Summary
The Debris pilot is full of interesting ideas and questions, but it needs a bit more madcap sci-fi energy to get the most out of its premise.
This recap of Debris season 1, episode 1 contains spoilers.
NBC’s Debris is the kind of high-concept big-idea sci-fi that could make for appointment television on curiosity alone. But it also has the kind of pilot that makes you worried. There is a lot of compelling stuff in this opening hour, written by the show’s creator J.H. Wyman, but it’s treated with a kind of uninterested blasé attitude that doesn’t exactly lean into the otherworldliness of the premise. That premise posits that alien debris with a range of extra-terrestrial powers and properties is landing all over the place and causing a great deal of havoc and that two different agencies – MI6, represented by Finola Jones (Riann Steele), and the CIA, represented by Bryan Beneventi (Jonathan Tucker) – are teaming up to investigate it. It’s quite a hook, just the kind of thing that seems suited to a Fringe alum, but that show was great in large part because it was completely bonkers, and Debris isn’t. As of now, it stands on the cusp of becoming the next Lost or the next Emergence, two very different outcomes which, until we’ve seen the next few episodes, might be equally likely.
The Debris pilot has a problem that all pilots tend to, which is that it needs to handle a certain amount of setup and exposition while also providing enough action and mystery to persuade an audience to come back next week, so it’d be unfair to judge a show entirely based on just this one episode. Nevertheless, it does not bode well given the obvious lack of chemistry between the leads and the ungainly way that context for both the debris and the agents’ personalities is provided. What we see of the random pieces of metal, some of which apparently have similar effects – causing people who touch it to teleport through solid matter – and some radically different – the latter of which makes for the standard procedural “case of the week” – is interesting, and you can definitely see a near limitless amount of potential there. But caring is another matter, especially when the two core perspectives – Finola’s idealism versus Bryan’s worldly pragmatism – are being sketched in such seemingly broad terms.
The case in Debris episode 1 also puts emotion first and foremost, which is fine, but the performances cannot support this kind of material at this early stage. If we had a deeper understanding of the backstory of both leads, a clearer idea of their worldview, then we would be much more interested in a piece of debris that can pull forth their innermost memories and feelings. In a pilot, this is mostly interesting conceptually; the execution, which expects us to buy into Finola’s grief over her mother dying of cancer, feels like a tough ask. The implication is that tragedy is enough on its own terms to not really require any character-building effort – losing a loved one to cancer is sad, therefore we understand that Finola is sad, even though we know hardly anything else about her. You have to give your audience a bit more credit than that.
The way this case unfurls, though, shows glimmers of what the show can do well. It begins with the discovery of a woman’s body floating eerily just above the ground, and it leads to a field of similarly floating victims who are technically alive but are being steadily drained for some unknown purpose, left to wither. It all relates to a tragic car accident in which a mother lost her young son, Kieran, and internalized her grief. The debris, sensing her pain and longing, manifested an off-kilter version of Kieran who led the victims along the same fateful route, using their energy for sustenance. It is a very solid idea, which makes it even more puzzling that nobody seems to be particularly shocked by it.
Setting Debris a good while into the discovery of this technology, when international joint-agency investigative teams have already been established to investigate it, doesn’t limit the potential for sci-fi hijinks – the show can still do virtually anything with the concept, and I sincerely hope it runs with it. But it erects something of a barrier between the fiction and the audience, who’re expected to have a sense of wonder and excitement for the discoveries that they’re not seeing reflected on-screen. A floating body is treated with the same kind of indifference that any old procedural murder victim might warrant, which grounds events too much. A last-minute reveal that the CIA is meddling on their own terms feels like a played-out development at this point – “government agencies can’t be trusted” really isn’t a twist anymore – and there just isn’t that sense of weirdness that a show like this probably needs.
Still, none of this is to say that the show cannot get weird, and Debris season 1, episode 1 still provides enough compelling story threads that there’s a reason to return next week. Finola’s father being alive and Bryan knowing about it but keeping schtum sets up a potentially intriguing conflict, a larger inter-agency beef in microcosm, and there is no reason why, with a bit of finesse, we can’t flesh out the mythology and answer some important questions that the Debris pilot simply handwaves away to be dealt with later. I can cautiously recommend the show on the basis that I liked Fringe a lot and feel there is plenty of potential in the premise, but I’d be careful about getting too invested if I were you.
