S01.E01: Pilot

[ohjoy]

Two agents, from two different continents, and two different mindsets, must work together to investigate when wreckage from a destroyed alien spacecraft has mysterious effects on humankind.

Aired 3/1/2021

[Ms Blue Jay]

😲.  Well you can call this show Sully because that was a Good Pilot! 

[crowsworks]

I like it so far. A little Lost and X-files. Tucker reminds me of Stephen McHattie.

And Fringe too.

[Paloma]

It held my interest, but I have questions that I suspect will not be answered, and that will frustrate me. For example, why were the victims at the hotel and in Kansas physically "transported" (or floated in the case of Kansas) but the various people investigating the scenes with the debris were mostly unaffected by it physically, aside from the female lead and one male on the team having visions? 

[Ms Blue Jay]

9 minutes ago, crowsworks said:

Tucker reminds me of Stephen McHattie.

I was like this is Robert Patrick's son???? 😄

[shapeshifter]

I fell asleep and missed the part in the middle after the commercial, as per usual with a 3rd hour of prime time show. 
I don't think I really missed anything, though. I'm not sure if that's because the show was so slow, or if I've watched so many shows about extraterrestrial stuff that I kind of already know how it goes.

Edited March 2, 2021 by shapeshifter

[DavidWeis1]

I made a point to watch ... but I was bored. Sorry. 

I really don’t know how they’re going to stretch this into a series. And that’s where many science fiction tales fail. TPTB want a 7 to 8 year run, when the underlying stories only warrant, at best, 7-8 episodes. If they can make it last (usually while hobbling), it’s because they’ve introduced 3 or 4 primary “plots.” Think X-Files. The government conspiracy. Horror episodes. Funny episodes. The whole will Mulder and Sculy ever get together and stay together and what of their son.

Back to Debris. Sorry. Boring. Even the leads seems bored with it all. 

[Suzysite]

1 hour ago, DavidWeis1 said:

I made a point to watch ... but I was bored. Sorry. 

I really don’t know how they’re going to stretch this into a series. And that’s where many science fiction tales fail. TPTB want a 7 to 8 year run, when the underlying stories only warrant, at best, 7-8 episodes. 

Yes. I was thinking as I was watching that this should be a 6 or 8 episode mini series, rather than drag it out only to get cancelled before anything is resolved.    Overall, I didn't love it.

[sempervivum]

I guess real life is so boring right now that this seemed pretty interesting!

The vortex of levitating 'corpses' in the cornfield was eerie; I was intrigued and touched by the woman detective pulling a tiny seedhead out of the air and getting an intense memory of her mother. I want to know why the hotel maid fell through 14 floors (and ceilings) but was killed only at the ground floor. The conversation with the kid about tight-rope walking was the last one he had with his mother before the car crash (I assume), and it was repeated with the old lady, but why didn't she have her own apparition instead of the mother's? Etc. 

This show will have to keep a lot of balls in the air in order to keep me watching- I could see it devolving into 'Manifest', with lots of plot holes, angsty emo/family drama and inconsistent characters/motivation. We're watching like hawks, NBC.

Also, Jonathan Tucker is apparently average height, so why is he sporting the high hair? It looks foppish and out of character with a CIA agent.

[DavidWeis1]

1 hour ago, sempervivum said:

Also, Jonathan Tucker is apparently average height, so why is he sporting the high hair? It looks foppish and out of character with a CIA agent.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I noticed this too. It's funny (or sad) that In slow moments of any show I look at the characters' hair and say, "That doesn't like a firefighter, or a spy, or a lawyer." I lead a slow life.

[rove4]

And the takeaway is, never engage a creepy child. 

[shapeshifter]

So I was able to watch the parts I missed on Peacock.

5 hours ago, sempervivum said:

...I was intrigued and touched by the woman detective pulling a tiny seedhead out of the air and getting an intense memory of her mother.

Reading this comment^ makes me realize that since my elderly mom passed last August that I should have been emotionally moved by this scene, but instead I was silently scolding the character: Don't touch that! You're a scientist! You know better! Stop! Just take a picture and then run!

 

5 hours ago, sempervivum said:

I want to know why the hotel maid fell through 14 floors (and ceilings) but was killed only at the ground floor.

This was the most tragic and moving plot for me, especially after they followed up with the female lead revealing that the hotel maid was a single mom of 2 kids. I hope they return to this plot. Maybe the maid can be revived? Or did she suffer impact injuries like those of someone who fell 14 floors? It seems she might have only "fallen" a few feet. 

[sempervivum]

17 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Maybe the maid can be revived? Or did she suffer impact injuries like those of someone who fell 14 floors? It seems she might have only "fallen" a few feet. 

I actually just rewatched the pilot, and the maid had quite a bit of blood coming out of various places; unfortunately, like the guy who materialized in the cement block, I think she's really dead. 

[iMonrey]

I think the premise has potential, but a weekly TV series is a bad medium for this kind of show, especially major network TV. The pilot leaned a little too heavily into the emotional punch of the trauma of grief since we don't know any of these characters yet, and are not likely to revisit the ones that caused the child to materialize. But I think that's an indication of where this show will go. They intend to use it as a backdrop for weekly stories about randos affected by the debris while the primary leads show up to investigate. That formula is going to get real old real fast, and has sort of worn out its welcome as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't find the leads particularly engaging, either, so that's another problem. 

[SunnyBeBe]

Well.....it was a struggle.  I knew that title wasn’t going to help matters. Lol

[possibilities]

I don't know if I can get past the fact that I find the lead male character absolutely loathesome. I don't know if it's the character or the actor, but I feel a visceral revulsion to his presence, and everything he does. I find him smarmy and toxic to such a degree that even when he's not in the moment doing anything particularly awful, I still hate him.

I have no idea what marketing team decided to name the show "Debris" but it seems to me like a bad choice. I thought maybe it meant the show was going to be a semi-campy rollick that didn't take itself too seriously, but after watching the pilot, that's clearly not the case.

 

[Grammaeryn]

The mystery of it has me interested. The characters? Meh. Jonathan Tucker’s head and neck distracts me - they are the same width!

My comparison combo is Defiance and X-Files. Maybe because life has been about pandemic for a year but I am surprised the debris wasn’t cordoned off or put in containment when it is discovered. Touching a floaty bit with bare hands is Prometheus dumb. 

[possibilities]

If touching the debris is dangerous, the team really could have spared the single mom her death if they hadn't been so secretive about what they were doing at the hotel. I have a problem with the secrecy aspect, especially where there are so many incidents. What are they going to do? Wipe not only security footage, but also the minds of everyone in Wichita? I think the story would be more interesting if it wasn't supposed to be a secret. See how they deal with the media, the public, the competing scientific and inevitable cult reactions. 

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, possibilities said:

I have no idea what marketing team decided to name the show "Debris" but it seems to me like a bad choice.

Clearly the final decision on the show title was by someone with zero knowledge of SEO. 
For instance, I was trying to look up "Laghari," as in the scale they referenced twice to measure the debris, but even if I pair it with "debris" I get a lot of irrelevant hits because seemingly "Laghari" is a made-up word to measure in-show handwavium (although a few not-famous people have the last name "Laghari") and Google interprets "debris" as "garbage," even when I type : debris TV show. 
I guess that last part will change soon?

 

3 hours ago, possibilities said:

I find the lead male character absolutely loathesome. I don't know if it's the character or the actor, but I feel a visceral revulsion to his presence, and everything he does. I find him smarmy and toxic to such a degree that even when he's not in the moment doing anything particularly awful, I still hate him.

Did you miss the scene where he tried sharing something of himself with the person he was interviewing the way the female lead character told him she does it? He also teared up once. I think they just started him off as smarmy and repulsive so we could see character growth. Kind of a "to know him is to love him" sort of deal.

Anyway, I was really distracted with the way the lighting and camera angle were emphasizing the scar on his chin. But my son-in-law brought over a 56” TV because it was too big for them, LOL. My old, now-dead TV was 19" so I am going to have to adjust to chin scars and stuff.

Edited March 3, 2021 by shapeshifter

[memememe76]

Jonathan Tucker is sooo my type, so I watched this show for him. It’s okay, really slow. Hope it gets better. 

[crowsworks]

4 hours ago, possibilities said:

I don't know if I can get past the fact that I find the lead male character absolutely loathesome. I don't know if it's the character or the actor, but I feel a visceral revulsion to his presence, and everything he does. I find him smarmy and toxic to such a degree that even when he's not in the moment doing anything particularly awful, I still hate him.

I have no idea what marketing team decided to name the show "Debris" but it seems to me like a bad choice. I thought maybe it meant the show was going to be a semi-campy rollick that didn't take itself too seriously, but after watching the pilot, that's clearly not the case.

 

This might have something to do with the fact he usually plays the worst characters on cop shows - I mean the WORST.

[Dowel Jones]

I hope they tone down the theme music in future episodes.  That took me out of most of the scenes.

[possibilities]

6 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Did you miss the scene where he tried sharing something of himself with the person he was interviewing the way the female lead character told him she does it? He also teared up once. I think they just started him off as smarmy and repulsive so we could see character growth. Kind of a "to know him is to love him" sort of deal.

I didn't miss it, but it didn't help. I'm just not into the whole "dude who's repulsive and smarmy but with a heart of gold and actually lovable because guys are allowed to have a repulsive exterior and women should ignore that shit because dudes are excusable for anything and should be loved no matter what, instead of just growing the hell up and acting like decent human beings... while women are just a bummer if they aren't adoring the wounded smarmy dude full time or if they have a bad day or something then they are definitely bitches."

4 hours ago, crowsworks said:

This might have something to do with the fact he usually plays the worst characters on cop shows - I mean the WORST.

Might be a chicken/egg problem? I'm not sure I've seen him in anything else, but maybe they are typecasting him because he's a natural at whatever it is about him that repulses me. 

 

I did like that when he was smarming about how the woman on the team was falling in love with him, the guy he said it to snarked back at him the equivalent of (1) that's clearly bullshit, and (2) it's not cute, either and I won't dignify it with an attaboy. I mean, if we can't have secret agents reported to HR for being shitty creeps, at least we can take the consolation prize of having their coworkers snark on them a little bit, I guess.

 

[basiltherat]

The female lead (Finola Jones?) reminds me of Martha Jones from Doctor Who.  British, smart, and puts up with a lot of strange stuff.  Her father is George Jones, and I wonder if the writer is a fan of the "real" George Jones.

I wonder what MY problem is that I keep watching these type of shows ever since Lost (and probably even before) -- the Nine, Manifest, the one with the time-travelling eyeball, etc. etc.

[Lostinthehouse]

9 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

I hope they tone down the theme music in future episodes.  That took me out of most of the scenes.

Yes!  During some scenes it totally wiped out the dialogue.  I was watching from the DVR; so I did a few rewinds & replays and I still didn't get it!

I'll watch a few more episodes just to see if I like it any more than I did Monday.  If those episodes are equally incomprehensible with loud music and garbled dialogue, I'm out.

[Ms Blue Jay]

3 hours ago, basiltherat said:

The female lead (Finola Jones?) reminds me of Martha Jones from Doctor Who.  British, smart, and puts up with a lot of strange stuff.  Her father is George Jones, and I wonder if the writer is a fan of the "real" George Jones.

I wonder what MY problem is that I keep watching these type of shows ever since Lost (and probably even before) -- the Nine, Manifest, the one with the time-travelling eyeball, etc. etc.

What's that one??? 😄

[dargosmydaddy]

9 minutes ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

What's that one???

Timeless, maybe?

[basiltherat]

Yup!  You see how memorable it is.

[bref]

Gotta add The 4400 to that list. 😉 

[Grammaeryn]

It’s kind of funny reading these comments. It seems like a lot of us tend to watch the same shows over the years. So, whatever audience demographic the marketers were aiming for, they got this bunch of eclectic weirdos! Seriously, X-Files, to Manifest, to Fringe, to the 4400 - I have found my people. ❤️

[possibilities]

I legit loved "Timeless"! It was flawed, like any TV. But it was fun.

[Paloma]

13 hours ago, bref said:

Gotta add The 4400 to that list.

 

9 hours ago, Grammaeryn said:

It seems like a lot of us tend to watch the same shows over the years. So, whatever audience demographic the marketers were aiming for, they got this bunch of eclectic weirdos! Seriously, X-Files, to Manifest, to Fringe, to the 4400 - I have found my people.

I was a big X-Files fan and liked The 4400, but I didn't get into Fringe and never watched Manifest (not sure why--the premise sounds right up my alley, but we might have been traveling overseas when it came out). Still, I agree that I am in the demographic of eclectic weirdos that the marketers were aiming for! But I doubt that Debris will hold my interest for long. 

[shapeshifter]

The interlocking geometric shapes made me think of Threshold (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_(TV_series)) but my first impression of this show was that they were hoping to reproduce the Scully and Mulder magic.

I loved Fringe, which this does not seem anything like to me, but maybe once the female lead character’s father gets resurrected he will turn out to be like Walternate.

[Tachi Rocinante]

11 hours ago, Grammaeryn said:

It’s kind of funny reading these comments. It seems like a lot of us tend to watch the same shows over the years. So, whatever audience demographic the marketers were aiming for, they got this bunch of eclectic weirdos! Seriously, X-Files, to Manifest, to Fringe, to the 4400 - I have found my people. ❤️

Same here - I even watched Harsh Realm.

Also, The 4400 is supposed to get a reboot soon on the CW.

[tennisgurl]

Not a bad start to the show, its rather more melancholy than I was expecting. I definitely caught the parallels to a lot of other Sci-Fi mystery network procedural shows, like Fringe or Manifest or The X-Files and a lot of those shows became really good...and a lot of them utterly crashed and burned when it became obvious that the writers had no idea what they were doing and the mystery was going in circles. Tone wise this actually reminded me of the Amazon series Tales from the Loop, it also had a very wistful and melancholy atmosphere where people mix with strange technology and they work out their issues through Sci-Fi artifacts they find laying around. 

I like that they are jumping ahead a bit into the story, with the leads already working together and the debris incident having happened awhile ago, it means we can cut all of the exposition and just get to the story, but I also think that they might have started off with all of the grief and backstory for the leads too quickly. We hardly know them, its hard to get that invested in their struggles quite yet. 

The floating people were creepy and a lot of the actual imagery of the strange pieces and happenings are interesting, and they are setting up some interesting stories, but it did feel a bit dry. Not a lot of life or personality besides its melancholy and mystery, but I am interested. It feels kind of like some of the shows that popped up right after Lost got really big, high concept, big budget, big cast, big focus on some kind of supernatural mystery, and most of them sucked and clearly had no idea what the answer to the mystery was actually going to be. I will give it a shot though. 

6 hours ago, Tachi Rocinante said:

Also, The 4400 is supposed to get a reboot soon on the CW.

What a random show to get a CW reboot, are we going to get a lot more sexy young people in sexy love triangles? Weirdly though, I actually think that The 4400 is a good show to reboot. Don't reboot shows that were really good, reboot shows that had lots of potential that they never quite lived up to. The 4400 had a great premise and started out strong then sort of fell apart and didn't really use its premise to its full potential, so I am actually curious to see how a second run at it goes. 

[Ms Blue Jay]

I looooooved Fringe.  Sometimes I forget it existed.  I really liked Flashforward and I really liked the show Departure that just aired.

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

I looooooved Fringe.  Sometimes I forget it existed.  I really liked Flashforward and I really liked the show Departure that just aired.

I read and enjoyed the book Flashforward before it was made into a series. Interviews indicated that it failed due to disputes between the author and the other Show PTB over direction of the series.

 Departure was off my radar. Maybe I’ll check it out. 

[rove4]

23 hours ago, possibilities said:

I legit loved "Timeless"! It was flawed, like any TV. But it was fun.

I loved Timeless too!  It was fun and the chemistry between the three main characters was great.

I checked out of Manifest midway through S1.  Loved X-Files, watched Fringe though didn't make it to the end of that series (don't remember why). I remember Threshold, Flashforward, and other short-lived shows like Surface and Invasion. Oh, and the V remake/reboot.  Lost...still makes me rage.  Six years of my life!

I didn't find the male lead particularly smarmy.  He seemed like an average guy to me.  

There have obviously been witnesses to the effects of the debris, even if they don't know the cause.  Like the other hotel workers in the dining room/ballroom who saw the woman fall out of a solid ceiling.  Even if the government is paying these people to stay silent, it's hard to believe that someone wouldn't eventually feel the need to talk about it.  I know it would be a constant niggle in my mind.  Fox Mulder taught me well: Trust no one. 

[AnimeMania]

I was wondering, the dining room that the hotel maid fell into seemed to have a stained glass dome ceiling. I am not sure, but do they build hotel floors over those types of ceilings, since the maid fell straight down. Maybe they put lights above it to make it simulate sunlight.

[CooperTV]

I couldn't quite figure out why CIA and MI6 are involved in the recovering/finding the Debris (tm) instead of FBI/MI5. Oh well...

For the show so reliant on a set of intelligence officers to do their job those guys seem like overemotional bystanders to me. Neither of them act all that professional, to be honest, that's why any attempt at cloak and dagger feels completely out of place and not earned.

What's not earned as well is potential conflict between the two characters about the father of one of them. We don't know these people (outside of weird pseudo-philosophical conversation on the plane), we don't have a reason to care about them individually, so why the father drama should affect us?

The production values so far are very good. But the script is again all emotions over facts, and when it turns to sci-fi elements as a crutch for building up plot it gets ridiculously stupid.

The writers don't even try explaining anything through the lead characters outside of "stuff happens, and it's beautiful!111", like it's some sort or religious experience, not a alien ship coming down to Earth in pieces. Combined this nonsense with overtly dour serious tone and word salad kind of quasi-intellectualism and we have this show.

[basiltherat]

How can the "debris" be beautiful and good IF IT KILLS PEOPLE !!  I'm sure the dead maid and the guy impaled in the pillar do not see the beauty.

[Terrafamilia]

I do hope that we are not in for a series of maudlin human interest stories with overintrusive background music telling us how we should feeeel. That will get really old, really fast.

So the secret crash-site investigators are piecing the alien ship back together. Understandable, but in the real world such investigators like the NTSB know what it is they are piecing back together. Those photos the astronomers took (how did they manage to keep that secret?) of the thing before the remains started raining down possibly gave them a very rough idea of how it should be. Maybe if they get enough of it back together a critical mass will be reached and the ship will start reconstructing itself and the Feds will start to wonder if they need to stop it (cue the Borg).

[possibilities]

FBI is for domestic stuff. CIA deal with international. The spaceship is an international incident. 

[TimWil]

On 3/3/2021 at 1:56 AM, crowsworks said:

This might have something to do with the fact he usually plays the worst characters on cop shows - I mean the WORST.

But Jonathan Tucker gave a beautiful performance as a sweet young artist doomed to die from an AIDS-related illness in the 2009 TV film An Englishman in New York starring John Hurt as Quentin Crisp. He made me cry then (my brother died from an AIDS-related illness in 1992) and he made me cry again in this pilot when his character was visibly moved by his partner Finola’s story as well as the little sister’s.

Besides Flashforward (awful casting IMO), Fringe, Lost, The 4400 (horrible leading man IMO), Manifest, The Last Ship, Departure, Threshold, Surface and Invasion there were also high concept doozies such as The Event and Last Resort.

Edited March 7, 2021 by TimWil

[SunnyBeBe]

The last series of this genre that I got into was Resurrection and that was a disappointment.   That one grabbed my interest early, though.  Debris, not so much. The performances seem solid.  

[ottoDbusdriver]

Let's just hope that Debris is much, much, much better than Aftermath.  :)

[Maverick]

 I didn't get why everyone was so nonchalant about everything they witnessed.   The people they retrieved from the field were thought dead but then open their eyes and look around.  And nobody jumps/gasps/comments?   They watch two guys teleport and no biggie?   I get they've witnessed odd occurrences before but it appeared much of what they encountered in this episode was new.   They sure became blasé in 6 months.

The MI6 agent was going on about the aliens giving them a gift.  It's a wrecked spaceship.   At best there was an accident and the wreckage drifted to Earth.  At worst some aliens are using the Solar System as a galactic junkyard.  

[shapeshifter]

39 minutes ago, Maverick said:

The MI6 agent was going on about the aliens giving them a gift.  It's a wrecked spaceship.   At best there was an accident and the wreckage drifted to Earth.  At worst some aliens are using the Solar System as a galactic junkyard.  

Wasn’t the “they’ve given us a gift” comment sort of a metaphor? Like maybe just a reference to potential advances in technology to be learned from the debris? 
Of course I think the opposite is even more likely—like a plague. 

[AnimeMania]

I thought it was weird that those two teleporting guys seemed to know about that big ball of spaceship debris and they only chose to take one piece at a time, you think they would have grabbed the entire thing.

[Terrafamilia]

It probably means there's a mole in the organization.