Debris S01E02: You Are Not Alone

© NBC

Episode 2 improves and becomes more Fringe-y, and that's a good thing
by Chuck Duncan

The first episode of NBC's new sci-fi procedural Debris did an adequate job of setting up the show's premise, but I feel that this week's second episode really moves the story forward now that we've gotten past the 'origin story' that is often slow going, whether it be a TV series or a movie. We know pretty much who Bryan Beneventi and Finola Jones are at this point, and this episode peels back another layer to their characters. In a word or two, it's working.

I'm also liking how the series is taking aspects of both The X-Files and Fringe without being a complete carbon copy. From what we've seen over two episodes now, there is an ongoing story arc -- the effects of the debris raining down on Earth after an alien ship exploded in space -- but the two episodes thus far have also had self-contained stories with the CIA and MI6 having to investigate the effects of the debris in various locations. There is also another intriguing plot point introduced this week that could also carry through the series (think along the lines of Fringe's alternate universes and multiple versions of the various characters).

This week Bryan and Finola are sent to a small town in Pennsylvania where another debris incident is taking place -- various metallic objects are moving through town of their own accord, or rather being dragged, and selectively. Not all metal objects are being moved. It seems so far that the citizens of Earth are being kept in the dark about this debris phenomenon with Bryan quipping that if anyone asks what's going on, they'll just blame it on the Russians. Was that just a joke, or could this have larger implications down the line? The problem with the items moving about is that they can't locate the debris to which everyone believes the objects are being drawn to. A satellite view shows that the objects aren't just being dragged to a single location, but they are actually building a barrier wall.

Bryan spies a man watching things happen in this apparently abandoned town, but the man can't really tell them anything. He barely knows his own name, Eric (David Alpay), and is so intently focused on finding something that he doesn't even notice the objects moving down the street past them. They have Eric taken to a secure location, but a short time later Bryan and Finola see him again, this time trying to break into a car, his shirt bloodied. Concerned that he injured some of their people, they try to take him in again but he runs to his house.

There they discover the debris in the basement. It is also found that the metallic items aren't simply creating a barrier, they are creating a mathematically correct circle around the area with the center point being Eric's house. While Bryan is in the basement, Finola is outside and she finds Eric again. Inside, Bryan hears a noise upstairs and discovers ... himself. Before his doppelganger can shoot, Bryan pulls the trigger and kills his double. Eric gets away and they engage in a foot chase, following him to a factory. Finola finds the frightened man inside while Bryan finds the panicked man outside, so now the debris seems to have the properties to create clones of whoever comes into close contact with it. If this has happened in Pennsylvania, has it happened elsewhere? There is a very real possibility, which we'll get to in a minute.

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None of the three Erics seem to be the original as each of them are very specifically focused on a single matter -- a lost love, a job -- and none are fully emotionally formed. Bryan deduces that the real Eric is still somewhere nearby but is dying so these manifestations of himself are the less important things his psyche is letting go of as he, and they, die. But the one that survives is the one intent on finding the woman he lost because of a new job on the other side of the country that he was going to take. Eric's car was obviously used at some point so it could have also been dragged to the barrier.

Bryan and Finola walk in a straight line to the barrier to locate the car while a team is back at the house trying to deactivate the debris (this is something new introduced into the mix, seeing that they can effectively 'turn off' the debris). Bryan finds the car and Eric is inside, unconscious, and Bryan climbs the pile to get Eric out. Suddenly a blast emanates from the debris and hits the barrier, slowly compressing it. The car is being compressed with Bryan fighting to get Eric out, but each blast makes that more difficult. In the house, the blast is also generating more copies of Eric ... and Bryan, grotesquely morphed together into two-headed monsters. The team finally manages to shut off the debris, and Bryan gets Eric out of the car safely, giving him the opportunity to call his love and ask her to stay.

While all this was happening, Finola was trying to get in touch with her sister back in London, who apparently has some substance abuse and abandonment issues. They finally do talk and it seems Finola has gotten through to her sister, who was about to indulge in another round of drugs but instead went home, promising Finola she'd answer the phone when she called later. What she wants is for Finola to come home but she obviously can't and she can't tell her sister what's going on. Finola tries to dig a little deeper into Bryan's background, but he is reluctant to share much. But there is a deep loss there that she can clearly see in his eyes.

Bryan, though, is also feeling bad because he has to lie to Finola about what he's learned from his boss, Maddox. MI6 shared some information with Maddox about a group called Influx, which seems to be dealing in the sale of debris, but there is still the question of Finola's father being spotted. Bryan casually asked Finola about the last time she saw her father, and she told him she stayed with his body at the morgue the night he committed suicide. Maddox noticed in the photo of George Jones that there was something wrong with one of his eyes. Are they dealing with a clone of Jones, or was Finola actually sitting with a dead clone and the real George is still out there? And what exactly is his connection to the debris? And are the more clones? And what about the Russians?

Overall, this was a pretty good episode that expanded the premise and gave us a little more information about the characters. Jonathan Tucker and Riann Steele have some good chemistry together, so hopefully their characters will become closer as the situation escalates (hopefully the writers won't fall into the trap of making them romantic partners). It's probably not out of the question that they will have to join forces against their own agencies as the conspiracies deepen.

Debris airs Mondays at 10:00 PM on NBC.

NBC's Debris launches with an intriguing concept

© NBC

NBC's new sci-fi show gets off to a good start just scratching the surface of its central mystery
by Chuck Duncan

Cast:  Jonathan Tucker, Riann Steele, Norbert Leo Butz, Scroobius Pip
Airs: Mondays at 10:00 PM ET on NBC

NBC is launching another "police procedural" series this week with a science fiction twist, and a pair of investigators that give off a Benson and Stabler vibe. I smell a sweeps month crossover event with SVU!

Okay, we know that's not going to happen but it would be cool. So what is the new series Debris about? It takes place some time after an astronomical event sent the titular space debris to Earth leading to some very mysterious occurrences now under investigation by both the US and UK in a rather uneasy partnership -- neither country seems to trust the other and keeps important information to themselves, which is likely to cause issues for partners Finola Jones (Riann Steele) and Bryan Beneventi (Jonathan Tucker) down the road.

The pilot episode is almost a self-contained story that sets up the series premise, but also has a beginning, middle and end. A woman has gone missing, her car just stopped in the middle of the road. The woman is found a couple of miles from her car, floating just above the ground, her hand caught on a piece of barbed wire fence. Bryan releases her and she continues to float toward the location of a piece of debris ... and there are other bodies there as well, whirling around as if in a small tornado.

Security footage from a gas station shows a boy in the back seat of the car, her son. Contacting the daughter at a nearby boarding school, she reveals her brother died several months ago and her mother could never get over it. That's why she went to the boarding school, to get away from her mom's insanity. At a diner, a woman exits and sees the same boy, and she instantly believes he is her son. They go to the same gas station and the same fate befalls her.

At a facility set up to examine the bodies, it's discovered that they aren't actually dead even though their hearts aren't pumping. Their brains are working though, and Bryan and Finola have to piece together how the boy is tied to the debris and the victims. Knowing they are alive, Bryan brings in the daughter to try to talk to her mother, to get through whatever is holding her in this state of suspended animation.

© NBC

Meanwhile, Finola is still investigating the area where the last victim was discovered and comes across a large piece of the debris (which we learned earlier is apparently from an alien spacecraft that exploded in space). Her close proximity to the debris draws out memories of her mother and nearly brings her close enough to touch the object. We saw earlier that touching the metallic debris can transport a person or object through solid matter, as happened to a hotel housekeeper who plunged several stories to her death.

Just in the nick of time, the girl breaks through to her mother who awakens along with all of the other victims. Finola snaps out of her own stupor and this seems to put an end to the event. But is it the end, and why did this boy appear to so many people? Finola's father, whom she apparently thinks is dead or vanished, has turned up on security footage ... but this is information Bryan's boss Craig Maddox (Leo Norbert Butz) is instructing him to keep from Fiona.

There's also intrigue in the form of a black market cartel dealing in the sale of shards from the alien spaceship. One of the men comes to a particularly gruesome end while the other gets away, but this is certainly some dangerous tech for any civilian to deal with. And Maddox is even shadier when the final shot shows he and his team attempting to reconstruct the alien ship from the pieces of debris scattered across the planet. He can only be up to no good, right?

The pilot of Debris is adequate for setting up the series. It gives us some interesting characters with Bryan and Fiona, revealing just a bit of their own backstories, and setting up Maddox as the potential series "Big Bad". It also has some nifty, if disturbing, special effects of floating bodies and people bleeding from their eyes, so there is certainly enough here to justify a second viewing. Can they keep it up and give us something reminiscent of Fringe? NBC doesn't have the best track record with sci-fi, although I suppose Manifest could fall into that category as well and has been a success. So we'll see where Debris takes us moving forward.