Fringe: Stowaway
Well goodness this icon suddenly seems appropriate.
I really only have two things to discuss re: this episode, and surprisingly neither is an actual opinion about the merits of putting Spock in Olivia's body. Which I thought Anna Torv handled surprisingly well given I was...impressed but not entirely taken in by her voice at the end of the last episode. This time I think the physicality she brought to the character did and the delivery did more than the accent. Regardless; I'ma wait and see whether they did something awesome or just weird with that. I got some thoughts, though, briefly on Bell and less briefly on the nature of reality, physics, spirituality and the relationship between those things, (a) in my head and (b) on Fringe.
So, on Bell - mostly I just feel vindicated that he's a sod. Like, I never trusted the pat, "I was only doing it to save you/your world/Peter" crap he spouted out before his "sacrifice" at the end of the second season. I mean, I think there were elements of truth to it. But even if Walter did ask him to cut out bits of his brain, I don't think he also asked him to store those bits in other humans thus driving them insane for twenty years. I don't think we can overlook the way Newton so conveniently knew where those bits were stored, even if Bell did try and warn Olivia about him. In short, yes, I believe Bell was playing both sides, but if he was helping Walternate to gain his trust, I gotta wonder what was so awesome about his trust that it required Bell essentially...jumping him ahead in the space race. Now it may simply have been the price to be in a position to help that world survive in other ways - and then that's interesting, if Bell saw selling out to the enemy the price for saving enemy civilians. But...like I said, complicated and I don't think Bell himself is very moral.
And I feel this episode totally vindicates that view. But also in weird ways. Like, he thinks nothing of the violation that is stealing Olivia's body and using it to smoke pot and flirt with Astrid which is funny but horrifying, and worse given his history with her and all the things he's already done to her and the fact he knows exactly how angry she feels about it. And he still drugs her with soul magnets at the first available opportunity. (Sidenote: I don't have a huge issue with the concept of transferable consciousness - this is scifi after all, but I can't help but feel "soul magnets" sound dorky and ungrounded; I have no idea what they are and want to call them Magic Soul Jewels or something; a little more ridiculous technobabble would have been appreciated - I know there's no ACTUAL way they can work, but according to Fringe Telly Science, I want to know how they work).
And yet, this is also the guy who's willing to put himself in a cow and have his brainwaves interpreted as the only form of communication. And is not only seriously considering this, but pushing Walter to consider it. It's not that I think he particularly wants that for himself, and I do think his survival is essentially selfish in nature, but it's interesting to me that his desire to push the boundaries of science beyond the absurd and the acceptable - no limitations otherwise you cannot learn everything there is to be learned - extend also to himself. He'd get a strange sense of satisfaction at not only cheating death but then putting himself in a cow.
Again, not moral in the least; terrifying in fact given his lack of regard for the choices and rights of others. But interesting he is, like Walter, willing to experiment on himself.
Okay, that over with, let's talk about the possibly religious chatter about meaning and purpose at the end.
I don't like the idea of Fringe being overtly religious in tone, but I think the show itself does try to broach that subject at times. Now, I wanna be clear, I'm gonna talk a lot about this because it's a subject about which I'm passionate, but for once it's not cus I'm particularly annoyed at the show. I think it wants to have a hint of populist spirituality, and I have zero problem with that, I just have weird personal ideas that...Sparked Thoughts. Which you are now invited to share. Basically, I'm a humanist atheist and I find science can be deeply inspirational and indeed spiritual in the sense I connect with that concept. I also think that Fringe in its general...discussion on how we react to the unknown, how we live with our choices, is at times a really brilliant example of a humanist narrative.
What's interesting and potentially problematic for the show is that it also discusses science in terms of how far is too far and ethics in the pursuit of knowledge. This is a question that is very difficult to separate from the notion of God as a moral barometer, or the notion that science cannot answer all questions. Now, I don't believe that religion and science must be enemies and I don't know many other people (religious or not) who do either, but I'm talking in terms of broad strokes. I'm talking about popular humanist spirituality; the idea that there's a higher power of some kind to comfort and guide us and that there's reassurance in knowing we can't answer all the questions.
This is not an idea I subscribe to, but in Fringe's defense, it's not like the seeds of it haven't been in the show since the beginning; Walter is suggested at several points, albeit subtly, to be a person of lapsed religion, and sometimes - most notably but not uniquely in "White Tulip" - is overtly looking to be proven wrong in a belief that science explains all and there's no room for any gods but him in his lab.
I'm not explaining this all that great. I guess what I'm saying is, there are two common ways of mixing spirituality and science. There is using scientific ideas to express spiritual concepts and to depict spiritual events that nonetheless have explicable, scientific underpinnings, and then there is presenting science as only able to get one so far - a final leap of spiritual faith is required to truly understand the significance and true meaning of an event.
"White Tulip" stands as one of my favourite episodes because I think it works so well from that first perspective - I wrote extensively about it at the time, but I was very moved that Walter thought he had received forgiveness from God when in fact he had received forgiveness from himself. However, it's also possible to interpret it from a more overtly mystical perspective and to believe that it was indeed God (or a higher power, or the universe) forgiving Walter, simply working in mysterious ways. We could even argue (and I might agree) that there is no functional difference between the two. But I remember being slightly surprised, at the time, when the idea that it was, in fact, a higher power at work in orchestrating those events, rather than two humans meeting in strange circumstances leading to an incredibly unlikely but moving and redemptive event, that seemed to dominate among those whose opinions I read on the wilds of the web.
Having paid a little more attention to the themes of the soul and the spirit on the show, I'm not so surprised anymore. As I said, I think the show seeds this stuff more than I necessarily pick up on. I do still want Fringe to be a humanist narrative (as opposed to, say Battlestar Galactica where I enjoyed an overt religious element for most of its run), but I think it still qualifies. "Humanist" is a noble adjective that can be applied to atheistic and religious traditions alike. And I want much more strongly for Fringe to be humanist than atheist.
So why did I go through all this?
Because of William Bell's words at the end, about significance in things, about the possibility that his first answer - the scientific reason for the Dana Grey's survival being wrong - because perhaps she simply had "a purpose".
I believe, at this point, that the writers are attempting to discuss spirituality, and I am vaguely disappointed that I feel they are doing so in a less interesting way than is possible - still separating science and the spirit rather than looking at them as one.
I suppose what I want to talk about, having laid out the framework of what I think Fringe is and isn't trying to do and where my biases are, is point out that the first answer doesn't render his second answer wrong. That's three-dimensional thinking and a belief that the mystical cannot be explained with atoms - which seems unworthy of a man willing to steal other people's bodies and put his brain in a cow.
Our current understanding of time (as I understand it - bwahahahaha), is that we have a massively crippled ability to view it. We see it in a linear fashion, and Newtonian physics shows it has a direction - cause and effect - but the idea that the future hasn't "happened yet" is inaccurate; we simply haven't experienced it yet. Like...driving towards Paris and assuming Paris doesn't exist yet just because we haven't gotten there.
So, when you factor in the apparent physical fact that everything we ever have done or will do already exists, is existing right now, we just aren't necessarily experiencing making those choices in this instant of our consciousness, determinism and fate and purpose become more interesting scientific concepts. And I only italicise that, not to be obnoxious, but because I'm genuinely amazed and excited by this shit and on more than one occasion I've been gabbling about how freaked out and awed I am by the concept that observation in the present can change the past (from our perspective), or how it doesn't seem to "count" if a machine observes it and then deletes its data and what implications does that have for sentience... And it always surprises me when other people... It doesn't surprise me when other people don't know this stuff, because why would they? And I'm sure I get it wrong half the time - I'm not a scientist, I never will be - I probably make scientists cry with my enough-to-be-dangerous popular science obsession. But it does always surprise me when people don't know that science even asks these questions; the assumption that it's about understanding what equation describes gravity or what what chemical reactions occur in the sun.
And that stuff's cool too, but wow, would I be on the train of people who find science inadequate to feed the sense of curiosity and knowledge and hunger for the unknown; the desire to feel connected to the universe and to be awed by its great magnificence and brilliance, if that's all it were to me.
But I think these ideas are so weirder and cooler and more awesome and frightening than that - I think they're invaluable parts of the spiritual discussion, not an argument against it. And curse William Bell for suggesting momentarily that they are at odds!
I mean, the character and I do differ in that I don't feel the desire to believe that all events have meaning - in fact I'm at peace with the fact they likely don't, and even take comfort in it at times. So in that I'm not sure I believe that it was Dana Grey's purpose to save the people on the train; that suggests an author of her fate. But to reuse that word, I do believe it was quite possibly her fate. Or, given the multiple simultaneous futures and web of choices that the Observers posit and Walter's branching universe theory, it was her fate here. It was the culmination of her choices, but she had already made them.
The energy of the explosion is what unbound her molecules and allowed her to die. It was this explosion at this time, in this circumstance, because...it always had and would be. From an objective view of time, Dana Grey is forever being shot with her family and forever dying in that explosion; they are both features of her life. It happens because it will happen because it has; we all of us live in this philosophical paradox. We make all the choices in our lives, but...we have already made them. We just haven't gotten to them yet.
Or, to explore a concept from quantum physics that, in the realworld cannot possibly apply to this situation at all because quantum physics applies to things much smaller than a lightning-struck human, but in terms of Fringe Telly Science where Anything Goes, the idea that cause and effect can occur in reverse - that Dana Grey saving those people from that explosion resonates backwards through her timeline to force her to survive until then, is something we do see in quantum physics, and it's creepy and amazing as hell. And I wish Bell had articulated that along with his point that the facts of the explosion energy may not be enough alone to have a full understanding of the circumstances. Cus it's a cool idea!
Point is - I know that I'm probably reading slightly offmap; I don't think the writers would mind. And I'm not super pissed about it or anything - my wordiness stems from excitement and enthusiasm. I think Fringe skirts closer to this than most other stories I've seen or read. I just think it could be something truly amazing if it went just a little further.
And, REALLY finally, I did like the way Bell spoke about the coincidence of the case of the week being pertinent to the philosophical dilemma facing the team. Season three especially has been all about that - mirroring with the case of the week to the point I've seen jokes about it. I think this is, in some ways, just that - a gentle joke. But if we are talking about the universe changing in reaction to the participants in the story - and why not - this is a nice way to broach the subject.
I really only have two things to discuss re: this episode, and surprisingly neither is an actual opinion about the merits of putting Spock in Olivia's body. Which I thought Anna Torv handled surprisingly well given I was...impressed but not entirely taken in by her voice at the end of the last episode. This time I think the physicality she brought to the character did and the delivery did more than the accent. Regardless; I'ma wait and see whether they did something awesome or just weird with that. I got some thoughts, though, briefly on Bell and less briefly on the nature of reality, physics, spirituality and the relationship between those things, (a) in my head and (b) on Fringe.
So, on Bell - mostly I just feel vindicated that he's a sod. Like, I never trusted the pat, "I was only doing it to save you/your world/Peter" crap he spouted out before his "sacrifice" at the end of the second season. I mean, I think there were elements of truth to it. But even if Walter did ask him to cut out bits of his brain, I don't think he also asked him to store those bits in other humans thus driving them insane for twenty years. I don't think we can overlook the way Newton so conveniently knew where those bits were stored, even if Bell did try and warn Olivia about him. In short, yes, I believe Bell was playing both sides, but if he was helping Walternate to gain his trust, I gotta wonder what was so awesome about his trust that it required Bell essentially...jumping him ahead in the space race. Now it may simply have been the price to be in a position to help that world survive in other ways - and then that's interesting, if Bell saw selling out to the enemy the price for saving enemy civilians. But...like I said, complicated and I don't think Bell himself is very moral.
And I feel this episode totally vindicates that view. But also in weird ways. Like, he thinks nothing of the violation that is stealing Olivia's body and using it to smoke pot and flirt with Astrid which is funny but horrifying, and worse given his history with her and all the things he's already done to her and the fact he knows exactly how angry she feels about it. And he still drugs her with soul magnets at the first available opportunity. (Sidenote: I don't have a huge issue with the concept of transferable consciousness - this is scifi after all, but I can't help but feel "soul magnets" sound dorky and ungrounded; I have no idea what they are and want to call them Magic Soul Jewels or something; a little more ridiculous technobabble would have been appreciated - I know there's no ACTUAL way they can work, but according to Fringe Telly Science, I want to know how they work).
And yet, this is also the guy who's willing to put himself in a cow and have his brainwaves interpreted as the only form of communication. And is not only seriously considering this, but pushing Walter to consider it. It's not that I think he particularly wants that for himself, and I do think his survival is essentially selfish in nature, but it's interesting to me that his desire to push the boundaries of science beyond the absurd and the acceptable - no limitations otherwise you cannot learn everything there is to be learned - extend also to himself. He'd get a strange sense of satisfaction at not only cheating death but then putting himself in a cow.
Again, not moral in the least; terrifying in fact given his lack of regard for the choices and rights of others. But interesting he is, like Walter, willing to experiment on himself.
Okay, that over with, let's talk about the possibly religious chatter about meaning and purpose at the end.
I don't like the idea of Fringe being overtly religious in tone, but I think the show itself does try to broach that subject at times. Now, I wanna be clear, I'm gonna talk a lot about this because it's a subject about which I'm passionate, but for once it's not cus I'm particularly annoyed at the show. I think it wants to have a hint of populist spirituality, and I have zero problem with that, I just have weird personal ideas that...Sparked Thoughts. Which you are now invited to share. Basically, I'm a humanist atheist and I find science can be deeply inspirational and indeed spiritual in the sense I connect with that concept. I also think that Fringe in its general...discussion on how we react to the unknown, how we live with our choices, is at times a really brilliant example of a humanist narrative.
What's interesting and potentially problematic for the show is that it also discusses science in terms of how far is too far and ethics in the pursuit of knowledge. This is a question that is very difficult to separate from the notion of God as a moral barometer, or the notion that science cannot answer all questions. Now, I don't believe that religion and science must be enemies and I don't know many other people (religious or not) who do either, but I'm talking in terms of broad strokes. I'm talking about popular humanist spirituality; the idea that there's a higher power of some kind to comfort and guide us and that there's reassurance in knowing we can't answer all the questions.
This is not an idea I subscribe to, but in Fringe's defense, it's not like the seeds of it haven't been in the show since the beginning; Walter is suggested at several points, albeit subtly, to be a person of lapsed religion, and sometimes - most notably but not uniquely in "White Tulip" - is overtly looking to be proven wrong in a belief that science explains all and there's no room for any gods but him in his lab.
I'm not explaining this all that great. I guess what I'm saying is, there are two common ways of mixing spirituality and science. There is using scientific ideas to express spiritual concepts and to depict spiritual events that nonetheless have explicable, scientific underpinnings, and then there is presenting science as only able to get one so far - a final leap of spiritual faith is required to truly understand the significance and true meaning of an event.
"White Tulip" stands as one of my favourite episodes because I think it works so well from that first perspective - I wrote extensively about it at the time, but I was very moved that Walter thought he had received forgiveness from God when in fact he had received forgiveness from himself. However, it's also possible to interpret it from a more overtly mystical perspective and to believe that it was indeed God (or a higher power, or the universe) forgiving Walter, simply working in mysterious ways. We could even argue (and I might agree) that there is no functional difference between the two. But I remember being slightly surprised, at the time, when the idea that it was, in fact, a higher power at work in orchestrating those events, rather than two humans meeting in strange circumstances leading to an incredibly unlikely but moving and redemptive event, that seemed to dominate among those whose opinions I read on the wilds of the web.
Having paid a little more attention to the themes of the soul and the spirit on the show, I'm not so surprised anymore. As I said, I think the show seeds this stuff more than I necessarily pick up on. I do still want Fringe to be a humanist narrative (as opposed to, say Battlestar Galactica where I enjoyed an overt religious element for most of its run), but I think it still qualifies. "Humanist" is a noble adjective that can be applied to atheistic and religious traditions alike. And I want much more strongly for Fringe to be humanist than atheist.
So why did I go through all this?
Because of William Bell's words at the end, about significance in things, about the possibility that his first answer - the scientific reason for the Dana Grey's survival being wrong - because perhaps she simply had "a purpose".
I believe, at this point, that the writers are attempting to discuss spirituality, and I am vaguely disappointed that I feel they are doing so in a less interesting way than is possible - still separating science and the spirit rather than looking at them as one.
I suppose what I want to talk about, having laid out the framework of what I think Fringe is and isn't trying to do and where my biases are, is point out that the first answer doesn't render his second answer wrong. That's three-dimensional thinking and a belief that the mystical cannot be explained with atoms - which seems unworthy of a man willing to steal other people's bodies and put his brain in a cow.
Our current understanding of time (as I understand it - bwahahahaha), is that we have a massively crippled ability to view it. We see it in a linear fashion, and Newtonian physics shows it has a direction - cause and effect - but the idea that the future hasn't "happened yet" is inaccurate; we simply haven't experienced it yet. Like...driving towards Paris and assuming Paris doesn't exist yet just because we haven't gotten there.
So, when you factor in the apparent physical fact that everything we ever have done or will do already exists, is existing right now, we just aren't necessarily experiencing making those choices in this instant of our consciousness, determinism and fate and purpose become more interesting scientific concepts. And I only italicise that, not to be obnoxious, but because I'm genuinely amazed and excited by this shit and on more than one occasion I've been gabbling about how freaked out and awed I am by the concept that observation in the present can change the past (from our perspective), or how it doesn't seem to "count" if a machine observes it and then deletes its data and what implications does that have for sentience... And it always surprises me when other people... It doesn't surprise me when other people don't know this stuff, because why would they? And I'm sure I get it wrong half the time - I'm not a scientist, I never will be - I probably make scientists cry with my enough-to-be-dangerous popular science obsession. But it does always surprise me when people don't know that science even asks these questions; the assumption that it's about understanding what equation describes gravity or what what chemical reactions occur in the sun.
And that stuff's cool too, but wow, would I be on the train of people who find science inadequate to feed the sense of curiosity and knowledge and hunger for the unknown; the desire to feel connected to the universe and to be awed by its great magnificence and brilliance, if that's all it were to me.
But I think these ideas are so weirder and cooler and more awesome and frightening than that - I think they're invaluable parts of the spiritual discussion, not an argument against it. And curse William Bell for suggesting momentarily that they are at odds!
I mean, the character and I do differ in that I don't feel the desire to believe that all events have meaning - in fact I'm at peace with the fact they likely don't, and even take comfort in it at times. So in that I'm not sure I believe that it was Dana Grey's purpose to save the people on the train; that suggests an author of her fate. But to reuse that word, I do believe it was quite possibly her fate. Or, given the multiple simultaneous futures and web of choices that the Observers posit and Walter's branching universe theory, it was her fate here. It was the culmination of her choices, but she had already made them.
The energy of the explosion is what unbound her molecules and allowed her to die. It was this explosion at this time, in this circumstance, because...it always had and would be. From an objective view of time, Dana Grey is forever being shot with her family and forever dying in that explosion; they are both features of her life. It happens because it will happen because it has; we all of us live in this philosophical paradox. We make all the choices in our lives, but...we have already made them. We just haven't gotten to them yet.
Or, to explore a concept from quantum physics that, in the realworld cannot possibly apply to this situation at all because quantum physics applies to things much smaller than a lightning-struck human, but in terms of Fringe Telly Science where Anything Goes, the idea that cause and effect can occur in reverse - that Dana Grey saving those people from that explosion resonates backwards through her timeline to force her to survive until then, is something we do see in quantum physics, and it's creepy and amazing as hell. And I wish Bell had articulated that along with his point that the facts of the explosion energy may not be enough alone to have a full understanding of the circumstances. Cus it's a cool idea!
Point is - I know that I'm probably reading slightly offmap; I don't think the writers would mind. And I'm not super pissed about it or anything - my wordiness stems from excitement and enthusiasm. I think Fringe skirts closer to this than most other stories I've seen or read. I just think it could be something truly amazing if it went just a little further.
And, REALLY finally, I did like the way Bell spoke about the coincidence of the case of the week being pertinent to the philosophical dilemma facing the team. Season three especially has been all about that - mirroring with the case of the week to the point I've seen jokes about it. I think this is, in some ways, just that - a gentle joke. But if we are talking about the universe changing in reaction to the participants in the story - and why not - this is a nice way to broach the subject.