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| Thursday, November 18, 2010 08:04 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 3, Episode 6 - "6955 kHz") |
 by Fëanor |
As always, spoilers ahead.
People all over the world are recording some strange music on the titular radio frequency. Then a voice begins reciting numbers. Then everyone listening gets their minds wiped! No memories. Crazy.
Eeww. Peter and alt-Olivia being all lovey-dovey is totally gross.
Walter: "If you end up breaking the universe, this time it's on your head."
Broyles and Nina have heard of the "number stations" - radio frequencies where voices recite lists of numbers for no reason anyone knows. Creepy. I wonder if this is a real thing?
Walter is definitely very pissed at Peter for trying to figure out the doomsday device. Which is understandable. Walter's still a little guilt-ridden about ruining an entire universe, and isn't exactly pleased that it could happen again, this time thanks to his son.
Alt-Olivia nearly gave herself away again, this time to Nina.
A creepy floating box was left behind at the radio tower the numbers were broadcast from. A pulse, generated by the box, was hidden in the numbers broadcast - that's what killed everybody's memories. And the villain behind the box is the little dude from Alias! The mismatched eyes are a nice touch.
Yet again Olivia nearly gives herself away, by not recognizing the name of someone she and Peter met before.
All kinds of great, eerie theories revolve around the number stations. It's said they were already being broadcast before Marconi invented the radio. There's even a rare book called The First People about an earlier, technologically advanced race of humans that lived on the Earth before dinosaurs. The book apparently describes a theory for the source of the numbers. Love it!
Walter is given another of the cubes that are the source of the memory-erasing pulses. "Now I have bookends!"
Nina and Walter hang out on a bench in the middle of campus, passing prescription marijuana back and forth, reminiscing about their wild school days and lamenting the cowardice and seriousness of this generation. Great stuff.
Another rough moment for Olivia: Peter relies on her photographic memory to pull up the numbers from the first broadcast, but she struggles to remember. She gets enough of them, however, to reveal that a calendar in the book corresponds. Curiouser and curiouser.
Walter: "In 1974, the CIA asked me to develop the best sandwich for clarity of thought." Weaponized sandwich! Maybe my favorite moment in the episode.
D'oh! Alt-Olivia knows our villain. She walks right up to his apartment and knocks on the door. He's from the other side, too, and working for Walternate. He asks if Olivia has any information on his next mission. She says, "Yeah, I do." Then out he goes through the window! Man, she's killing her own people left and right!
One of the magic locations holding a millions-year-old secret is in... Jersey City?
Alt-Olivia is trying to work out whether her position is morally defensible. She asks Peter if he and he alone were fighting for the continued existence of his universe, and it was either his universe or the other, he'd have to do whatever he had to do... right? But Peter says, "I gotta believe there's another way. There's always hope."
To no one's real surprise, the "vacuum" turns out to be Walternate's machine, and the coordinates that the number stations have been broadcasting are of the locations of the remaining pieces of the device. Despite the fact that this didn't shock me, it was still a cool reveal. Plus, I kind of like 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo plots of this sort, where our heroes are tasked with recovering a limited number of objects. There's a concrete goal in sight.
Walter has been converted and now he and Peter are determined to hunt down the pieces, put them together, and figure out how this thing works. But are they playing right into Walternate's hands?
The mystical typewriter tells alt-Olivia to "initiate phase two," which is very ominous. Meanwhile, our Olivia on the other side is told that her universe traversal experiments are canceled indefinitely, which, as the Peter in her head points out, is clearly a bad sign! They have what they need, and it's time for her to go home before they decide to eliminate her!
Everything's coming to a head now. Very exciting! I like the suggestion that the doomsday device could have a positive application. Where could this go? Could it create a third universe?? I can't wait to find out. |
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