1.6 The Cure

Please note that all episode posts are written with foreknowledge of the most recently-aired episodes of Fringe. As such they may contain spoilers for viewers not up to date.

Plot Overview

A woman is dumped from a van on the street. She wanders into a diner, dazed, but when the police arrive to try and establish who she is and how she may need help, she suddenly becomes volatile. Everyone in the diner is killed as blood boils their brains and the woman herself dies when her head abruptly explodes.



The Fringe team check out the case, and discover the woman in the diner – Emily Kramer – had only just had a remarkable recovery from a rare disease, known as Bellini’s Lymphocemia. They also learn another woman – Claire Williams – with the same disease has also gone missing and Olivia becomes convinced that she is being held by the same people who took Emily Kramer and she will suffer a similar fate unless she is found.



Olivia learns that a man named David Esterbrook, working for a medical company called Intrepus, is surely responsible for the abduction. But he is unyielding to any pressure to admit guilt, so Peter turns to Nina Sharp and asks for her help in pinpointing where David Esterbrook would have kept Claire Williams. Nina, in return, demands that one day Peter will return the favour whenever she asks.



Using Peter’s information, Olivia and her team swoop on the facility and manage to save Claire Williams before she triggers herself off with a fatal radioactive reaction. David Esterbrook is arrested on suspicion and hauled out in front of the press (improving Massive Dynamic’s stock as Intrepus is discredited).

Olivia had been in a bad mood all day, despite it being her birthday. She tells of a time when she was a child and she shot her abusive stepfather. He did not die, but disappeared afterwards. Every year, however, he sends her a card on her birthday to remind her of his existence. This year, at the end of the day, Olivia finds a card from him has been delivered to her home.



Episode Discussion

If Fringe is to ever be ascribed archetypal episodes, then this would be one of them. A single plotline involving an individual being used as a test subject in an experiment that physically effects their power as a human being. Throw in some ongoing plot threads with the main characters and this, more often than not, is the template for Season One.

So this episode’s ‘special’ power (the use of the word special isn’t the first time the term has been used) was apparently modifying people to be utilised as weapons or soldiers, but otherwise this was another episode presenting another ‘bad guy’ doing unscrupulous things for an objective we don’t yet know.



That David Esterbrook worked for a rival company to Massive Dynamic is something of a counterargument to the idea that these independent tests and scientific studies are all elements of Massive Dynamic; subsidiaries to the major corporation set up to run secretive tests in ignorance of one another. It may be the case that other tests seen throughout the series fit this ‘pattern’ but I am thinking Esterbrook, and his scheme to make radioactive people, wasn’t part of them.

Indeed, at time of writing Season 2 recently-aired the episode Fracture, where people were scientifically-altered to be used as bombs, which shares parallels with the ploys being, ah, employed here! Again, any link to these independent studies and Massive Dynamic is nowhere near concrete.



There are a couple of elements in this episode that, as far as I know, have not been picked up as at time of writing. The first was the matter of Olivia and her stepfather. Just the mere mention of her having a stepfather immediately raises the question: Who is her real father? Walter!? William Bell!? It seems unlikely because I recall mention of her saying she grew up on a military base, perhaps suggesting her real father was a military man that she does have some memory of. But that this stepfather continues to harass her surely sets up a situation where he could come to the fore and perhaps represent a very real threat in a future episode. One to bear in mind.



The other piece of business was between Nina and Peter. When they met up, Nina mentioned that she had known Peter as a boy, though he probably doesn’t remember it. Of course, this would be because the boy she knew was more than likely not the same Peter. Question is: Does Nina know that this Peter is not the same Peter she knew as a boy? (The best guess would be that she does; there doesn’t seem to be much she doesn’t know!)

Peter also ended the meeting in Nina’s debt, for a favour she could call in at any time. As far as I can remember this is not a chip she has cashed, so this too remains on the table as a potential future plot thread to be picked up. (I do hope Fringe bears all this stuff in mind and brings it into play – I love it when shows retain that kind of consistency!)

Observer Appearance



The Observer is seen in the background of the function where Olivia encounters David Esterbrook for the first time. (Curiously this isn’t a scene of a strange event, suggesting The Observer is actually observing Olivia!)

Point Of Interest

David Esterbrook is seen sporting an Aleph pin on his jacket, as below.



This same symbol also appeared during the sequence where Olivia merged minds with John Scott in the Pilot episode. It was on her uncle’s kayak (top left, below).



To draw significance to this meaningfully, at this stage, is not possible – but if this symbol crops up again against other people then it may potentially be the insignia of a particular group operating within the Fringe universe. .

The Glyph Symbols that appear throughout this episode spell out the word: CELLS



There are numerous meanings behind the word ‘cells’. The most obvious and literal would be the biological testing and genetic modification of human cells being conducted on the likes of Claire Williams as a result of her cellular illness. But given the potential for there to be various factions, like Interpus and David Estebrook, the word ‘cells’ could be considered as activist groups working independently for their own agenda.

1.5 Power Hungry

Please note that all episode posts are written with foreknowledge of the most recently-aired episodes of Fringe. As such they may contain spoilers for viewers not up to date.

Plot Overview

A sad man with low self-esteem called Joseph Meegar has become charged with the capacity to send electronic appliances into overdrive, particularly during moments of high emotion. When he inadvertently prompts an elevator to drive itself into the ground at high speed, killing all inside but himself, Olivia and the Fringe team are called in to investigate.



Walter figures that someone has continued work he once did, trying to supercharge people to maximise their electric capability. It transpires that a man named Jacob Fischer had been posting fake advertisements, calling for human guinea pigs, in just such a way. Jacob tracks down Meegar (after he has inadvertently killed his mother) and conducts further experiments on him. However, the Fringe team, with the aid of pigeons (!), find him. They capture Jacob and imprison him for further questioning and promise to help cure Meegar of his condition.



During all this Olivia continues to have longer and more vivid encounters with John Scott. Clearly these are encounters that only she can see and hear, but John tells her that she is on the right track with her investigations and that, no matter what she thinks, he did love her, always, and he will prove it.

Olivia eventually shares her experiences with Walter, and he speculates that John Scott’s appearances are as a result of their consciousness’ merging when she was in the tank communicating with him (in the Pilot episode). As a consequence she has retained some of his memories and these encounters are her mind’s way of purging his identity from her own.



John Scott leads Olivia to a secret storage room, filled with papers and research. Broyles later tells Olivia that there is a lot of pattern-related material there, confirming John was aware of the phenomena. There was also a box of personal effects, which contains a ring inscribed with the word ‘always’.



Episode Discussion

Essentially the episode struck a balance between a standalone plot (the supercharged threat of Meegar) and the continuing drama regarding Olivia and John Scott. The plot of Meegar was the more relatively straightforward element.



Once more this was an example of superior technology being used on humans – such as the ageing process to generate super soldiers as seen in The Same Old Story – that goes awry. Again, an unscrupulous character – this time Jacob Fischer – emerges as an unscrupulous ‘villain’ behind-the-scenes.

Implicitly, Jacob Fischer is operating under the direction of preparing technology that will better equip the human race to fight in the war against the ‘alternate reality’, which in turn implies that he is working for Massive Dynamic. It’s a major assumption, naturally, but it’s the one that seems most right at time of writing. In a strange way this kind of aligns him with Broyles, which makes me wonder about what John Scott said to Olivia about how he wasn’t the one that betrayed her.



To take that idea slowly: back in the first episode Broyles was the one that sent Olivia to the storage unit, where she and John Scott were attacked and Scott was ‘killed’ (he didn’t immediately die there, of course, but it was the key event that lead to his undoing and subsequent death). Broyles, too, was the one that got Walter Bishop into Olivia’s life – who we know experimented on Olivia as a child. Did Broyles know that? Is he the betrayer? It kind of points in that direction but I can’t help but think of him as on the ‘right side’.



The business with John Scott’s appearances being due to him merging consciousness’ with Olivia works well enough. I thought it was interesting how he appeared to Olivia and exited in a lift, recalling her getting into a lift during There’s More Than One Of Everything in the season finale. Of course it also helps set up the link between Meegar and the lift, and thematic comparison between Olivia and Joseph as two people to whom strange things were happening that they could not explain.

Peter’s character was in a strange place this episode. Still bearing the marks from his sufferings in the previous episode. This isn’t so much as a criticism, more an observation. All he seemed to do was interpret Walter’s dialogue into basic terms for the benefit of Olivia/Astrid/the viewing audience but, aside from stopping Joseph in his tracks with a crowbar, there really wasn’t much to do or any sense of where he was at. Certainly his is a role that struggles to find its place more than any other in the show (which actually works really well, considering he is surely not originally from the reality he is in!).



As far as the relationship between Walter and Astrid goes, from the last episode where Astrid was very cold towards Walter after he had struck her unconscious, this episode didn’t particularly retain that consistency. There was a brief moment of severity from Astrid, when she referred harshly to Walter’s pigeons, but by the end of the episode she was merrily teasing Walter about his inability to remember her name. (A point that becomes a running joke in future episodes.) In terms of episode-to-episode character consistency Fringe has been found wanting!



Observer Appearance

The Observer exits the elevator, glancing at Meegar before he gets in it and sends it crashing.



Point Of Interest

Massive Dynamic don’t feature directly in this episode, but one of their posters is in the background.



Interesting that the slogan on the poster is ‘Unlock your hidden potential’ – the same slogan Fischer was using on his adverts to lure in the likes of Meegar for testing. Again, it’s a small thing, but an extra piece of evidence that links Fischer’s experiments to work for Massive Dynamic.

The Glyph Symbols that appear throughout this episode spell out the word: SURGG



Apparently this is correct, according to my sources, but it does seem incorrect. Given the nature of the episode, to do with powerful electricity, I would have thought that ‘surge’ would have been a more appropriate word. . . A website called http://www.surgg.com/ did once exist, though; it apparently showed horrific images, which would tie-in to the remark Broyles made to Olivia about how some of the stuff he could show her wouldn’t make for pleasant viewing. So it does fit!

1.4 The Arrival

Please note that all episode posts are written with foreknowledge of the most recently-aired episodes of Fringe. As such they may contain spoilers for viewers not up to date.


Plot Overview

A bald-headed man we will come to know as The Observer waits in a café, ordering spicy food, taking notes in a strange script. Outside there is an enormous explosion at a building site. Investigation yields the source of the explosion is a mysterious object – a ‘beacon’ – that is handed over to Olivia and her team to check out.



Whilst Walter studies the beacon, Olivia notices the bald-headed man in certain images and recalls he has been present at other sites of strange activity. It appears this very same man has been seen at all Pattern-related incidents for many decades. They don’t know who he is, or what he does – but he seems to be around when strange things occur to observe.

Walter disappears with the beacon for a meeting with the bald-headed man. After this he then hides the beacon and returns to face questions from Olivia whilst John Mosley, a man viciously hunting for the beacon, tracks down Peter and, using his strange machine, somehow learns from Peter where Walter has hidden it.



Olivia and Walter go to where the beacon has been hidden to see that Mosley has already made Peter recover it. Olivia pursues Mosley and shoots him as he runs. The beacon is dropped, but then comes to life and tunnels itself underground and is gone. Meanwhile Peter has a run-in with The Observer, who somehow speaks the words Peter means to say as he says them.

In the evening, Walter explains to Peter that the reason he had hidden the beacon was as a debt to The Observer, who had once saved their lives after a car accident. Peter recalls none of this and can barely comprehend how it was he was able to know where his father had hidden the beacon. Meanwhile, Olivia is alone at home in her kitchen when she is suddenly confronted by John Scott, apparently standing alive and real in her kitchen.



Episode Discussion

There’s no doubting that this episode is one of the most major instalments of the first series, proffering massive plot threads and hints towards the larger mythology. Not least of these mysteries is The Observer himself – previously glimpsed in episodes, now given much more focus (but little in the way of further understanding!).

It feels almost certain that The Observer is not from the current reality, and is instead from a parallel universe. Whilst Season One will eventually impress the idea that there is one reality merging with another, forcing a war that only one reality will win, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that there are other realities that have ‘arrived’ in this one. The Observer could be of a race of humans from an alternate reality rather far removed from the regular one – but this is all speculation.

Perhaps The Observer’s role, as an observer, is to note down the nature of all these strange incidents as two realities merge as a provision should such a thing occur in the reality he calls ‘home’. Alternatively he is from the ‘alternate reality’ and is more like a scout, making notes and observations, to report back to his side to aid victory in the upcoming war.



The beacon may also be a part of this war between realities. Perhaps existing like one side launching a tracking system, or scanning device, ‘over the fence’ to their enemies side to gather information. The Observer remarking that the “departure” was on schedule backs up this notion.



Maybe it was less passive than this, and the beacon, and its activation, serves as a means of reinforcing a gateway link between the realities to assist in the merging. Like throwing a grappling hook to drag something that is far away closer in. Or else maybe the beacon activating fundamentally changes something about the current reality. . .



The matter of John Scott’s physical manifestation may be as a result of the beacon activation. Early in the episode Olivia received a phonecall where she scarcely hears John’s voice. By the end of the episode he then appears in person. It’s tempting to consider that the beacon’s activation perhaps prompted some capacity to allow this to occur. As in it was switched on and triggered a kind of bandwidth that opened up these strange means of communication, similar to the ones Walter was telling Peter about, the kind that meant The Observer could know what Peter was thinking, or allow Peter to have knowledge of where Walter had hidden the beacon.



John Mosley, the man that appeared from nowhere pursuing the beacon, is an odd ‘arrival’. At time of writing I cannot recall if he ever features again (obviously not physically, as he was killed!). However we eventually come to learn of the ZFT faction, a terrorist group potentially headed by William Bell, that are more likely to emerge as an alliance preparing for battle against this upcoming merging reality; it would seem probable that Mosley was a member of this group, given his strangely advanced weaponry and mind-reading technology.

The family life of the Bishops is also given mention here. Walter made some pointed remarks that further hint towards the idea that he has taken Peter from an alternate reality. “Have you never taken anything that didn’t belong to you because you knew it was the right thing to do?”

That Peter doesn’t recall anything of this car crash that The Observer apparently saved them from is also interesting. I suspect it was because original Peter was in the crash, hence the Peter we know having no idea about it. Did original Peter die in this crash? I don’t think so. But I am wondering if perhaps he wasn’t seriously hurt in some way – a way that would show up on medical records or files, like the ones Olivia could have seen but were missing; the kind that would betray the idea that the Peter we know couldn’t possibly be the same person that was in the crash. Again, mega speculation on my part!



Walter also hides the beacon at the grave of Robert Bishop. Presumably Walter’s father, and Peter’s grandfather. Along with Peter’s mother, this is someone who gets mentioned and it feels like there is a bigger meaning lurking in the background behind the casual references. The family Bishop as a whole is one that needs further light cast upon it and I feel, once it is, a lot more things will come into focus.

Last point, and purely something to track for continuity purposes: Walter smacks Astrid unconscious when he takes the beacon away. Towards the end of the episode he moves to make an apology, but it’s not one she takes particularly well. It’ll just be interesting to keep an eye on how she reacts to Walter in subsequent episodes to see if this distancing is maintained.



Observer Appearance

The Observer is hard not to miss in this episode, considering he takes a key role!



Point Of Interest



Fringe takes a cheeky pop at S.E. Kramer – a writer at Popular Mechanics, who had been taking sideswipes debunking the science and the merit of the show in general when it was first aired – by acknowledging his existence in the shape of this huge sign!

The Glyph Symbols that appear throughout this episode spell out the word: ROGUE




Intriguingly, the Glyph Symbol word makes a suggestion that The Observer is a rogue agent, of sorts. Perhaps this means, in this upcoming war between realities, he belongs to neither side and may prove to be the deciding factor in which side wins. . .

1.3 The Ghost Network

Please note that all episode posts are written with foreknowledge of the most recently-aired episodes of Fringe. As such they may contain spoilers for viewers not up to date.

Plot Overview

A man, Roy McComb, confesses to his priest that he believes he is possessed by the devil; he sees visions of terrible events that he can only cast out by drawing them onto paper. What’s curious is that these events he envisions then proceed to happen in reality – such as a regular bus being attacked with a weapon that trapped all the passengers inside like insects trapped in amber.

Olivia and her team come to realise, once again mainly through Walter and his experiments from yesteryear, that Roy has become a kind of human receptor for a secret communication network known as ‘the ghost network’. This is a psychic network, pioneered for transmitting top secret information and now being utilised by a terrorist cell potentially seeking to advertise their capacity for technologically advanced weaponry.

Walter uses Roy as a receiver to intercept the communications on ‘the ghost network’ and so Olivia and her team track down the terrorists to a meeting at a train station. They learn that one of the terrorists, Matthew Ziegler, detonated the attack on the bus and acquired information from a passenger who was an undercover agent – Evelina Mendoza – that had apparently discovered information about The Pattern.

Matthew throws himself into the path of a train rather than be apprehended, but Olivia and Broyles recover a briefcase that contains the strange disk Matthew extracted from Evelina’s hand.

Broyles takes the disk to Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamic, not wanting to go through official channels. Nina takes the disk to where John Scott’s body is being examined, stating they have found another disk. Apparently a similar disk is in John’s body, the data it contains currently being extracted. . .

Episode Discussion

So the big obvious discussion point is: What’s on the disks? It’s got to be incredibly important for the likes of Matthew to kill himself over, and for Massive Dynamic to invest so much time and effort trying to obtain and decipher. Naturally, we don’t have any indication as of the end of season one what the disks are for, but they do crop up in various future episodes, dug out of people’s hands.

Indeed, the reason for keeping John Scott’s body alive was, apparently, to ensure that the disk was not destroyed (which would occur should he die). This seems at odds with Evelina, mind – who was dead on a slab when Davidson took the disk from her hand – but perhaps her only being recently-deceased explains the matter (and the urgent means by which Davidson had to claim the disk from her body).

Another matter is to try and work out what was happening with the ‘baddies’ in this episode. There were three characters involved in the bus attack and disk heist overall. Matthew Ziegler was the guy on the bus at the beginning, that detonated the chemical attack and stole Evelina’s bag (which he thought contained the disk).

As the bag evidently didn’t contain the disk, a man called Grant Davidson posed as DEA to gain access to Evelina’s body, where he cut out the disk from her hand.

It’s unclear how close Davidson was to the other two men – I personally got the impression he was more of a ‘hired hand’ in helping obtain the disk, particularly in light of how he was coldly shot at the end of the episode once the handover had taken place. Davidson had contacted another man, Gerard, on a large phone that I assume was used to pick up the ‘ghost network’ signal.

By the end of the episode, only Gerard survived from the three men, though he has never appeared in any subsequent episodes.

Whilst this ghost network was designed by Walter to be used as a means of psychic connection, the likes of Gerard and Davidson were merely using the frequency of this network without the actual psychic element involved. However, the idea that this psychic bandwidth exists may explain later events – such as The Observer reading Peter’s mind in the next episode The Arrival.

Roy McComb represents the first ex-test subject of Walter’s to enter the fabric of the Fringe (parallel!) universe. Olivia will, of course, prove to be a more dramatic ex-patient, but Roy’s appearance here is a nice foreshadowing.

It’s interesting that Walter is portrayed as an amusing, lovable genius when he has done ethically terrible things. Even the remarks about how he could wire Roy so he could receive satellite television for free show a major lack of compassion. His test subjects are not people to him; they are guinea pigs to be prodded and studied. Whilst Walter will, over the course of the series, come to reclaim a sense of humanity it does leave the possibility of an ‘alternate Walter’ having never made that connection, and perhaps being a far more darker character.

(If there is a Walter in the parallel universe perhaps that guy never got interred in a mental institute and so has been allowed to conduct his studies continuously. Maybe that accounts for greater technological advancements in the parallel world?)

The last discussion point for me was to do with the conversation between Nina Sharp and Olivia, where Nina picked up on the curious point about how all the strange events Olivia had been investigating were all occurring close to where she is. The implication being that Olivia herself is a pivotal element in The Pattern – something that Nina and Broyles had realised – and the chief reason why she was the perfect candidate to be investigating them and, more to the point, be monitored.

We know that Olivia has greater capacity and, if you like, a form of destiny regarding her involvement in The Pattern and her role in the battle. The idea lends credence to the idea that, like a pattern, nothing is accidental and everything we are seeing and the events that are unfurling are all predicated by a grander design we don’t yet know.

Observer Appearance

The Observer appears at the South Station terminal just before Olivia encounters Davidson and Ziegler.

Point Of Interest

We get a view of the lab door where Walter once worked, and now continues to work, and the inscription on it confirms that he and William Bell did once operate out of the same place.

Curiously it seems that Walter Bishop’s named has been restored since he has returned to work, whereas Bell’s name was not properly removed, nor was it restored – rather just left in the presumably same state of decay as Bishop’s name had also previously been in.

The Glyph Symbols that appear throughout this episode spell out the word: AEGER.

Aeger is the Latin word for ‘sick’. Significance in relation to this episode? Well the use of Latin nicely coincides with the Latin spoke over the ghost network, but otherwise I suppose the ‘sick’ aspect relate to Roy McComb. He thought he had a sickness, possibly demonic possession, but it turned out to be entirely explicable by scientific reasoning. One of the themes of Fringe is how the extraordinary is made plausible, so in that sense Roy McComb’s experience neatly encapsulates this concept.

1.2 The Same Old Story

Please note that all episode posts are written with foreknowledge of the most recently-aired episodes of Fringe. As such they may contain spoilers for viewers not up to date.

Plot Overview

A heavily-pregnant woman is rushed to hospital where she dies giving birth to a baby that physically ages rapidly. Within hours the ‘baby’ has become an old man, and died. Olivia, Walter and Peter investigate and find themselves on the trail of a serial killer – officially only named as Christopher – with a curious motive for murder.



It transpires that Christopher is the ‘son’ of Claus Penrose, who worked in the same department as Walter Bishop on experiments to rapidly grow humans until they were adults, able to be deployed as soldiers. The killer, Christopher, was murdering his victims to extract the pituitary gland from their brains in order to halt the rapid aging process he was experiencing as a result of the experiment’s ageing effects becoming uncontrollable.

Using technology, courtesy of Massive Dynamic, to view the last image a victim saw before they died, Olivia and Peter track Christopher and Claus Penrose down. Claus Penrose escapes whilst Olivia pursues Christopher and, ultimately, watches him collapse and rapidly age before he dies.



A fleeting glimpse at the end of the episode shows a number of tanks containing cloned replicas of Christopher lying dormant in an unspecified location.

Episode Discussion

The ‘oversight committee’ shown at the beginning of the episode serve a couple of functions. The first is to allow Broyles, in presenting to the group, recap on the events learned in the Pilot episode so new viewers to the show can be quickly brought up to speed.

Phillip Broyles: “I called you together tonight to introduce you to my new team, who will now be responsible for investigating all these events. Hopefully they will have more success than our last.”



The casual mention of hoping this group will have more success than the last immediately raises the question of who were “the last” and what happened to them. It’s a question entirely open to speculation – and it may be a massive plothole waiting to be exposed, or just a mundane element about a team that was no good being replaced by one that’s better (the inference, I feel, lends itself to the idea that something dramatic and possibly tragic happened to this former team).

Given what I know already, it’s perhaps not too fanciful to wonder if this other team disappeared into the parallel universe and never returned. (On writing that, I realise it reads as being entirely fanciful!)



There were many elements about this episode that lend themselves to the larger scope of the series (which is pretty good, considering this episode has the feel of a one-off, self-contained story also). Walter disclosed a little more information about Peter’s health that really ought to have piqued Olivia’s interest. Walter appeared consigned to the belief that Olivia would have been aware of Peter’s ‘condition’ because it was in his file – but she had read the file and such documentation had been removed.

The lesser question is: Who removed the documents from the file (and so protected the truth about Peter’s origins)? The more important question is: What was the nature of these health issues?

Personally I believe that Peter’s file may have disclosed that the young original Peter was very sickly, perhaps ill a lot of the time, and yet that is in complete contrast to the Peter that now exists – which is explicable due to them not being the same person. I think the take-home point is that there was information in Peter's medical history that would be hard to explain when set against the adult Peter currently in the regular world. As this evidence has gone missing it suggests that someone else, other than Walter, knows what Walter did. William Bell is the first best guess for that.



In a similar medical sense, Olivia’s dream of being pregnant after questioning by Broyles indicates that these thoughts of having unprotected sex with John before he died are plaguing her subconsciousness.

At time of writing I cannot quite recall the timescale that the first season operates within, and so can’t quite determine if it’s feasible that Olivia could in fact actually be pregnant and be carrying John’s child. Hold that thought for season two, perhaps.



The crazy science of Fringe, for what the show is perhaps consistently famous for trying to push the envelope on what it can pass off as plausible, got a real outing with the equipment that allowed Walter to capture the last image a person saw before they died. What’s interesting is where Massive Dynamic got this, and all their other technological advancements from. Again, I don’t think it’s too fanciful to consider that their leaps and breakthroughs have come courtesy of the parallel universe (or even some other universe?) where their technology is more superior to the one in the regular world.

Perhaps it’s the superior advancement of this parallel world that makes it such a threat and what Massive Dynamic are working so hard to defend against? That William Bell, the founder of Massive Dynamic, is revealed by the season’s end to be operating within a similar environment in the parallel universe certainly raises intriguing questions about which is the most ‘massively dynamic’ of the two!

The tanks revealed at the very end of this episode, containing clones of Christopher, are an intriguing aspect of the wider scope of the story, too. Though Claus Penrose referred to Christopher as his son, I think it’s only in the sense that he ‘fathered’ Christopher by creating him in a laboratory, trying to perfect the technique of rapidly ageing a person and then stopping the rapid-ageing process once they were ready for war.

Breeding an army of soldiers must lend itself to Massive Dynamic’s preparations in defeating whatever threat is being posed by this parallel universe and it will be interesting to see if this particular plot thread gets picked up for use in later episodes, or whether it will simply exist here as a failed attempt at a possible plan – a strategy that never came to fruition.

Observer Appearance

He stands at the hospital desk where the ageing baby-man lies dead, watching Olivia and her team arrive on the scene to investigate.



Point Of Interest

Claus Penrose, in cryptic surname form, was alluded to in the previous Pilot episode by the curiously out of place image on the street of a Pen and a Rose in a labelled diagram.



(The labelled diagrams works as a form of indicating the scientific nature of Penrose’s character.)
The Glyph Symbols that appear throughout this episode spell out the word: BRELD.



At time of writing I have no idea what the word ‘Breld’ means. It might be a name, a term, a concept or an acronym or something else entirely. What it isn’t, alas, is an actual real word!

1.1 Pilot

Please note that all episode posts are written with foreknowledge of the most recently-aired episodes of Fringe. As such they may contain spoilers for viewers not up to date.

Plot Overview

Flight 627 lands via autopilot, all passengers and crew inexplicably dead via some form of viral toxin that made their skin translucent. Olivia Dunham, of the FBI, investigates a lead at the garage of Morgan Steig, a man who has an identical twin, that died aboard Flight 627. During this investigation, Olivia’s partner and lover, John Scott, is infected by the same virus when they meet Morgan’s twin, Richard.

Olivia tracks down potential help in the shape of Walter Bishop – a one-time fringe scientist now interred in a mental hospital. With the guardianship of Walter’s son, Peter Bishop, Walter uses Olivia to merge her mind with John Scott and find out the identity of Richard Steig to track him down and obtain a cure.

John Scott is cured, but ultimately revealed to have been threatening Richard Steig. As he dies in Olivia’s arms he asks her to question why she was pushed – by her superior, Philip Broyles – into the investigation in the first place. Broyles approaches Olivia and requests that she join his team investigating The Pattern; a series of bizarre events conducted like the world is a giant laboratory. Enlisting Walter and Peter, Olivia commits to this new life.

Meanwhile, at the mysterious Massive Dynamic, John Scott’s dead body is dropped off for questioning. . .

Episode Discussion

Like most pilot episodes, this one sets up the dynamic of the series by gathering together the team of Olivia, Walter and Peter as an investigative squad (with Astrid Farnsworth also part of the gang as a ‘fringe’ support). Crucial plot conceits are introduced, such as The Pattern, Agent Broyles being part of a group already involved and discussion of Massive Dynamic and the never-seen William Bell. Many of the pieces are put on the board, the rest of the series will simply be a matter of showing them off more as they move around.

There are some major points of interest that foreshadow events that later come to light; notably Walter and Peter and the idea of a parallel universe.

When Walter first sees Peter he remarks that he thought he would be fatter, to which Peter makes a comment about how he was chubbier up until the year before high school. As we can deduce from events in the season finale, it seems likely that Walter snatched Peter from the parallel universe as a replacement for his own Peter that died as a boy. From this exchange we can envisage pictures of ‘original Peter’ looking chubbier than ‘parallel Peter’ and Peter’s withering remark about how his father probably doesn’t remember becomes rather ironic.

The facts would suggest that Peter has been lied to and given a false history to account for his transition from one parallel universe to this one, that the original Peter was chubbier than his parallel counterpart. (The logical extension also is that, somewhere, there’s an alternate Walter missing a son. . .)

The twin characters of Morgan and Richard Steig also point towards this notion of there being more than one of everything. Is one of them part of this original universe and the other from the parallel one? It seemed they were officially recognised as twins on paper so, if the parallel universe was involved, it’s an element that has been put in place some time ago. Otherwise it may just be that they really were twins and these duplicate people were merely a thematic tie-in to the ‘twin’ nature of the world that will come to light as the show progresses.

William Bell, who only shows up at the very end of season one, is mentioned here as being away for a couple of weeks. Instead Nina Sharp is the face of Massive Dynamic, with her bionic arm evidence of the advanced technology.

That Richard Steig worked there, as part of the weapons division, suggests this is where he stole the virus he eventually used (but his motives for doing it, or what his brother Morgan was so nervous about on the flight, remain unanswered).

There was an interesting moment where Nina Sharp remarked that she would speak to Olivia as she would her daughter. It might just be heightened suspicion on my part, but future revelations about her being Olivia’s mother tweaked my interest. In a similar vein, Astrid being Olivia’s personal assistant also piqued my curiosity. Nothing has come to light as of season one, but I anticipate eventual surprises about Astrid to emerge.

The end of the episode, with John Scott’s body being taken for questioning, suggested that Massive Dynamic were as capable of ‘contacting’ him the same way Olivia encountered him whilst he was in a coma. Walter actually remarked that it was possible to achieve what he did with Olivia whilst a body was only recently dead. As we will later learn, however, the process of Olivia’s mind merging with John’s causes her to retain some of his memories and the information Massive Dynamic pursue is now with her.

Observer Appearance

The Observer makes an appearance in every episode of season one. Here he innocuously walks past the Massive Dynamic building.

Point Of Interest

During Olivia’s ‘dream’ sequence, where her mind merges with John Scott’s, a gravestone behind Olivia reads ‘He’s Not Dead’.

It’s tempting to assume that this gravestone is a reference to John Scott himself, and probably it is. But given the revelation of Peter’s grave at the end of season one it’s also a potential foreshadowing of that major twist.

Glyph Symbols

The Glyph Symbols that appear throughout this episode spell out the word: OBSERVER.