pregnant. Look, I'm all for her doing this because she wants to be closer to her kids. I understand how the idea of a kid not being your own or even the simple exploration of motherhood of a possibly new species is mysterious and cool, but why couldn't something like Star Wars have a female be the plucky, young hero whose lap this falls into? Why couldn't there be a female captain of a ship exploring the final frontier in Star Trek? Why couldn't E.T. star a girl instead of a boy? Or the new Earth to Echo movie have a bigger female to male ratio, instead of one girl and four boys? Why couldn't A.I. be about exploring the world through the eyes of an unloved robot girl?

I'm not saying every story has to do it. A.I. is brilliant enough on its own, leave E.T. alone, no one can pilot the Enterprise besides Captain James T. Kirk, and of course, nothing will be as memorable as "Luke, I am your father."

But, can we please stop complaining about how there aren't any female driven sci-fi story lines because no one wants to see them, they don't do as well, there isn't an audience for them, or little girls aren't interested in a galaxy far, far away, but then turn around and balk at the idea of a Wonder Woman movie or a Black Widow movie. You can't have it both ways.



I don't know, this is just my opinion. But I'd love to hear yours! Leave a comment below!