"Extant" continues to surprise and scare its audience with its recent episodes. This latest chapter "Nightmares" is definitely taking us down the rabbit hole into Halle Berry and Steven Spielberg's minds.

In CBS' summer TV series of "Extant" it is turning out to be a little bit of "The X Files," and a lot of Spielberg references from his past films and TV shows. Does it hurt or help a freshman TV series like "Extant" to use Spielberg references? In little ways yes, and in other ways absolutely not.

Although, "Extant" appears to be doing well with its revealing cast: We are learning more about Gordon Kern (Maury Sterling), the head of security at the International Space Exploration Agency (ISEA); some people might be loving or loathing Julie (Grace Gummer) for either her vulnerability, intimacy issues or both. We meet one of Julie's acquaintances, Oden (Charlie Bewley); who is he and why is he so interested in Ethan?

And we finally know that the head of the ISEA Alan Sparks (Michael O'Neil) is a desperate and dangerous man. Sparks is the bad guy.

The Woods family of John (Goran Visnjic), Berry's Molly, and Ethan (Pierce Gagnon) are at the center of the ever growing problem of what happened at the Seraphim. In this latest episode, Ethan starts to have nightmares which John says is not possible. Ethan is learning just like David in Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" film. Ethan is turning out to be less creepy, and more of a genius like child.

Meanwhile, Molly and John are sneaking around, placing listening devices on Dr. Barton (Camryn Manheim), and hiding in hallways and bathrooms with Harmon Kryger (Brad Beyer), whom we have not seen since Episode 3. They are all doing this to avoid the prying eyes of Sparks and the ISEA. Kryger, John and Molly all meet to discuss the strange symbols -- that look more like "Doctor Who" Gallifreyan symbols than anything else. Apparently, Kryger first saw these symbols on the Seraphim of his solo-mission. The symbols were either an electronic test pattern or something else.

Did the ISEA encounter these "angel like" beings before? Did the ISEA have a close encounter? Another "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" Spielberg reference. Molly, John and Kryger are convinced that the ISEA knows something. After Kryger steals an encrypted file from the ISEA computer backup servers, under the noses of Sparks and Gordon, Kryger cannot decrypt the file so he turns to the Woods for help.

Another Spielberg movie reference. John and Molly go to the Humanics lab, but they are unable to decrypt the file. Just like a scene from "Minority Report," remember when John Anderton (Tom Cruise) used a transparent glass-like screen while wearing a pair of gloves. Anderton digitally moved the video images that he was seeing by touching the screen: He moved the video back-and-forth, freezing, rewinding, and then magnifying the image.

Visnjic's John does the same thing to break the code of the digitzed files with the exception of not wearing any gloves. Unfortunately "Extant's" John cannot crack the code, but Ethan does. Ethan cracks the code like a kid playing a video game going to the next level.

The encrypted file reveals a video: It shows what happened to Spark's daughter and her crew while they were on another space station above Earth. Similar to Molly, Sparks' daughter was pregnant with the same creepy symbols surfacing on her belly. But much of what happened on the previous space station above Earth is happening now in an ISEA lab. Molly's fetus is rapidly growing inside of a giant metal container. And at the same time, the creature is controlling the mind of a scientist.

Another Spielberg reference. In Spielberg's critically acclaimed TV series "Taken" where it was about three families: the Keys, Crawfords, and Clarkes, who had all encountered an alien species that was either hell bent on colonizing the Earth, or watching their own human experiments thrive. "Taken's" story spanned five decades and four generations. In that TV series, the alien species had the ability to project into any human's mind the loved ones of those who had died a long time ago. The dead loved ones seem to appear out of the blue.

Similarly in "Extant" the growing creature did the exact same thing with one scientist that it inffected, as well as with Sparks. Sparks wanted to talk with his dead daughter, but not her in adult form, when she was a child. The creature has the ability to control minds but after seemingly long exposure.

The baby that Molly had was not hers, she was simply a vessel so that it could travel and come to Earth. And now that the being is here what is its intent? Gordon, the ISEA head of security, asked the right question to Sparks: How do we know if the exposure is safe? How many people have been infected?

This week's upcoming Wednesday episode will be two-hours long at 9 p.m. on CBS.