#Debris Season 1 Episode 8 Review: Spaceman

There’s good news, bad news, and some in-between news in the wake of Debris Season 1 Episode 8.

The very best news is that Finola and Bryan, while still expected to work together despite opposing directives, have found a comfortable rhythm in which they share everything with each other.

The worst news is that very little was offered regarding the overarching mystery, even with a significant reveal. Make that two mysteries.

The first mystery, of course, is about the debris and what INFLUX is doing with it.

The second mystery is whether Maddox and Ferris can be deemed good, evil, or somewhere in between.

Sadly, Bryan and Finola are being controlled by forces that refuse to share their mission, and even when they get an inkling in that direction, it’s without context.

With his very life somehow intertwined with Maddox, Bryan is expected to follow orders blindly. Whether it’s because Maddox saved him or because Maddox uses Bryan’s military training to control him, I’m not really sure.

Maddox: I don’t want you to use Finola on this mission, tactically.

Bryan: Finola’s capable. I trust her instincts. There’s no way she would ever not be one of the first people through the door to retrieve her father.

Maddox: You’re going to have to find a way. This isn’t a retrieval for you, Bryan. George Jones doesn’t come out of this alive.

But Maddox doesn’t know Bryan as well as he thinks or hopes, and he’s not been paying attention to the clues Bryan has dropped that Finola’s wellbeing is high on his list.

Maybe it’s because Bryan lost another partner and didn’t put up much of a fuss that Maddox thinks Bryan would be willing to murder George Jones, Finola be damned. Hell, ethics be damned, too, and that would have a lot more to do with Bryan than anything he’s experienced before.

Finola hasn’t shared too much with Ferris about how she feels toward Bryan, so it’s not surprising that Ferris just doesn’t care if Finola is asked to screw over her partner.

Finola: Ferris told me there’s going to be a team waiting to ambush the convoy to take my father and I back to London.

Bryan: That doesn’t matter if he’s dead.

Finola: What? What do you mean?

Bryan: Maddox doesn’t want your father coming out of this raid alive.

Instead, Ferris used Finola’s fragile family as a means to control her, and it didn’t work. Instead, DeeDee outsmarted Ferris, ultimately keeping George out of Ferris’ hands by sharing what Ferris did on Debris Season 1 Episode 7.

Despite this new working relationship with Bryan and Finola, I wish that Bryan had more agency and wasn’t always following Finola’s lead. Somehow, he’s always swayed in Finola’s direction. Otherwise, his purpose seems to be muscle — and even that doesn’t always feel genuine.

After all, Finola is pretty darn capable. She can fire a weapon just as well as Bryan, and she walks directly into danger time and again. That might seem foolhardy at times, but it’s served her well.

And just moments after Bryan promised George he would be safe as long as he was around, Bryan proceeded to watch George meander around the hotel unhindered.

That’s problematic since George has a damaged hippocampus, which alternately allows him to share relatively nothing and, perhaps, hold the key to stopping INFLUX.

Finola: You need to tell me right now. How are you alive?

George: From what I understand, they took me from the morgue, and I was reanimated. They can only do it to a person once. I had no idea that the debris had these capabilities. They went in through my eye.

Yes, George Jones is alive. He’s not a clone, rather reanimated, which is a one-time-only shot. George has a disconnect between his short-and long-term memories, but if that seems scientific, it’s really not.

George knows that INFLUX is trying to gain access to a dangerously powerful piece of debris that is a game-changer, the kind of game-changer that makes life insignificant.

Of course, he doesn’t remember what it does or any of the math he used to build a device that would aid INFLUX in either using or obtaining this debris or both. That makes sense since he had a room full of equations. That must have been handy with his work.

But what didn’t make sense was how George remembered what supplies he needed to recreate the device, a device whose purpose he cannot recall. How can you know what supplies you need to build something when you have no idea what it’s supposed to do?

Finola: I really understand how important your work is to you. I just wished there was room in there for me. That’s it.

George: I’m sorry I wasn’t the father you needed, Finola. But now, this isn’t about you or me or our relationship. This is about your children’s children. This is about making rice in fields that should be barren. This is about regrowing forests in, in, in days, rather than decades, making the world harmonious and having no wants. This is about restoring balance to a world that is on fire. That’s what this is about! And the only ones who can usher these things in are the beings that created this debris, beings that we may never. They gave us the gift of their technology, and it’s going to take all of that technology to save mankind.

Finola: Yeah. Well, I um.

George: Maybe I made mistakes. I viewed the world in a particular way, and now it’s all out of control. Do you understand? You are so important to me, and now I, I have a chance to set things right with you and with what I’ve done.

Finola, of course, got the opportunity to tell her dad how disappointing it was that his work meant so much more than his family. He had no answer for that. He just knows that earth so frakked that without the debris, we’re all dead anyway, so put your soft feelings behind you, girl.

Can I say UGH??? Yes, yes, I can. I don’t need yet another show where the premise is that humanity is so worthless that without intervention, there’s no future.

In this case, the intervention required is alien by way of a “gift” of technology that appeared why? Because they couldn’t keep their spacecraft from exploding. That’s not as helpful as it sounds, is it?

George sounded like a ranting old fool as he faced his daughter without much proof of anything other than we’re doomed if not for the tech. What a disappointing message to humanity and Finola as his daughter.

George later went to sleep under some aluminum foil, as you do. I guess alien technology in the hands of humans is anything but profound.

Overall, what did we learn about this episode? INFLUX is experimenting on people to varying results. None of them seem excited to be a part of it. Not that I would expect them to, but if this were The Flash or something, they’d lean into their powers.

George Jones is alive, but he was almost useless. He was building a thing, and if it’s finished, that’s bad. Thanks, George.

Questions that arise from “Spaceman” include: Who the hell is Brill, and why is he wearing another Brill’s face (that he peels off while the guy has his eyes open)?

Why is Ferris working with him? Does she know he’s a face-wearer? Is HE the spaceman in the title?

And was George revived, or was he only told he was reanimated? Given his memory issues, how do we know anything he says is true?

Now that we know someone can be reanimated, could that be what happened to Bryan? Was he dead, and Maddox reanimated him? Is that why he’s on meds?

Will any of these questions be answered by the time the credits roll on the finale?

Remember that you can watch Debris online any time right here via TV Fanatic, and drop down below to get your thoughts off of your chest.

Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.