An excellent, classic science fiction standalone Fringe 4.6 tonight, coupled with more of Peter's story. And the denouement is superb, touching, and about as good as it gets.
The classic story concerns a brilliant physicist who figures out - mathematically - how to slip back in time. But she succumbs to Alzheimer's before she can convert her equations into actual results. Fortunately (or unfortunately) her husband is a brilliant engineer who is able to apply his wife's equations. His passion for this is not so much for his work, but to get his wife back to a time, four years earlier, when she still had all of her faculties.
As is always the case in these stories, the time slips have adverse effects beyond the time slipping couple. The time displacement in each shift backwards endangers people miles away, when the rug of time is pulled out from under them. The worst case is yet to come - hundreds of people will be trapped and killed in a tunnel, which didn't exist four years ago.
Peter gets called in when Olivia thinks his presence may have caused the time slips. By the end of the episode, our team knows it's the engineer - but Peter thinks he was the cause, after all, because the equipment built by the engineer didn't start working until Peter arrived in this universe three days ago (that's three weeks ago in television episode time).
And the ending proceeds to be double sad. The physicist, in her final sojourn in brilliant mentality, crosses out all of her equations, rather than providing the last piece of mathematics which could make the time shift permanent, as the husband so desperately wanted.
And Peter apparently comes to believe that he really doesn't belong here.
Sad, sad-
But I'll bet you as far as Peter is concerned that Olivia and Walter will come to take and bring him back.
Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology
See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return
See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe
See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch
See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best
Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic
The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
The classic story concerns a brilliant physicist who figures out - mathematically - how to slip back in time. But she succumbs to Alzheimer's before she can convert her equations into actual results. Fortunately (or unfortunately) her husband is a brilliant engineer who is able to apply his wife's equations. His passion for this is not so much for his work, but to get his wife back to a time, four years earlier, when she still had all of her faculties.
As is always the case in these stories, the time slips have adverse effects beyond the time slipping couple. The time displacement in each shift backwards endangers people miles away, when the rug of time is pulled out from under them. The worst case is yet to come - hundreds of people will be trapped and killed in a tunnel, which didn't exist four years ago.
Peter gets called in when Olivia thinks his presence may have caused the time slips. By the end of the episode, our team knows it's the engineer - but Peter thinks he was the cause, after all, because the equipment built by the engineer didn't start working until Peter arrived in this universe three days ago (that's three weeks ago in television episode time).
And the ending proceeds to be double sad. The physicist, in her final sojourn in brilliant mentality, crosses out all of her equations, rather than providing the last piece of mathematics which could make the time shift permanent, as the husband so desperately wanted.
And Peter apparently comes to believe that he really doesn't belong here.
Sad, sad-
But I'll bet you as far as Peter is concerned that Olivia and Walter will come to take and bring him back.
Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology
See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return
See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe
See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch
See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best
Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...
3 comments:
I thought the episode was very, very good. The time setting of 47 minutes would be yet another occurrence of the mysterious "47" that I can tick off on my fingers as well as getting another iteration of the Fibonacci golden spiral. There are more golden spiral nautiluses (or nautili) I spied in some wrought iron railing that's in a photo from next week's episode so the mysteries continue. Peter has made it home but it wasn't the home he was looking for. What a Fringe-tastic series.
That's a very good point about the 47 - it's some kind of fractal, that maybe the Observers have something to do with (maybe their hat brims are 47 inches around ...)
Looking back with hindsight we might consider that Olivia could have experienced a time jump when she received the hourlies in the previous episode of Novation but the sequence didn't line up well enough. Also, at the previous episode's end, 47 showed up as the locker number.
A still shot from next week's episode shows us a return of the golden spiral as well.
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