NBC won’t be picking up any more Debris: The hard sci-fi drama has been cancelled after one season, our sister site Variety reports.
Created by Fringe showrunner Joel Wyman, Debris in its 13-episode freshman run averaged shy of 2.8 million total viewers and not quite a 0.4 demo rating. Out of the 14 dramas NBC has aired this TV season, it ranks No. 10 in the demo (besting The Blacklist, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, Good Girls and the acquired Nurses) and 11th in total audience.
The season/now series finale introduced an ominous INFLUX leader, named Otto and played by Fringe favorite John Noble, and left viewers puzzling over Brill and Dahkeya’s plans for some “other” iteration of MI6 agent Finola Jones.
“I’m so happy that [John is] on board because it’s a great character and where he goes and how he expands is really complex,” Wyman told TVLine. “[Otto] is very, very, very, very, very knowledgeable in things that nobody else is, and there are reasons for that that we’re going to get into.”
In a midseason TVLine Q&A, series co-lead Jonathan Tucker spoke directly to sci-fi fans’ concerns about Debris‘ fate, saying, “Some people are like, ‘Will NBC cancel it, before it has time to get [where it’s going]?’ I can’t speak to that with the degree of confidence that I can having read all of the scripts and having spoken to Joel [Wyman], who knows the last line of the first season and knows the last scene of the last season, but I can say the partnership with NBC, up until this point and particularly after the premiere, has been remarkable.
“The networks understand, now more than ever, that people are consuming content in a very different way,” Tucker added. “They recognize that there might be a whole group of people that are not going to watch a single episode of Debris until we conclude our 13 episodes, and then they’re going to binge it all on Peacock [streaming service]. They’re being patient in that respect.”
