We've been seeing climate change addressed in science fiction media more and more often, but usually obliquely. "Extrapolations" is one of the few shows I've seen that tackles the uncomfortable subject head-on. It's an anthology series, created by Scott Z. Burns, which presents various stories set at various times between 2037 and 2070 in a world drastically changed for the worse by climate change. An all star cast has been recruited, including Meryl Streep, Edward Norton, Marion Cotillard, Toby Maguire, Forest Whittaker, Sienna Miller, Kit Harrington, and Daveed Diggs. Unfortunately, despite a lot of good intentions and a lot of resources being expended on the project, "Extrapolations" is pretty underwhelming.
I like the anthology format, which gives Burns a chance to explore climate change from many different points of view. One episode is about a scientist played by Sienna Miller having conversations with the last whale. One episode is about a rabbi played by Daveed Diggs trying to save a Florida synagogue that is threatened by rising floodwaters. One episode is set in India, about a delivery driver played by Adarsh Gourav making a dangerous delivery. One episode, directed by Nicole Holofcener, involves a dinner party where characters debate embracing a wholly digital existence. We watch these characters deal with biodiversity loss, wild weather fluctuations, and many other disastrous outcomes up close. New diseases and ailments become commonplace. New technologies are created to try and mitigate the worst of the damage, but these are controlled by greedy corporations that never act for the common good.
Some of the installments are significantly better than others. The Daveed Diggs episode is my favorite because it's one of the most personal, with characters that feel the most real. Most of the other episodes get too bogged down in the science fiction conceits, and are difficult to connect to on a human level. For instance, the crucial fourth episode sees a desperate attempt to curb the crisis through geoengineering, but much of the drama plays out through conversations between the members of an estranged family. This doesn't work because the situation is so wildly contrived. There's a dreadful lack of nuance in much of the writing, and anyone playing an executive or businessman seems to be an evil bastard by default. At the same time, it doesn't go hard enough on the worst consequences of rising temperatures, with too many major events happening offscreen. We spend an awful lot of time with rich people discussing things in the abstract.
The visions of a not-too-distant dystopia with a steadily declining quality of life are rendered very well, at least. All the stories share the same universe and timeline, so we can watch the climate crisis unfold incrementally over multiple decades. A few characters also recur, so a child in one episode will show up as an adult a few episodes later, and we can track the effects of some specific decisions and actions over time. Technology continues to advance, so we can talk to whales by 2046, upload our memories into the cloud by 2059, and upload our whole consciousness by 2068. Unfortunately, the recurring elements aren't too interesting, and the changes to the world come so fast that it's sometimes difficult to reconcile one story with the next. It becomes harder and harder to reorient with each new time jump.
At times "Extrapolations" feels like it's sharing conceptual real estate with "Black Mirror," though "Extrapolations" is much less pulpy. It's more concerned with ideas over thrills and chills, but that may be to its detriment. Many of the stories in "Extrapolations" are tragic and disheartening, but they're not very memorable. At best, some of the earlier episodes make the theoretical end results of climate change feel more real, and introduce some concepts the general public probably aren't familiar with. The Indian episode with the horrifying drought conditions best exemplify this. At the same time, some of these outcomes feel too remote and fantastical, existing in the same world as AI nannies and memory backups for the human brain.
Still, I like that Burns is ultimately optimistic about how we'll battle climate change, giving his final episode a happy ending where the forces of greed and oppression are defeated, and humanity is given a second chance. After eight hours of doom and gloom, it's a nice reminder that the future envisioned by "Extrapolations" isn't inevitable. However, I wish the show had picked a lane - either something more grounded that showed how average people were dealing with the changing world, or something broader and more all-encompassing, to give us a big-picture look at how the crisis plays out. "Extrapolations" tries to do both, and just winds up with fragmented, piecemeal results.
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