1.03 The Ghost Network

Fringe is not all about fringe science, electro-men and exploding heads. It taps into an idea that corporations govern the direction of the world and make decisions on who lives, who dies and who is expendable – all in the name of science, all because they can. This arrogance was most recently brought into focus when INtREPUS, a pharmaceutical company who gave sufferers of Bellini’s not only ‘hope’, but a cure for the terminal disease, decided to prey on the innocence of these people and turn them into human cooking machines. Claire Williams and Emily Kramer were expendable – they would have died from Bellini’s anyway, had it not been for INtREPUS’s cure, right? So the people who had the power to cure them, decided that they also had the right to experiment on them, use them, kill them, and anyone else within a nearby radius.

Who, then, polices these people? Is it Massive Dynamic - a rival corporation who were only too happy to give up the location of INtREPUS’ secret research facility? Only thing is, if Nina Sharp knew that INtREPUS were doing these things, why not give them up sooner? Corporate espionage laws aside, could it be that Massive Dynamic are also conducting ethically questionable experimentation’s on humans? It would sure seem that way, if the Penrose clones and Massive Dynamic affiliate, Jacob Fischer, are anything to go by. So it’s about politics – kill the opposition, whilst claiming to be as clean as snow.

Who then polices Massive Dynamic – who keeps them in check? The police, the FBI? Not likely. We’ve already seen Phillip Broyles’ midnight rendezvous with Nina sharp, handing her the encryption key that Olivia helped to sneer from Matthew Ziegler in episode 1.03. Interestingly, Broyles was as p*ssed as we’ve ever seen him when he got wind of Olivia’s public dusting down of unethical INtREPUS leader David Esterbrook. Olivia was all smiles, proud that her efforts were yielding results – ironically this was the attitude that she lacked when she obtained the encryption key in Ghost Network. Back then, Broyles told her that she should smile more - heck Broyles, look whose talking! Granted, Broyles’ ambiguity might simply stem from the possibility that he is trying to juggle corporate assistance – keeping the Nina’s and Esterbrook’s of the world happy, so that he can get closer to understanding the series of events that are running amok.

However, the point is, if we can’t trust the leaders in their field – the INtREPUS’s, the Massive Dynamic’s, and perhaps the FBI, just WHO can we trust?

Who will police the policemen?

This is one of the reasons why we champion Olivia. Sure, to some, she may come across as cold, and she gets emotionally involved in her cases, but at least she’s fighting the good fight, and despite Broyles’ corportate concern, she slayed a giant in the form of INtREPUS. Just another 627 more to go!

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