Debris Season One Finale: Fringe with a Vengeance

Well, I and many others have been saying how reminiscent Debris is of Fringe, and sure enough, in tonight's season one finale, John Noble shows up as maybe the head of Influx, certainly at least a little higher than Anson and Finola's father.   In any case, Noble's Otto is a lot meaner than Walter Bishop, and very likely doesn't have a cow that gives milk in his lab.  (Just dawned on me that maybe Devin Nunes has some connection to all of this?)

We'll no doubt be seeing more of Otto in season two, if there is such a season, which we don't yet know.  And there were lots of other promising developments in tonight's finale.  Finola's father is totally in with Influx.   Bryan had some very early encounter with Debris, and he's been taking injections to ward off possible ill effects, which is exactly what happened tonight.  And in the last minute or so of this episode, we see a clone or whatever in the works for and of Finola.

I'm still very partial not only to the show, but the Influx credo which Finola's father again eloquently intoned tonight: let the people not their governments decide what to do with the interstellar tech that has fallen to Earth.   As I mentioned in a review of an earlier episode, I made essentially the same point at 1min24secs to 1min47secs in this 2010 interview on the History Channel:

But I do think Debris has been too diffuse this season, too slow to get to the punchline, though all of this took a sharp turn for the better with the two-part alternate reality episode a few weeks back.  I say, give Debris another season to find its pace.  Extraterrestrial technology is a hugely suggestive tableau, and I'd like to see another season of it realized.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief ... Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning ... Debris 1.6: Fountain of Youth and Its Complications ... Debris 1.7: Ferry Cross the Moebius Strip ... Debris 1.8: Resurrection and Its Hazards ...  Debris 1.9: Resets 1 ... Debris 1.11: Connections ... Debris 1.12: Happy?

Debris 1.12: Happy?

Well, the next-to-last episode of this season of Debris -- still not renewed by NBC for a second season -- was surprising for a penultimate episode of any season of any series that's not a sitcom: it had an apparently happy ending.

The coming attractions, of course, promised something much more perilous and sinister, but this 12th episode of Debris actually saw Bryan seeing the light -- as in understanding something about the Debris he wasn't getting before -- and consequently letting the Debris do their thing, and fulfill a destiny as a bright light in the sky on its way, presumably, to the cosmos.

Or maybe the mother ship.  None of that is still not even the slightest bit clear at this point.  But it has to be significant that Bryan is enabbling not opposing or riding herd on the Debris, and he seems to be pretty much in his right mind.  And there's also the fact that many fewer humans than usual got killed in Bryan;s part of the episode -- in fact, I'm pretty sure it was just one.

But what this all means for the future of us down on Earth is uncertain.  Anson Ash is free, and that's likely not good for our side, whatever exactly our side is.  Maddox is getting slightly less trustworthy in each episode, and that can't be good, either.  Finola's father George gave a rant against the government, which makes him closer to Ash than Maddox, but does that mean Ash is the hero and Maddox the anti-hero after all?

Ash likely holds the key to the decisive part of this, why else free him after all these episodes tonight.  There's a lot be told and a lot to unpack with just one episode left to do it, and I'll be back here next week with a report.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief ... Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning ... Debris 1.6: Fountain of Youth and Its Complications ... Debris 1.7: Ferry Cross the Moebius Strip ... Debris 1.8: Resurrection and Its Hazards ...  Debris 1.9: Resets 1 ... Debris 1.11: Connections

Debris 1.11: Connections

I didn't get a chance to review last week's episode of Debris -- 1.10 -- who knows, maybe I came into contact with some Debris on this side of the screen and I lost some time.  It was the second part of a two-episode story about Debris triggering alternate realities, and Bryan was caught in one, desperate to get out. Here's my review, now: It was an excellent episode, until the end, in which Bryan does get out.  Not that I wanted to see him stuck there.  But I thought he got out a little too easily.

Tonight's episode 1.11 didn't make things easy for Bryan at all.  A woman near some Debris knows about Bryan's past -- about events only he would have known, from when he was serving in Afghanistan.  Finola figures out that when Bryan was cloned in Pennsylvania a few episodes back, the Debris kept a part of him, at very least some or all of his memories.  And this woman who knows things that only Bryan knew had some into contact with some Debris, and picked up Bryan's memories from that piece of Debris.

It's a nice, original premise for an episode.   And it made me realize even more vividly that Debris is actually an anthology series, a compilation of all kinds of science fiction tropes, common and rare, all injected into Earth and humanity via the Debris.  The only problem with this, at least so far, is that all the episodes are pretty much equidistant from the Debris, in the sense that none of them are telling us what the story behind the Debris and their interstellar artifacts really are.   Isn't anyone on Earth devoted to investigating that?  Or are they just running from one report of Debris to another?

But perhaps some good news on that score at the end of this episode.  Finola has access to the Legari files.  And it looks as if all of this is connected to some kind of Native American event or legend.

See you here next week.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief ... Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning ... Debris 1.6: Fountain of Youth and Its Complications ... Debris 1.7: Ferry Cross the Moebius Strip ... Debris 1.8: Resurrection and Its Hazards ...  Debris 1.9: Resets 1

Debris 1.9: Resets 1

Whoah -- a brilliant game-shaking episode 1.9 of Debris on NBC tonight, in which the piece of said Debris shifts those who come into its presence into alternate realities.  That is, what clearly is not one but what seems to be an unlimited series of alternate realities.  That would be a cool centerpiece of this narrative.  But the story that plays out for our characters is an ingenious piece of work in itself for just an episode of a television series.

The hour starts off conventionally enough (that is, conventionally enough for Debris).  A diver comes into contact with a piece of Debris off the coast, and finds he's in an alternate reality minus his sister.  And the narrative stays conventional enough (that is, for Debris) throughout most of the rest of the hour.  Bryan and Finola investigate what's going on, now with the help of Finola's sage father.  But the diver, desperate to find his sister, keeps jumping in the ocean and swimming towards the Debris to enter yet another new reality.  We see everything from the diver's perspective, including Bryan having different partners in some of the realities.  Finola's father says colors are important in understanding what's going on, especially the color orange.  In an especially nice touch, it even looks like one of the Bryans has orange reddish hair.  (Did they dye Jonathan Tucker's hair, or just changed the lightning, or maybe my mind was playing tricks on me.)

But all of that is just prelude to what happens near the end.  Bryan tries to stop the diver from swimming towards the Debris -- the repeated resets of reality could "damage the universe" -- and Bryan gets sucked into an alternate reality himself, where, among other things, Finola is not his partner.

And this turns out to be just Part 1 of a two-part story about alternate-reality resets.  I've seen some good alternate-reality episodes on various science fiction series over the years -- those on Star Trek: TOS and Star Trek: TNG are especially memorable -- but this episode of Debris is something new, very different, and right up there with the best.

See you back here next week in what I hope is our same reality with my review of the conclusion of this story (or these stories).

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief ... Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning ... Debris 1.6: Fountain of Youth and Its Complications ... Debris 1.7: Ferry Cross the Moebius Strip ... Debris 1.8: Resurrection and Its Hazards

Debris 1.8: Resurrection and Its Hazards

Well, Debris finally cashed in tonight -- ok, this was only the 8th episode, so maybe "finally" is a bit harsh, but it's seemed like a long time -- on the promise (or threat) of Finola's deceased father George being resurrected or reanimated is the more au currant word.

Now, you know if that happened, that George wouldn't. couldn't, possibly be exactly the same.  First, there's what I years ago called "the paradox of duplication" -- you can never make a perfect or complete copy of a unique entity, such as any human being, because that duplication will unavoidably rob the original of a crucial characteristic, its uniqueness (see my Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age, 1988, pp. 149-150; and/or my review of Charles Platt's Silicon Man).  And worse than that, as was explored so well in Frank Herbert's Dune Messiah, chances are the people or beings who brought a departed loved one back to life will endow that reanimated entity with something not to your liking.

Since Debris like Fringe is deeply obligated to great science fiction of the past, of course there has to be something sinister about the alive-again George that will break Finola's heart.  We got just glimpse of confrrmation of this in the very last scene, when "George" seems to disintegrate, or I don't know, something under a blanket.

One good thing about George back to life, though, at least as far as the viewing audience is concerned, is that he provided about the best explanation I've heard so far about why the interstellar debris are so valuable to Earth and humanity:  we're way of track, falling apart, irrevocably declining, and the debris can help right our course.  In a phrase, that technology can save us.

Though that seemed a tad more relevant six months ago, we're still not out of the real woods by a long shot yet, so I'll keep watching Debris.  Nah, not true -- I'll keep watching because I'm an irredeemable sucker for classic science fiction.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief ... Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning ... Debris 1.6: Fountain of Youth and Its Complications ... Debris 1.7: Ferry Cross the Moebius Strip

Debris 1.7: Ferry Cross The Moebius

An interesting Debris 1.7 last night, that served up another example of what the debris can do, mixing horror and humanity in the now signature way that Debris does this, but not moving the ball of understanding very much forward.

Speaking of signatures, the story had a lot of nice mythological touches, beginning with the mention of the ferry, and moving on to the sweet little girl with supernatural i.e. debris-endowed  powers.  These interludes have a scrapbook-like quality.  If only Bryan and Finola could see the whole scrapbook, rather than just these weekly pages.  I feel the same way as a member of the audience.

In my review of last week's episode (1.6), I objected to the assumption of Bryan, Finola, and their superiors that says governments are the proper custodians and regulators of the debris and all their effects.  No one in any country ran on a platform in which they asked the voters to give them sole or any power to represent humanity and human interests in the event that we are visited by extraterrestrials and their debris.

Someone on Twitter (maybe Scroobius Pip under a pseudonym) commented that that's what Anson Ash is saying and working against (he's played by an actor with a perfect name for a narrative like this, Scroobius Pip -- a combination, in my head at least, of Ebenezer Scrooge and moebius strip).  In last night's episode, he's unceremoniously tortured by Maddox for information.  And that of course brings home the point, doesn't it?  What is our government doing torturing this guy?

Back in the days of 24, Jack Bauer would regularly torture anyone who had valuable information about a terrorist plot and didn't want to share it.  But Ash is not quite a terrorist.  He's fighting for something which might take innocent lives, for sure, but the philosophy of his cause has an angelic element.  Fighting about a boat which, so far in this story on the screen, doesn't have a name.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief ... Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning ... Debris 1.6: Fountain of Youth and Its Complications

Debris 1.6: Fountain of Youth and Its Complications

Debris 1.6 re-visits the ancient Fountain of Youth myth, in which you drink from some magical source of water and regain your youth.   Later on in the New World, Ponce de Leon was allegedly searching for a fountain of youth when he discovered Florida.  More recently, in 1985, Ron Howard directed Cocoon, in which alien cocoons found in a pool restore the youthful energy of elderly swimmers.   And just last night, Debris gave us a story in which interstellar debris literally makes very old people young again.

Of course, in the legends and the science fiction, there's always a problem with the fountain, a price to pay, assuming the fountain is even found.  In Debris, the price is that everyone who gets young again has to stay in proximity to the other rejuvenated oldsters.  If they don't, they'll get old again, and die.

You know what?  This doesn't seem like all that steep a price to me.  And this undermines Bryan and Finola's motive in the narrative for getting the rejuvenated back to their original old age.   What would be the problem in setting up a community of young-again people?  Perhaps that was explained and I missed it, but as it is, it seems that the main motive of Bryan and Finola is to counteract any effects of the interstellar debris on Earth, even if they are beneficial.

And this in turn brings to the fore a larger question which gets at the very heart of this series.  If all the effects of the debris were bad, or could be used for bad purposes, it would make perfect sense to track down all the debris and keep them out of reach.  But if some of the debris are beneficial, what then?  Are Bryan and Finola on the side of the angels, and just another pair of warriors in a very new kind of war?*

*Back in 2010, in an interview on Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, I questioned why governments rather than citizens should be the presumptive interface between humans and extra-terrestrials who come to Earth.  See1min24secs into this video

I'll be watching to see how these questions play out.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief ... Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning

Debris 1.5: Fine Tuning

Make that two weeks in a row with strong episodes of Debris -- in fact, tonight's episode 1.5 was even better than last week's, on all kinds of levels.

The destruction was averted, and it would have been a major piece of devastation indeed: sending a piece of Manhattan to who knows where.  This evokes not only the song "I'll Take Manhattan," but John Stith's novel Manhattan Transfer.  It requires not one but two pieces of interstellar debris, posted in just the right places, fine tuned in appropriately near-distanced skyscrapers. 

And the beings doing this come not from the stars -- at least as far as we know -- but are apparently the human beings in Influx, that mysterious organization trying to marshall the powers of the debris for their own benefit.   They take pills which enable them to teleport through short, maybe longer, spaces, and the guy with the beard who is in command can join in a song playing blocks away.

Again, all of this feels like an update of Fringe, and that's just fine.   Debris has the addition of the CIA/MI6 complex relationship of incomplete allies, and this is being well developed as well, in the interactions of Finola and Bryan, both with one another and with their higher-ups in the agencies.

What I'd still like to see: how about a joint mission out into space to see exactly where the interstellar ship first appeared?   If there were no such thing as discrete networks and streaming services down here on Earth in our reality, there could be a crossover event between Debris and For All Mankind.  But I'll settle for whatever Debris can dish out.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time ... Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief

Debris 1.4: Suspentia Belief

Well, I know I keep saying this, and that's because it's true.  Debris keeps getting better and better, and it did this again this week in episode 1.4

I especially liked the use of extra-terrestrial tech -- "suspentia" -- to cure a different Debris effect, the extra-terrestrial terraforming of our atmosphere into one in which chlorine, deadly to life on Earth, replaces oxygen.   This (again, like many an episode of Fringe) is an old and still intriguing science fiction chestnut of terraforming other planets to make them suitable to human life, and vice versa.

Finola plays a major role in applying suspentia to save a group of people who will die on Planet Earth, having been transformed into chlorine-breathing beings: put them into suspended animation, until we humans develop the means to bring them back to life in our oxygenated world.  It's a big risk, of course, but far better than the alternative.

Meanwhile, Finola also learns that Bryan knows her father is alive, and didn't tell her.  This will put a sizeable schism in their relationship, and in doing so will further separate the CIA and MI6.  Missing in action this week, except in one short sentence, is "Influx" -- we need to learn more about them already.

But as long as the episodes get tighter and tighter, as they've been doing, I'm more than happy to wait for the central plot to move along and find a more satisfying pace.  There's something about Debris that increasingly has classic --- as in destined to become a classic -- written all over it, and I'm eager to sit back and see that happen.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones ... Debris 1.3: Trapped Out of Time

Debris 1.3: Trapped out of Time

An excellent episode of Debris tonight -- 1.3 -- that connected in a bunch of ways and opened up some intriguing possibilities.

The main agenda are people who disappear and are trapped in another dimension barely perceivable to us, as a result of the debris.   We hear clearly for the first time that the extra-terrestrial ship was both intergalactic and extra-dimensional.  In the case of the trapped people, they disappeared from Earth ranging from very recently to at least as long ago as 1976.   Since the intergalactic extra-dimensional ship arrived in our solar system -- at least as far as we know -- just six months ago, this means that among the effects of the debris are some wild extra-temporal consequences, too, i.e, a type of time travel.  For the people who are trapped, it seems that just a very short time has passed.  And judging by their apparent lack of aging, it has.  But by our tracking of time, in which the weirdest thing is setting the clock backward or forward twice a year, the time passed can be as long as half a century.

So there's that.  And another good thing is that all the temporally trapped people in this episode are actually rescued, giving us the first passably happy ending in the first three outings of Debris.

Meanwhile, the overlay of spy story is gradually getting more appealing, too.  There's the CIA and MI6, cooperating, at least most of the time.  There are the Russians.  And there's the mysterious group called Influx.  Again, as far as we now know, the first three groups are human.  But what about Influx?

And then there's the question which will likely be looming for a long time.  Actually, two questions.  Why did the ship come here?  Why did it blow up or become a wreck and spew debris down on Planet Earth?

More than enough science fiction in all of that to keep us occupied for a long time, unless we get pulled into another dimension.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces ... Debris 1.2: Clones

first starship to Alpha Centauri ... and they only had enough fuel to get there

Debris 1.2: Clones

Well, I liked Debris 1.2 on NBC this week considerably more than 1.1 the week before, and that's always a good sign.  The story hung together a little better, and maybe that was because its main theme was clones.

One -- or, at least two -- were clones of Bryan.  He kills one of them, which gave Craig the opportunity of getting off a good sarcastic line, something to the effect that it hurts to kill what you love most in this world.  The other was a clone of Bryan with two heads, which harkened back to some movie from back in the 1970s, I think, about a guy with two heads (ok, here it is, The Thing With Two Heads, starring Rosey Grier, 1972).

I should have mentioned last week that the creator of Debris is J. H. Wyman who did a lot of work on the late, lamented Fringe.   That show had a deliberate B-movie 1950s feel to it, which Debris almost happily picks up on.  I don't mean this as an insult.  I've been a fan since I was eight or nine years old.

The other clone of interest in this episode is Eric, who is wounded by a piece of alien debris that fell on his house, which then did him the favor of creating some of clones of him, while it moved pieces of cars and other non-alien wreckage around his home.   To mark the spot?  Who knows, or why.

The pace of Debris is amazingly slow in terms of telling us what's really going on here.  It holds its cards very close to its chest.  So far, in two weeks, all we've learned about the grand scheme of things in this narrative is that an alien shipwreck left debris on Planet Earth which is causing all kinds of strange effects.

As in Fringe, these effects so far are a blend of horror and science fiction, and that's ok by me.  But I'd like to learn more, and  I guess that's the reason for the slow pace.  I'd also like to see a little more story for Finnola the MI-6 agent, played by Riann Steele.

See also Debris 1.1 Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces

first starship to Alpha Centauri ... and they only had enough fuel to get there

Debris 1.1: Some Probability of Gems Among the Pieces

Debris debuted on good old NBC tonight -- a fast-paced, surprisingly deep piece of science fiction, which has real potential.

The set-up: in an alternate-present or near-future reality, an extraterrestrial ship, wrecked, shows up in our solar system.  Debris rain down on our planet.  And they have a bizarre series of unnatural effects, including allowing someone holding a piece to "phase" through matter, having the effect on others of bringing the dead back to life in a way that (of course) has profound consequences on the survivors, etc. The coming attractions advertise more of these effects to come.  Jonathan Tucker plays CIA agent Brian Beneventi, Riann Steele plays MI6 agent Finola Jones, and they are cooperating, for the most part (also of course), in an effort to find out what's going on, how to get on top of the extraterrestrial tech, etc.

So there are a lot of pieces in motion at the beginning of this narrative, and some of them are obvious, but all together the pieces could make for a compelling piece of television.  For one, the story picks up speed very quickly, which is always a good thing.  For another, the various powers that come from pieces of the wrecked ship have no apparent connection, and that's a good thing, too, because there's lots of room for development at this point.

I think it's become tough for a network to put out a good science fiction story, given the advantages that streaming services have in making original leaps.  But anything is possible in a weekly showing riven with commercials, especially when the tableau is science fiction, so I'll be watching and reviewing at least the next few episodes.

first starship to Alpha Centauri ... and they only had enough fuel to get there