In this latest Fringe round-up, we continue to walk in an Observer Wonderland as “Observer week” nears its climax. We also have interviews with Joshua Jackson, Anna Torv, Michael Cerveris and Fringe Exec. Producers Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman. There’s also a look at the fact v fiction from last week’s impressive Of Human Action.
Here’s an eTalk Joshua Jackson interview and new sneak peek of tonight’s episode:
[video: surtla]
An Observer is spotted in the crowd on So You Think You Can Dance:
The Observer also found his way onto a FOX commercial:
[video: shineyboa46]
Fringe EP’s Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman took part in a conference call to talk about tonight’s episode, which they feel extremely “passionate about” (mild spoilers):
How did the idea of the Observer come about?
Pinkner: When we started riffing and blue sky-ing about what the series would look like, the Observer was one of the first ideas we came up with. … You want to surprise yourself and give yourself a really cool puzzle. One of the ones that came to mind was, What if there were these characters that by all accounts, all they did was watch? And our team, specifically Olivia [Anna Torv] and Broyles [Lance Reddick], realize there are these events that seem significant to them — but when they [also] realize there’s a guy who seems to be all these events around the world, sometimes almost simultaneously, they take on a whole new significance.How did the character develop?
Pinkner: We were looking for something that was sort of iconic, and at the same time we were fascinated with the idea of all the little things that go on under our noses every day. … We wanted the Observer to have the quality of being invisible. We put him in the first three episodes of the show and finally revealed him in the fourth, and people went, “Oh my gosh, he was right there and I didn’t see it.”Some of his characteristics — the bald head, the no eyebrows — [came from] imagining how it would be that someone who wasn’t of our world ended up in our world and what the process of getting here would entail. His senses were largely deadened, so it took a lot of stimulus for him to feel anything, so that led to the hot peppers and some other characteristics.
What will we learn this week?
Wyman: It definitely qualifies them to a certain degree for everybody. It will open up a whole other line of concept and another line of understanding for the viewer to say, Oh my gosh, that’s really interesting. … To us the best science fiction deals with very human conditions, like Isaac Asimov or great writers like that. The more out there and sci-fi it becomes, the more it reveals human conditions. This is one of those episodes that we feel very passionately about in that regard, because the entire episode reveals itself to be about a very human emotion. The way we chose to tell it is through the eyes of somebody who’s not human.Where is the show headed later this season?
Wyman: It’s a journey of self-actualization for our characters. What separates this year from last year — we always refer to last year as a prologue for the series, where you get an understanding of the characters and what’s going on, you learn something about the pattern and you learn everything you’d need to situate yourself and enjoy the series. In this season, we’re really looking to get deeper into the characters and have people really participate with them and watch their evolution.Pinkner: One of our favorite themes in the show that we’re constantly coming back to is perception, and how what we see with our eyes might not necessarily be the truth. … We have an episode that’s really big and fun and crazy about how what it is we think we’re seeing isn’t necessarily the truth. In a couple of episodes we kind of drop a bombshell for our characters, and one of the big dormant secrets, one of the bombs under the table as it were, goes off. Perhaps it will blow our team apart, and it will certainly change the nature of their relationship.
We’ll delve a little more directly into the fact of the alternate universe and what’s going on over there and how it may affect our world. … We also have kind of a cool episode that deals with Walter’s [John Noble] memory and William Bell [Leonard Nimoy] specifically.
Meanwhile, Michael Ceveris -- who plays the Observer we know and love, is featured in USAToday (mild spoilers):
When he was cast for Fringe’s pilot episode, Cerveris figured he was a guest star, one of several nuggets dropped in by co-creator J.J. Abrams, who figured he’d come up with an explanation later, just as in Lost: “We knew there’d be a hatch, but exactly what or who was inside we didn’t know. We were just excited to open it.”
Only later did the Observer become “this sort of Where’s Waldo thing (as) the linchpin in an overarching story of the series,” Cerveris says. But “it wasn’t clear if he was a good guy or a bad guy, if he was human or something else.” Fans will learn his kind “are not completely devoid of feelings, and are not incapable of being attached to people they’re observing,” he says. But they mustn’t interfere with their subjects.
“Our goal was to take a character who is by definition unknowable and make him someone you can connect to emotionally,” says executive producer Jeff Pinkner. “He’s more specifically connected with the overall character mythology of the show than we ever expected.”
Aside from the cameos, which are sometimes digitally inserted or filmed by other actors since Fringe shifted production to Vancouver, B.C., this season, Pinkner promises “an epic unfolding” in an episode set for April 1: “We answer a lot of questions of where this all began.”
A nice AOL interview with Anna Torv on “the war”, William Bell, Alterlivia and the show in general:
[heads-up: FringeWatch]
Anna Torv also talks “New Fringe Clues” in this AP interview (may contain spoilers):
Popular Mechanics put last week’s episode, Of Human Action, to the test to see if it matches up to scientific plausibility:
The episode “Of Human Action” kicks off with sirens wailing and police rushing to the aid of a teenage kidnapping victim. As the cops swarm the vehicle, the two suspects climb out of the car, unarmed. As one utters the prophetic, “You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” another officer begins to back up toward the ledge of the high-rise parking garage with a look of shock on his face. He throws himself over the edge. Another officer unexplainably begins firing at her co-workers before turning the gun on herself.
The Fringe team arrives at the scene, and instantly Dr. Walter Bishop, mad scientist turned special investigations specialist, declares the cause of death for the two police “subliminal hypnosis of a violent nature.” But, his son Peter Bishop points out, hypnosis alone can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. All signs seem to point to mind control on a much higher level than hypnosis.
Also factoring into the kidnapping/mind control mystery is that the initial victim, Tyler Cabot, is the son of a scientist at Massive Dynamic, the company founded by Bishop’s mysterious ex-partner Dr. William Bell. Agent Olivia Dunham notes the obivious: Everything seems to lead back to Massive Dynamic.
After more people fall victim to mind-controlled violence, a trap set for Tyler’s captors reveals that it was the suspects themselves who were the victims of the kidnapping, and that 15-year-old Tyler is the one toying with minds. Quickly, the team establishes that Tyler’s ability is due to a mind control cocktail of ADD medication and a brain-wave enhancer allegedly stolen from an experiment his father was working on at Massive Dynamic.
A clever theory, but is any of it possible? “The simple answer is no,” says Steven Novella, neurologist and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. “The brain does not produce enough energy to project brain waves out like that. The skull would also act as a barrier.”
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observerland?