#the lighting when he talks to Finola makes it seem like he’s on crack

[bluemoonbabes]

Ep 12 Bryan is off his rocker. Just so mad off it.

[wannabesewcrafty]

Year’s End

Fandom: Debris (TV)

Notes: I had this idea that the men of Orbital should do a calendar photo shoot, and then I had to contrive why. (In which Bryan and Finola are two oblivious idiots agents partners in love.)

“I’m never playing cards with you again,” Bryan vowed to Mallory.

“That’s what you said last time,” the younger agent said with a smirk.

They stood talking in the shelter of a makeshift tent that Orbital had set up as a temporary work site. Last night, in the very same tent, out of boredom for her and insomnia for him, the two colleagues had decided to play poker to pass the time. During their game, Mallory had brought up the subject of a charity calendar, and now she was collecting on the promise she had extracted from Bryan as the wager they had made on their final hand.

Now, in the light of day, he didn’t respond to her comment, choosing instead to sulk. “This is a dumb idea. We’re a top-secret government coalition.”

“An international one,” she pointed out. “That means a lot of eyeballs. And all the money’s going to good causes.”

“Don’t make me dress up,” he half-warned and half-pleaded, his eyes wide with trepidation. He pictured himself wearing nothing but the yellow pants and red suspenders of some cheap knockoff of a fireman’s uniform and suppressed a shudder.

“Of course not,” Mallory reassured him. “The clothes you usually wear are fine.”

“Except I’ll be shirtless,” he muttered.

She grinned. “Exactly.”

-*-*-*-

“These are really good,” Finola murmured a few weeks later. She stood with Bryan in a quiet, out-of-the-way spot in a wooded area, slowly leafing through the calendar in her hands.

Bryan closed his eyes. “Don’t show it to me. I don’t want to know.”

“They started off with Gibson. Have you met him?” At Bryan’s nod, she continued her report. “Muntz is next.”

He snorted derisively. “The shortest month of the year? Why am I not surprised?”

“Now it’s Ahmed... Grace has a really good eye.” Jones flipped to the next page and let out a chuckle. “Oh, Lester,” she murmured. “He played it like comic relief,” she explained, not looking up from the calendar page.

While Bryan tried to figure out exactly what that meant, Finola continued through the calendar.

“I don’t know most of these men... I’m at November now, and it’s Tom…wow…” Jones’ voice was soft and sounded thoughtful, making Bryan crack one eye open.

She had fallen silent but he heard her turn to the next page in the calendar. When he didn’t hear anything else, he sighed with relief and opened his eyes again.

“You reached the end.”

“It’s you,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re the month of December. In the calendar.” She still didn’t seem able to meet his gaze.

He started to smile. “Yeah, I know what the last month of the year is, Finola.”

She didn’t respond to his bait, but she closed the calendar and used it to fan herself, making his smile broaden into a grin.

“I guess I look good, huh?” he asked, seeing a telltale blush spread across her skin.

“Well, you might say they saved the best for last. Better watch out... What’s the expression? You’ll be beating them off with a stick after this.”

He slid his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “Nah. I saw Kazemi this morning, and she said something weird to me. She told me, and I quote, ‘Don’t worry. Everyone knows you’re taken.’”

“They know you’re…? Since when? By who?”

He shrugged. “Damned if I know.” He tilted his head upwards to stare at the sky, deciding to leave the subject there. It seemed pointless for him to tell Finola of all people that he didn’t have time to date anyone. She was the person he spent the most time with, after all.

The MI6 agent nodded slowly, still mystified by what could have motivated that latest rumor about Bryan. She snuck another glance at the December page of Orbital’s charity calendar and made a mental note to compliment Grace on her photography skills the next time she saw her.

[mantra4ia]

Debris 1x12: Comments, questions, and observations on rewatch

Arco, VA: I'm not sure what I expected the antenna fields to look like, but they live up to the name.

George gets more eccentric by the episode (laughing that he won't change his stale grandpa sweater). I'm not sure what to make of it, but his selective memory triggers a mistrust in my gut.

I think Bryan might have to give up his expository title to George for this episode. He's definitely talking trivia like it's going out of style. I wonder if the writers were like "yeah, we use Bryan too much to explain things, we better give him a break. After all we almost killed him last episode... let's have George narrate.

Techs are the red shirts in this episode, got it. Also, I'll write up a formal correction/apology from my first watch: this episode does go into a few more details set up in "Asalah": certain debris "harmonic" frequency emissions do appear to be lethal with prolonged exposure, akin to radiation. And the debris does seem to have conscious intent for humanity if it wants to understand Bryan's need to protect people (but is that because it has the desire to replicate or exploit that need? It does seem to effect him with a kind of intoxicating euphoria not entirely his own/ unnatural). I am still not exactly sure it's benevolent, it is racking up quite a body count with it's trial and error approach, and it's not above holding people hostage / weaponizing them to get what it wants. Are we talking Annihilation or Arrival?

Some science of harmonic frequencies: "Harmonics with orders that are odd multiples of the number three (3rd, 9th, 15th, and so on) are particularly troublesome, since they behave like zero-sequence currents. These harmonics, called triplen harmonics, are additive due to their zero-sequence-like behavior."

Yeah George, hit that mid-century antenna with some WD-40, that'll do it.

Orbital is weaponizing debris, bit of a duh moment. My reaction is like Bryan's: non-news.

Finola confronting Maddox is the most underwhelming scene. She comes in so hot and literally pointing fingers and he's so cool and calculated, it just doesn't play.

Still don't know what happened to Garcia...is he going to be a one hit wonder this season or are we actually going to see the accident that him and Bryan went through in next week's finale?

I'm sorry, the fact that they're still calling that tiny piece of debris from episode 1 a nacho cracks me up to no end. "We've recovered the Nacho / get me a Nacho." That and Anson Ash in a mom car with groceries.

So when they took Ash into custody, nobody at Orbital thought to run him through metal detector or something equivalent like a Laghari scanner? And in episode 1 when the black market dealer goes "here's a special case to get [the debris] through customs" how does that work when Ash goes through an airport for travel?

It is interesting to see Bryan and Finola think in opposite ways. Will it last? Has Bryan finally put faith in making a difference with alien tech?

Sooooo...how pissed is Dee Dee going to be when, 6+ episodes later, she realizes that Finola hasn't told her their father is alive? Awkward family, awkward moments.

Bonus: In the credit roll, they talk about Bryan's recovery from Debris exposure, "he keeps saying the word telesphere over and over." Is that what the technical term we're calling the ball of light now?