Tag Archives: Walter Bishop

May 6 2013

Top 10 Fringe Episodes

Fringe, one of the most recently acclaimed sci-fi shows, concluded its five-season run earlier this year and its final season is out on Blu-ray/DVD this week. The show boasted many intriguing and memorable episodes that pushed the envelope in regards to storytelling. The show was about the investigations by a government agency into fringe science events like strange mutations and teleportation. The Fringe team led by Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) and his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) encountered some really bizarre phenomena. While Fringe had many standout episodes, these ten were among the show’s very best stories.

10. “The Arrival” The enigmatic Observer called September (Michael Cerveris) is fully introduced and right away viewers are fascinated by this strange, formidable being from the distant future who can predict actions.

9. “The Boy Must Live” This fifth-season episode boy must livetakes place (as does the entire season) in the future where the Observers have taken over the world. September and the Observers’ origins are finally revealed as is the forgotten plot devised by Bishop to defeat the Observers.

8. “Black Blotter” The Fringe team recover an empathic and mute child Observer called Michael (Rowan Longworth), who is the key to defeating the Observers. Meanwhile to aid in that task, Bishop takes a hallucinogen, which leads to some pretty trippy animated sequences. How trippy? Imagine Sgt. Pepper meeting Monty Python!

brave new world7. “Brave New World, Parts 1 & 2” The fourth season (and for a moment the series before it was renewed) closes with this exciting two-parter that has the Fringe team finally confronting Bishop’s former partner (Leonard Nimoy), who is out to destroy the universe and remake it to his own designs.

6. “There’s More Than One Of Everything” This first-season finale answers many questions about The Pattern events that the Fringe team was investigating while brining up many more questions and startling revelations. One of the biggest ones being about Peter’s identity. Plus, it introduces a parallel world where the World Trade Center is still standing.

5.TIE: “The Plateau”/ “Amber 31422” These two episodes take place predominantly in the parallel world where Olivia was trapped and brainwashed amberinto believing she was her double. The episodes present viewers with intriguing plots about the affect the Fringe team have on the parallel world. “The Plateau” is about a gifted man who can forecast future possibilities using math, except for the unforseen variable of a different Olivia in his world. It would prove to be his undoing. “Amber 31422” examines the impact that the suspending amber chemical has on people living in the parallel world. Notably on twin brothers, one of whom was released from the substance and we learned what it felt like to be embedded in amber.

4. “Peter” This outstanding flashback episode explains how the entire mess peterwith the parallel world began. Taking place in 1985, Dr. Bishop comes up with a way to peer into a parallel world. Around the same time his son dies and he learns his son’s double in the other world is also dying, thus he decides to save that boy at a terrible cost. The episode had a nifty retro feel to it, even the opening credits reflected the 1980s with its electronic soundtrack and listings of cutting-edge technology during that time.

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3. “Entrada” The thrilling conclusion of the swapped Olivias storyline in season three has them both on the run in the two universes. Fauxlivia, the nickname for the Olivia from the parallel world has her cover blown. Meanwhile, the original Olivia manages to break her from her captors who were out to remove her brain for study. There was an urgent feeling of desperation shown by both Olivias as the original tried to make her way back to her own universe, while her malevolent double assigned to the original universe mercilessly avoided a manhunt led by Peter.

white tulip2. “White Tulip” One of the grisliest and most emotional stories dealing with time travel introduces Alistair Peck, a scientist (played exceptionally well by Peter Weller) who is experimenting with time travel. Peck is able to time travel by painfully and surgically implanting devices on his body. What gets the Fringe team involved is that his work winds up killing people by draining them of their energy. It turns out that Peck was only trying to save his wife from being killed in the past.

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1. “Over There, Parts 1 & 2” The two-part second-season finale takes place in the parallel universe as Dr. Bishop and Olivia travel there to retrieve Peter, who had defected to the other side. It was fun seeing all the differences in that other world. Examples include, lost friends and family who are still alive, canceled TV shows are still airing, the comic books are differentover there map (Red Lantern instead of Green Lantern), dirigibles fill an altered New York skyline, and even the map of the U.S. is radically different. But more enjoyable were the actors portraying alternate versions of their characters. Fauxlivia and Walternate were very effective villains and are part of the reason why Fringe was so much fun to watch.

Lewis T. Grove

Jan 18 2013

Fringe & Its Fantastic Foray

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After five seasons, Fringe, one of the best science fiction shows on TV, comes to an end. Fans can now breathe a sigh of relief that the show runners were able to conclude the wonderfully twisting saga of the Fringe Division’s Science Team and its investigations into the bizarre and who later became freedom fighters for humanity.

When Fringe first premiered in 2008, it came off as a sophisticated, 21st-century version of The X-Files. Both shows were similar in that they were about government agents investigating freakish phenomena. In Fringe’s case, the main characters FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), consultant Dr. Walter Bishop (brilliantly played by John Noble) and his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) didn’t chase UFOs or ghosts but encountered weird monsters-of-the-week and fringe-level science like teleportation, fast-growing humans and so on as part of their investigations for the Science Team.

libertyBut the show soon developed its own mythology. It turned out there was a reason behind all the weirdness going on in the world, which was called The Pattern. Usually they happened in the New York/ New England area as illustrated by bold 3D location titles. Unlike The X-Files, where it became apparent that the producers didn’t know what was going on with its convoluted stories, Fringe methodically explained things and the answers led to more intriguing questions. It made one want to find out what was going on. For instance, in the first season finale “There’s More Than One Of Everything” viewers learned that Peter Bishop was actually dead with an apparent doppelganger of his running around. That led to the revelation of an existing parallel world, which was dramatically shown when Olivia found herself transported inside a very much intact World Trade Center.

Things became stranger and more titillating in latter seasons. That could be one reason why the show wasn’t a ratings hit. While sci-fi fans may have loved the bizarre antics of mad scientist Walter Bishop (like eating licorice during grisly autopsies) or the uncanny plots and macabre premises (such as reanimating a beheaded person when the missing head was reattached to the body) it probably turned off casual viewers. Well what would one expect in this society that loves shallow reality programs? Still, Fringe grew a cult following as people discovered this quirky show that dealt with parallel universes and visiting enigmatic post-humans from the distant future.

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But fans fell in love with the equally peculiar characters. There was Peter who was conflicted about his place in the world as seen in the show’s pilot. He was a brilliant but shiftless person with dubious morality and estranged from his father (who was committed at that time to a mental hospital). Olivia was seen as the more stable person yet contended with being thrown suddenly into bizarre cases while remaining a dedicated and resilient agent. Her core was terribly shaken from the events of the late second season/early third season. She traveled to the parallel world in “Over There, Parts I & II” and was captured and brainwashed. Her redheaded double (nicknamed “Fauxlivia”) came to Olivia’s world and took her place. These early third season episodes that shifted between the two worlds were some of the best. After Olivia finally escaped, and had difficulty with her romantic relationship with Peter, it was clear that she was traumatized.

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Oct 3 2012

The Final Chapter Of Fringe Is A Bold Departure

The fifth and final season of the TV show Fringe premiered this past weekend and it’s a radical departure from the previous four seasons.

In last season’s episode “Letters Of Transit”, the show deviated from its normal format, which is normally about a federal team that investigated bizarre science phenomena. Instead “Letters Of Transit” jumped ahead to the year 2036 and presented a world taken over by the enigmatic Observers. These unusual, telepathic, bald-headed men in black suits have appeared in every single episode of the show, often in the background unnoticed. It was eventually explained that they were humanity’s descendents from a far future where the Earth had become uninhabitable. This was why they arrived in 2015 and conquered our society as was shown in a dream sequence at the beginning of the fifth-season premiere episode “Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11”.

It seemed as if “Letters Of Transit” might’ve been a special one-off episode but by the end it was clear that many questions were unanswered and there weren’t any resolutions. Clearly Fringe‘s producers intended to continue the story, which was a huge risk because at that time the show was nearly cancelled. Luckily, the gamble paid off and Fringe was renewed to conclude the storyline.

However, from looking at “Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11” it is apparent that the rest of the show will take place in the future. Though the head-spinning cases that the Fringe Team worked on may be gone and their agenda has drastically changed, the beloved characters are still around. Daffy Walter Bishop (John Noble), his son Peter (Joshua Jackson), and FBI Agents Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) were kept in suspended animation and thawed out to speak to help save the world from the Observers.

Regarding the Fringe Team, viewers were still treated to its quirky nature and saw new nuances to their characters. Walter Bishop still calls Astrid by various nicknames and continues to be absent minded. Meanwhile, Peter and Olivia wrestle with guilt over not being able to stop the Observer’s invasion back in 2015 and losing their daughter during that time. Now reunited and aided by Peter and Olivia’s grown-up daughter Henrietta (Georgina Haig), the team is forced to work in the dystopic New York underground and come up with a way to defeat the Observers.

The world they come into isn’t brave but new and disturbing. The Observers are everywhere and maintain an iron grip on the world with their advanced technology. Expression and free will are discouraged as humanity is slowly being ground under in a police state. Many aspects of the world (represented by New York City) seem the same but with more advanced technology and a feeling of decay setting into civilization. One startling image was that of New York’s Central Park, which has been paved over and turned into a huge processing plant to pump carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. It turns out our air is too oxygen-rich for the Observers.

It was intriguing to see in these two future episodes how things change in the future. Whereas before, Fringe presented a parallel Earth in some episodes for fans to wonder over that world’s differences from ours, this time we learn about our future. If the Fringe Team manages to defeat the Observers, and they probably will, one can only imagine what will be shown as Fringe concludes. Even though the show now takes place in 2036, hopefully more flashbacks to the modern era will be shown. This bold departure in the show’s format is a bit startling but very welcome and illustrates Fringe‘s dynamic nature.

Lewis T. Grove

May 12 2012

Fringe Concludes Its Fourth Season

While the fate of two universes was in the balance in the final fourth season episode of Fringe, until very recently so was the show itself. Many Fringe fans breathed a relieved sigh when the show was given a final reprieve by Fox for a fifth and final season because now the show can properly finish its complex storyline. Yet by looking at the final episode “Brave New World, Part 2” one could tell that the show’s producers meant for this episode to also serve as a series finale if needed. Fortunately that wasn’t the case, but TPTB have to be careful not to fall into the trap that Babylon 5 did. In that show, the proper storyline came to a conclusion at the end of its fourth season only to be given a new season but felt tacked on and aimless.

As for the episode itself, it was one of the best of the series. Tightly plotted, suspenseful, and it featured all the elements of a classic Fringe episode. Meaning time-traveling Observers, reanimated corpses, weird and gross pseudo science, end-of-the-world theatrics and FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) doing a turn as one of the X-Men by emulating Jean Grey and Wolverine’s mutant tricks. This episode explained many of Fringe’s mysteries such as why was Olivia dosed with the fictional drug cortexiphan (which gave her psionic powers); what did the wounded Observer called September mean in previous episodes when he cryptically stated that Olivia Dunham had to die and most importantly what was the goal of the ultimate baddie.

The head villain was revealed in the penultimate episode of the fourth season to be Walter Bishop’s (John Noble) old partner William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) and he wanted to recreate the universe to his own design. William Bell had created a modern-day Noah’s Ark with new creatures and meant to use Olivia Dunham’s powers to fuel the collision between our universe and the parallel one that had been seen many times on Fringe. Naturally, it’s up to Olivia and her lover/partner Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) to stop this mad scheme.

What was surprising and oddly reasonable was his motive. Bell was dying of cancer and came to hate the unfairness of life. He reasoned that if we were created in God’s image then it was only natural that we try to be like God-hence all the scientific experiments and aberrations throughout the series. But what was surprising was that Walter Bishop came up with the scheme to destroy and remake the universe. Actually, Bishop concocted this back before the show when he was an evil mad scientist. This revelation also explains why the current Bishop is more benign and doesn’t have his full mental capacities.

There is a feeling of conclusion in the final minutes of the episode (Walter even finally calls his assistant by her proper name!), the Fringe Division of the U.S. government receives full funding and resources and Olivia and Peter are ready to live happily ever after. But luckily for us fans, a final nugget and indication of what is to come arrives in the form of the Observer, who delivers a warning. This is probably alluding to the future timeline seen in the recent episode “Letters Of Transit” where the Observers take over the world.

Thankfully, there are now a few more episodes left to answer this mystery and the other remaining ones. Thirteen episodes to be exact.

José Soto