Series / Debris

Debris is a NBC science fiction series that premiered March 1st, 2021.

Three years ago, Earth spotted the wreck of a derelict spacecraft drifting high above the planet. Six months ago, wreckage from that spacecraft began to rain down on Earth, causing bizarre effects wherever they fell. As countries and private dealers race to harvest the debris, the CIA and MI6 form a joint organization, ORBITAL, to keep the debris out of the wrong hands.

Enter Bryan Beneventi (Jonathan Tucker), plucked from a military prison, and Finola Jones (Riann Steele), whose late father was the leading expert on the debris. They travel across the United States, investigating debris-caused incidents, while the member organizations of ORBITAL balance cooperation with national interests and attempt to thwart a ring of debris-smugglers known as INFLUX.

The show was cancelled after one season.

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This show provides examples of:

• Alien Kudzu: Strange flowers grow and blossom in a matter of seconds in a cornfield affected by debris, producing chlorine instead of oxygen and making the area hostile to oxygen-breathing life.
• Alternate Universe: It's theorized that the debris in Episode 9 works like this, shifting its user/s to another dimension which is almost the same as the previous one but with various differences: for example, how many siblings Shelby has, who Bryan's partner is and whether George Jones is dead or alive.
• Amulet of Dependency: The debris in Episode 6 has a Fountain of Youth effect, but those that are exposed to it have to stay within a couple hundred feet of it or they snap back to their original age, to fatal effect.
• Arms Dealer: A brisk trade has sprung up in debris, most or all of which are harmful to humans and could be weaponized; the first episode has INFLUX meeting with one such dealer.
• Assimilation Plot: Turns out to be INFLUX and George's plan, using debris that can connect directly with human minds to link all humans into a single Hive Mind gestalt, thereby ending all conflict between individuals and enabling Humanity to 'ascend' to their full potential.
• Back from the Dead:
  • What Amy Morrison and her husband initially think is happening when their deceased son reappears. He's actually some sort of debris-spawned projection that feeds on the energy of others to sustain himself.
  • This is what happened to George Jones, as far as he knows: He did indeed die, then INFLUX took his body from the morgue and reanimated him with debris inserted through his right eye.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: A variant in Episode 6, when the elderly couple surrenders their debris and disappears into the woods; they're last seen holding hands at the edge of a cliff and it's heavily implied that they jumped to their deaths rather than allow themselves to be killed by the effect of the debris wearing off. As the woman originally had dementia, this might also be a form of Dying as Yourself.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: When debris starts terraforming a farm, it also transforms humans into beings that breathe chlorine.
• Black Site: The vast warehouse-like lab where ORBITAL/the CIA experiment with the debris they've obtained.
• Call-Back: An Eric clone from Episode 2 mentioned a "ball of light" during his rantings, and a test subject in Episode 8 who's implanted with debris says she "doesn't know where the ball of light is." This is also noted in-universe, with Finola pointing it out to Bryan.
• Came Back Wrong: George, potentially, depending on how much of his current worldview is influenced by his resurrection by INFLUX.
• Chekhov's Gun: The "nacho" from the first episode, or the same type of debris, reappears in Episode 8, implanted into a human test subject and grants her the ability to control its Intangibility.
• Cliffhanger: Episode 9 ends with Bryan shifted to a reality where Finola never became his partner, reality slowly breaking down as a result of the debris that shifted him, and the distant hope that he can mentally focus himself enough to send himself back to his proper reality before the Reality Bleed becomes irreversible.
• Clone Degeneration: As the ORBITAL technicians begin to shut down the clone-spawning debris fragment, it starts rapidly producing deformed hybrid Eric-Bryan clones that seem aware of their surroundings but are apparently incapable of movement or speech.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Maddox puts Anson through this in Episode 7 as part of an interrogation technique.
• Conspiracy Theorist: In Episode 7, a household computer is filled with links and bookmarks to anti-government conspiracy sites, most related to UFOs and the debris, causing Fin and Bryan to believe that the recent suicide victim was this. It's actually the computer of the deceased's brother, a Shell-Shocked Veteran who used conspiracy theories to cope with his PTSD and subsequently joined INFLUX.
• Covert Distress Code: Fin's sister, Dee, drops one into a phone conversation as she asks Fin to return to London; Dee is being coerced by Fin's MI6 superior, who's watching the call, but the mention of "Michelle's country house" lets Fin know that something's wrong, as it was a phrase the sisters used when they didn't want their parents to know what they were talking about.
• Creepy Child: Caroline, from Episode 7, is a young girl who barely speaks, stares at people just a little too long and is somehow connected with mind-controlling debris. This is subverted as the episode goes on: Her uncle is using Caroline in his grudge against the government and her demeanor is likely due to knowing that her uncle murdered her father, prevented her mother from coming for her and may do the same to anyone else who gets involved. She's actually trying to prevent anyone else from getting hurt by hiding the debris she "finds."
• Cue the Sun: The sun rises after the debris is packed up at the end of Episode 4, burning away the clouds and the terraforming rain.
• The Dog Bites Back: After being isolated and controlled by her Uncle Luke, who was using her to collect debris and murdered her father to retain access to her, Caroline finally uses her connection with the debris to slam Luke into a car, embedding a piece of debris into his forehead and killing him instantly.
• Eye Color Change: Garcia, who was apparently part of clandestine experiments with debris, was left with stark white eyes and solid black pupils. The audio during the end credits of the episode suggests there was an accident in a debris field and his current state was the best they could do to stabilize him.
• Eye Scream:
  • INFLUX revived George Jones by inserting a fragment of debris into his body through his right eye, rendering it milky and potentially blind. Mercifully, none of the process is shown on screen.
  • Whatever experiments Garcia took part in likely involved or resulted in this, given that his eyes have acquired an obviously unnatural appearance.
• Face Stealer: Ferris's operative is seen doing this in Episode 8, cutting off a layer of skin from someone and wearing it over his own face. It's suggested he does this on a regular basis because the face decays and he has to refresh it every so often. The victim has had it done to him enough times that there are obvious scars around the incision area.
• Faking the Dead: George Jones, whose body was replaced with a convincing double, confirmed by missing security footage and the double wearing a watch that had been removed from the original.
• Fighting from the Inside: Happens several times in Episode 7, which features debris that lets the episode's antagonist control people: a man visibly resists handing over a bag containing the debris and subsequently shooting himself in the head, and Bryan later resists being forced to shoot himself long enough for the antagonist to be taken out. More subtly, Finola is forced to turn around and walk away as Bryan is being controlled and is visibly trying to keep herself from moving.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Finola is the Responsible Sibling, having pursued an academic/scientific career and taken on the task of handling their late father's affairs, while her sister Dee is the Foolish Sibling; Finola claims that Dee was their father's favorite who "got away with everything," and is a recovering drug addict.
• Fountain of Youth: The debris in Episode 6 reverses aging, bringing someone to the prime of their life. This effect persists as long as they stay within a certain distance of the debris, and results in a fatal snapback if they move out of range. It also appears to have a limit as to how many can share the effect.
• Gravity Screw:
  • The debris in the pilot levitates its victims and draws them to the ditch where the real Kieran died, where they whirl about with various other detritus like leaves in an updraft.
  • In Episode 6, Maddox engages in a black market deal for a piece of debris that allows a top to spin about a foot above it.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The debris in Episode 9 results in this, when a brother and sister encounter it and are sent back two days prior. The "loop" only exists because they kept using the debris; after the sister disappears, her brother keeps resetting the loop in hopes of his sister reappearing.
• Happier Home Movie: At the end of Episode 5, Fin's sister Dee Dee sends her one from their childhood where they're happily singing and dancing to an old song as the voices of their parents are heard. Fin and Dee Dee are estranged, their mother is deceased and their father was believed to be dead but has apparently been abducted, with the stark contrast bringing Finola to tears.
• He Knows Too Much: Maddox believes that George Jones' knowledge about the debris is too dangerous for him to live, ordering Bryan to ensure his death on what's ostensibly a rescue mission.
• Hell Is That Noise: In Episode 5, a high-pitched drone is heard in the areas about to be affected by the debris-of-the-week, signaling that the wormhole-creating debris has been activated and will take effect in two hours.
• High-Tech Hexagons: The larger pieces of debris are comprised of or plated with metallic hexagons.
• Hive Mind: Kieran's victims in the first episode are apparently "dead," yet they speak in unison and respond to stimuli received by Kieran/the debris that spawned him.
• Hostile Terraforming: Finola hypothesizes that this is what the debris in Episode 4 is doing, making the affected atmosphere fit for lifeforms that breathe chlorine instead of oxygen. As an added wrinkle, it modifies the people, too, such that they can no longer breathe beyond the affected area.
• Human Popsicle: When debris renders a group of people incapable of breathing oxygen, meaning that they'd die once the atmosphere-altering debris was removed, Finola decides to use a previously-recovered debris to induce suspended animation in the victims and hopefully awaken them after the change can be reversed.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: Grayscale composites of images and text indicating the location we're about to see.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum:
  • The US and UK governments hope to use the titular debris to advance science and technology, and a scientist in Episode 3 emphasizes just how important the debris-of-the-episode could be to expanding humanity's knowledge.
  • George Jones believes this wholeheartedly, claiming that only the alien technology and the beings who created it can save the world humanity ruined.
• Information Wants to Be Free: The INFLUX agent in Episode 5 claims that "This technology [the debris] will be free," implying that this is a major motivation for INFLUX.
• In Spite of a Nail: The different iterations seen in Episode 9 have small differences, like the number of siblings Shelby has or who Bryan's partner is, but the overall world appears to be essentially the same: ORBITAL still exists and Bryan and his partner arrive to investigate Shelby and the debris.
• Interdimensional Travel Device: The debris in Episode 9 appears to rewind time by two days and is treated like a Time Machine, but some of George's theorizing makes it sound more like this; the debris isn't so much rewinding time as it is moving its user/s to an alternate universe where many things are the same but some details are different. Like how many siblings Shelby has, or who Bryan's partner is.
• Internal Reveal: Finola learns in Episode 4 that her father is alive, and that Bryan knew about it. The two admit their shared deception in Episode 6.
• Intangibility:
  • In Episode 1, a maid absentmindedly touches a piece of debris left behind by a black market dealer, rendering her intangible. She immediately falls through the floor, and the ones below, until she's dropped several stories and makes a fatal landing when she finally loses her grip on the piece.
  • A test subject in Episode 8 acquires intangibility and the ability to control it after being implanted with the same "nacho"-type debris.
• Invisibility: The test subject in Episode 8 can turn invisible as well as intangible.
• It Only Works Once: INFLUX has debris which can reanimate a deceased person, but it only works once and they're liable to cause brain damage installing the debris since it has to go in through the eye.
• It's All My Fault: Julia, Maddox's wife, blames herself for their son's condition because she was driving during the accident that left him disabled. Maddox doesn't blame her, but Julia's guilt and the difficulties of caring for their son has disrupted their marriage, leading to Julia secretly seeking a divorce.
• I Wished You Were Dead: A variant, where Shelby admits that he felt as though he were living in his sister's shadow and sometimes wished that she'd never been born. After she disappears during a time loop, Shelby's desperate attempts to get his sister back is likely fueled, at least in part, by guilt.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Bryan is forbidden to tell Finola that her father might be alive and suffers obvious guilt as a result; later, Finola has to keep the fact that she knows about Bryan's secret-keeping a secret and tells her MI6 contact in frustration that she's supposed to be able to trust her partner, but instead they're lying to each other. They eventually admit the truth to each other in Episode 6.
• Kidnapped Scientist: George Jones was kidnapped by INFLUX... or rather, he died and was resurrected by INFLUX, who forced him to work on a machine that can track a specific debris that's vital to their plan.
• Knuckle Tattoos: Anson Ash has a series of numbers and letters tattooed on his knuckles and across the backs of his hands.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • Happens repeatedly to Bryan and Finola in Episode 7, where the episode's antagonist mind-controls them to believe that there's nothing unusual about the swamp on his property and no reason to investigate it. It's also how the antagonist keeps a woman away from her daughter, who he's using to locate the debris in the swamp; she later describes it as being made to 'forget' her love for her daughter whenever she would try to get the girl back.
  • George Jones has a gap in his memories thanks to INFLUX damaging his hippocampus during his resurrection, rendering him unable to clearly remember much of what happened after that.
• Limited-Use Magical Device: The fragmented debris from Episode 7 functions like this, with each fragment providing a temporary use of telepathic ability before becoming useless, making it unique among the debris seen so far.
• Literal Split Personality: Ultimately the case in Episode 2, as the Eric clones embody his strongest emotions at specific points in his life, like his anger at being passed over for a promotion and his desperation to reunite with his girlfriend.
• Living MacGuffin:
  • Caroline, the little girl in Episode 7, has the ability to control debris with her mind.
  • It becomes clear that George Jones is one due to his knowledge of debris and his scientific background, as ORBITAL has been searching for him and INFLUX went to great lengths to acquire his expertise. After Finola and Bryan rescue him, both MI6 and the CIA continue to search for him.
• The Lonely Door: Episode 3 has one that doubles as a Portal Door to the dimension/s where various "missing" persons are trapped, though it looks less like a door and more like a wall-sized slab of aerogel standing in a field. When the debris creating it is moved in relation to the point where the slab forms, the perspective changes and eventually reveals a tunnel.
• Love Cannot Overcome: Maddox is desperately trying to keep his family together, insisting to his wife that he doesn't blame her for the accident that crippled their son. Unfortunately, she very much holds herself responsible, and his attempts to convince her otherwise, regardless of their sincerity, only make her feel worse about it. She ends up seeking a divorce because she can't forgive herself or accept it from him.
• Low Culture, High Tech: The debris is beyond the understanding of 21st-century humanity, but there's a race to secure as much of it as possible in the hopes that it will provide some sort of advantage.
• Mental Monster: The reality of "Kieran" in the pilot episode, formed by debris from the memories and the guilt of the real Kieran's grieving mother.
• Mercy Kill: Anson Ash puts a colleague out of his misery after he teleports part way into a concrete pillar.
• Mind Manipulation: The debris from Episode 7 allows the user to control a target's actions, to affect the target's memories and to put out mental signals, which Finola describes as a 'mental whisper,' that warn people away from specific places. The catch is that the debris is broken into many fragments, and the individual fragments lose power after being used, so he has to continuously obtain more to maintain the power.
• Mind Probe: Maddox uses one of these on Anson in Episode 7 to acquire information about INFLUX, which involves cutting open Anson's scalp and introducing probes, then directing Anson's thoughts, which are projected onto a screen.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Having seen that Maddox's marriage is on the rocks, we're briefly led to believe that his wife is cheating on him after Maddox sees his wife at their favorite restaurant with another man. In fact, that man is a divorce attorney and Maddox's wife is planning to leave him.
• Morality Pet: Maddox, the hard-nosed CIA agent, has a disabled son named Dario whom he loves a great deal: Maddox is willing to leave work unexpectedly when his son's aide has an appointment and is shown patiently trying to teach his son to catch a ball.
• Mundane Utility: One piece of debris in ORBITAL's possession acts as some sort of teleporter. Maddox heaves a folding chair through it again and again as a form of stress release.
• The Needs of the Many:
  • George and INFLUX have this as their rationalization, justifying everything they've done as being for the betterment of Mankind.
  • When the debris responsible for The Lonely Door is found in episode 3, the lead scientist argues against using it to free those trapped within because it represents the first real proof of interdimensional and intergalactic travel, secrets that might be lost were they to deplete its remaining power in a rescue attempt. Finola counters that if they aren't willing to rescue those in trouble using it, then they don't deserve to have it at all.
• Never My Fault:
  • Kurt in Episode 6 blames Bryan for the death of his friend, on the logic that he would have been fine had Bryan not caught him and allowed him to leave the range of the Fountain of Youth debris. On top of that, he then threatens to ditch his other two friends, intentionally letting them die, and says that would be Bryan's fault for not letting them go. His wife eventually talks some sense into him and he surrenders the debris.
  • George shows shades of this, brushing aside Finola's charges of parental distance and neglect by saying that his work with the debris could improve the world; when he meets Garcia, who was left permanently altered by ORBITAL's experiments and clearly holds George at least partly responsible, George blames the CIA for usurping ORBITAL but says that Garcia shouldn't blame anyone for his misfortune, as the benefits of conducting those experiments outweighs the risks to participants.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: After we learn that repeated using of the debris in Episode 9 risks destabilizing the universe itself, the scene transitions start "glitching out," becoming slowed down and taking on an orange tinge as the audio becomes increasingly distorted. For added effect, orange was one of the colors George had told Shelby to look for when the debris activates, with the implication that orange in particular could be bad news.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Word of God says that Bryan sees Maddox, ORBITAL's lead CIA representative, as a father figure, which may explain why Bryan's in ORBITAL at all and is initially willing to keep Finola in the dark about her father despite his misgivings.
  • Ferris, the MI6 boss, tries to position herself as this, emphasizing her concern for Finola and her family when trying to get Finola to bring her father back to London.
• Perpetual Storm: The debris in Episode 4 creates an endless, localized rainstorm as part of its Hostile Terraforming.
• Philosophical Parable: "The Soldier and the Penguin," written for Finola's mother and related by Finola herself, serves this purpose in Episode 9. Telling the story of a soldier who escorts a penguin across a desert to be with its true love, it's An Aesop about how fear of being hurt or becoming vulnerable can keep you from acknowledging what you truly desire, much less achieving it.
• Phlebotinum Breakdown: The starship was already broken when it was discovered out in space. On Earth, the fragments act in mysterious ways that are harmful to humans, simply because they're pieces of a whole acting independent of any central command. A navigational device creates a portal to another dimension because it happens to be pointed in the right direction and a terraforming device starts converting Earth because no one is around to tell it not to.
• Phlebotinum Overdose: The teleportation "pills" used by INFLUX have long-term consequences and one member is reluctant to use them, saying that he's "jumped too many times"; when he takes it anyway, visible scarring appears on his head and face and he may have suffered internal damage as well.
• Power Nullifier: ORBITAL has a device which can neutralize debris within its field of effect.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Occurs in Episode 7, when the episode's antagonist forces his brother to shoot himself in the head; he later attempts to make Bryan do the same thing, but is killed before Bryan's forced to carry it out.
• Pulling Themselves Together: In episode 12, the ship spontaneously attracts a piece of debris in storage to itself. Unfortunately, said debris shoots right through the head of the employee who heard the piece moving and came to investigate. The debris then begins assembling an object in a pocket dimension using debris with certain harmonic frequencies, creating a ball of light that shoots off to parts unknown.
• Quieter Than Silence: The debris in Episode 5 creates a high-pitched whine followed by absolute silence, heralding the imminent teleportation of the debris' target.
• Rapid Aging: Anyone under the effect of the Fountain of Youth debris in Episode 6 suffers this if they move too far from it. Unfortunately, going from physical prime to elderly in less than a minute is universally fatal. By the end, they figure out how to slow the aging effect so the snapback just resets them to their natural age without killing them.
• Reality Bleed: Overuse of the debris in episode 9 causes this effect. At first, the effect is only present in mirrors, briefly showing images of alternate universes. As the effect progresses, warped space manifests showing the other realities in real time.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: The breakdown of realities in episodes 9 and 10 stems from Shelby and Kathleen, twins, being stuck in different realities. The problem is solved when the two time their use of the debris at precisely the same moment, repairing the damage from their initial separation.
• Reality Warper: The debris breaks numerous physical laws and can impart these effects to those in physical contact with it. The larger the fragment, the more pronounced the effects.
• Recovered Addict: Finola's sister, Dee, is revealed to be a recovering addict in Episode 7 and begs her to come home, afraid that she's about to relapse. She's actually being forced to make the call by Finola's boss, who hopes to make Finola return to London.
• Ret-Gone: What happens to Kathleen, half of a set of twins, when she and her brother start messing around with debris that rewinds time to two days before they encountered the debris.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Shelby has this in Episode 9, by virtue of being the one who's using the time-altering debris. When Bryan attempts to stop Shelby, leaving them in physical contact when the next loop begins, Bryan acquires this too.
• Scientist vs. Soldier: Downplayed with Finola and Bryan: They're partners who work well together, but Finola comes from a scientific background and is prone to musing on the broader implications of the debris, even saying that it gave her astrophysicist father his faith back, while Bryan is from a military background and seems less interested in the questions surrounding the debris, focusing on whatever problems it's currently causing.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • Finola frequently takes this stance, arguing for the use of debris to help people even when it goes against protocol and telling a man the truth of what's going on, allowing him to join his family, when she's been ordered to give him the cover-up version of the story.
  • Bryan and Finola turn against Orbital and their handlers in Episode 8, more overtly in the case of Finola, rather than go along with either executing George Jones or delivering him to MI6 to never be seen again.
• See the Invisible: Bryan uses a handful of dirt to reveal a woman who can turn invisible thanks to debris implanted under her skin.
• Semper Fi: Bryan is confirmed to have been in MARSOC (Marine Forces Special Operations Command) prior to being recruited.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: This is Shelby's purpose in Episode 9: His sister disappeared after they used the debris-of-the-week, which can reset time to two days before they first encountered the debris, and he's obsessively resetting the loop in hopes of bringing her back.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • Bryan was in a military prison in Afghanistan before being recruited and he carries a photo of an unknown woman he presumably met while stationed there; whatever happened left him cynical and unwilling to share his past with Fin. We get a little more in Episode 7, where he reveals that he lost friends in combat and struggled deeply before "someone" stepped in. That person is implied to be Maddox, explaining Bryan's loyalty to him.
  • Episode 7 has Luke, who was so embittered by his experiences in Afghanistan that he joined INFLUX, forced his niece to "find" debris that let him mind-control people, then murdered his brother and mind-controlled Caroline's mother to stay away so he could keep using the girl.
  • Implied for Anson Ash, who's mentioned to to be ex-SAS and was a decorated soldier before he "became a problem" and went AWOL, eventually forming INFLUX.
• Speak in Unison: The victims of the debris in Episode 1, having become some sort of Hive Mind linked to the debris, at one point begin chanting the name of Finola's late mother when Finola makes contact with the debris and it sees her mother in her memories.
• Special Guest: John Noble isn't credited until the end credits to make his introduction much more impactful.
• Spiritual Successor: The show's premise is very similar to that of the Russian novel Roadside Picnic.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: Shelby always felt like this about his twin sister, Kathleen; he considered Kathleen smarter, kinder, and generally better than him, which sometimes led Shelby to wish that she'd never been born. This accidentally starts the plot of Episode 9 when the two encounter a debris that responds to the user's subconscious desires, resulting in Kathleen's disappearance.
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: The Quieter Than Silence effect in Episode 5 includes the soundtrack.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In Episode 4, Bryan makes it clear that they can't always win every battle. The people terraformed by the debris are stuck that way, the debris has to be shut off before many more suffer the same fate, and the best they can hope for is to put those affected in stasis with the hope that one day they can be cured.
• Sweet Tooth: Implied with Bryan, who waxes rhapsodic about sugar-coated Peeps marshmallows in Episode 2 and is later revealed to favor overly-sweet coffee drinks. Finola even calls Bryan out on his sugar fixation.
• Tele-Frag:
  • A pair of INFLUX agents escape through debris-powered teleportation, but one winds up with half his body inside a concrete pillar, necessitating the Mercy Kill above.
  • An INFLUX agent attempts to re-capture an escaped test subject in Episode 8 only to have her phase through him, taking part of a plastic body bag with her; the body-bag re-solidifies inside the INFLUX agent, resulting in his death from multiple internal hemorrhages.
• Teleportation:
  • INFLUX agents have metal shavings — presumably from debris — they can swallow to provide a one-way teleportation several miles away. They just have to be careful about where they land, lest they Tele-Frag into something.
  • Maddox has a pair of debris at ORBITAL which function as a portal pair. Chuck an object in one end and it gets sent out the other. Curiously, no matter how hard he throws a chair into the larger fragment, the chair always exits at the same speed and orientation from the smaller one.
  • INFLUX has a pair of debris that generate a wormhole between them when placed on a heavy steel conductor. An early attempt in China spaghettified the test subjects. A later attempt on a city bus twisted the back end and killed all but one passenger, but everyone otherwise came out intact. They tried to scale up the next attempt to an entire city block, which was stopped before it could fully charge.
• Tested on Humans:
  • Standard INFLUX practice, apparently, as we see their teleportation-based tests in Episode 5 and an entire group of test subjects in Episode 8, all of whom are likely to be unwilling.
  • ORBITAL apparently conducted human testing of its own, as Episode 9 introduces Garcia, who was part of it, and confirms that Bryan was also part of the project and is taking medication to presumably control its effects. Unlike INFLUX's subjects, ORBITAL seems to have used volunteers, or at worst unfortunate victims that were then treated as well as possible.
• Time Crash: The world is apparently heading for one of these as of Episode 9, where Shelby has been resetting time over a two-day loop in an attempt to find his twin sister, who disappeared during an earlier loop. Despite repeated warnings from multiple versions of George Jones, Shelby keeps resetting and it's starting to fray the local Space-Time, to the point where characters can glimpse alternate dimensions/timelines as ghostly images due to the universe breaking down.
• Time Loop Fatigue: As Episode 9 progresses, the instigator of the "Groundhog Day" Loop becomes increasingly disheveled and desperate, including cutting his conversation with Bryan and Finola or whoever Bryan's partner of the moment is increasingly shorter because he's been through it countless times. By the end, he doesn't bother answering the door and just tapes up a sign that says "COME IN."
• Time Machine: The debris from Episode 9 functions like this, though as the episode goes on, it's implied that it may be something closer to an Interdimensional Travel Device.
• Time Travel Episode: A two-parter, actually, with Episodes 9 and 10 filling this niche thanks to a large debris fragment that allows for limited time-travel.
• Tinfoil Hat: When Bryan, Finola and George hole up in a motel, the latter acquires a roll of aluminum foil, pulls out a sheet large enough to cover the bed and pulls it over himself entirely, presumably to keep ORBITAL's detectors from picking up the debris that was used to revive him. In a later episode, he's upgraded to a full-body covering that Bryan refers to as a "tinfoil cape."
• Trapped in Another World: The Lonely Door above leads to one or more dimensions where multiple people have been trapped for varying lengths of time; while those outside the Door see them as shadowy figures standing side-by-side, the trapped individuals can't perceive each other at all.
• Trust Password: Bryan finds himself in an Alternate Universe/Alternate Timeline where he has a different partner and Finola is working at ORBITAL's London headquarters. He calls and attempts to explain what happened, asking Finola to tell him about "The Soldier and the Penguin," a story that, in their previous timeline, George had mentioned as a possible solution. Finola is visibly startled, explaining that the story was written for her late mother, and seems to take Bryan's crazed ramblings more seriously from that point.
• Unwitting Test Subject: A busload of civilians are part of INFLUX's wormhole experiments and all but one is killed in transit, with the lone survivor having samples taken from him before being executed. A previous experiment in China got the unfortunate victims spaghettified.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The US and the UK are collaborating on ORBITAL, but neither side makes any secret about the fact that both have their own best interests in mind: Ferris warns Finola to remember this, as they know the CIA is keeping secrets, one of which is that they have footage of Fin's supposedly-dead father. We later see that MI6 is engaged in its own shady practices, including what's implied to be non-ORBITAL-sanctioned debris usage.
• Weird Weather: The debris in Episode 4 causes the sky to turn green in a half-mile radius and the rain that falls has the prismatic appearance of an oil slick. It also alters those who were caught in it on a physiological level, rendering them unable to breathe oxygen.
• Wham Episode: "Celestial Body" drops a number of bombs on Bryan and Finola. George turns out to be a part of INFLUX and has been playing the two since they found him alive, INFLUX operatives have been working across multiple universes, and the group has an alternate version of Finola trapped in stasis.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The first several clones from Episode 2 appear to be sentient, with each considering himself the "real" Eric, and the Bryan clone also seems self-aware, but all subsequent clones are unceremoniously dispatched via headshot immediately after spawning.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Finola implies that her father neglected his children after his wife's death while he buried himself in his work. Although father and daughter love each other, it's clear that there's still a rift.
• Women Are Wiser: Finola is the more empathetic of the main duo, trying to connect with Bryan and openly sympathizing with those involved in their cases: She tries to calm a frantic clone in Episode 2, realizing that the clones are attempts to protect the original Eric's "heart," and insists on trying to save the trapped people in Episode 3 despite the team's scientist trying to prioritize preserving the debris.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: A teenage girl disappears in 2019 and is released from the dimension where she'd been trapped, believing that she'd only been gone a few hours while in reality several years had passed. Time is implied to have been drastically slowed within the dimension, possibly halting the aging of those within, as two others became trapped in the 1980s and 1970s and don't appear to have aged after decades.
• Your Heart's Desire: The debris in episode 9 is suspected to shift its user/s into alternate realities based on their innermost desires. However, what you think you want and what you actually want can be two entirely different things, so it's hardly reliable in its outcomes.

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