After last week’s pilot episode, Debris continues to explore its world and fill in some of the blanks, with episode 2 ‘You Are Not Alone’. *Warning! Spoilers Lie Ahead!*
In what is a bit of a messy episode, you can see Debris struggling to establish its own voice and rhythm, aiming to give it some uniqueness. If anything though, ‘You Are Not Alone’ feels even more X-Files meets Fringe than the pilot. There’s something about the main dynamic between Bryan (Jonathan Tucker) and Finola (Riann Steele) that reflects both those shows, and it doesn’t help that the mystery is handled in much the same way too.
At the moment they do seem, understandably, to be setting up a bit of a ‘debris of the week’ style format which works here, but which will probably become tiresome very quickly. Primarily, the plot this week is that there is a town where lots of metal objects are being attracted to form a ring around it. At the beginning the reason seems baffling, as it’s not all magnetic metals, but only select pieces, almost like it was being driven by a conscious mind.
Things then get weirder, when they see Eric (David Alpay – Proven Innocent, The Vampire Diaries) still in the town and in a very confused state. This is at first a bit of a distraction, until they suddenly get multiple Eric’s appearing, which tells them far more, and for Eric, ‘You are not alone’ rings true. This leads to finding a hefty piece of debris at Eric’s house, which seems to clone whoever encounters it without suitable protection, including Bryan.
It’s an interesting premise, but hopefully most episodes won’t be relying on creating duplicate humans, as they’re two for two so far. There’s a temptation to assume that they are using these ‘clone’ stories to lay some groundwork for either a red herring or a major reveal regarding the mystery of what happened to Finola’s father George (Tyrone Benskin – Channel Zero, The Art of More). Did he die or not, and is his new appearance a clone or was there deception? No doubt this will play into a bigger storyline, but parts of what we know already have made some eyes roll. The whole ‘CIA are building something from the parts in secret’ bit has the potential to be very old hat, or could launch this into a whole new arena. The jury is still out.
What is clear though, is that at present it is very much smoke and mirrors for the audience as well as between the CIA and MI6 on a general level, with incomplete information being released. While some of that is understandable between the two agencies, there is a feeling that it could start to be used overtly as a shortcut device in the storytelling, rather than dealing with any central difficulties. Too many times series have been ruined by using worn out tropes where the whole plot would have been solved by the utterance of one line. That kind of artificial dragging out of a plot is painful.
As for the debris itself, there definitely needs to be some more explanation of how they categorise it and what types there are. They’ve laid hints that there is a system in place, but there is much we don’t know in terms of their organisation, or what has been learned so far. We’re very much in catch-up mode regarding their world, as they seem to be much more at ease with certain aspects of the debris than you’d expect. The audience are still seeing much more of a mystery and you get into the story thinking one thing to then discover that aspects of this aren’t a mystery at all.
‘You are not alone’ would have been better served as a second half of the pilot, as there is a lot of storyline that seems very connected. There is even a suspicion that a three part pilot, including next week would have been preferable, depending on how they handle the next portion of story. It just doesn’t feel like we know enough about this world yet to really get to grips with whether this is going to work. There are promising signs, but there are many pitfalls to overcome before it feels like it’s running smoothly.
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