Cordial Deconstruction

Observations from our shared single objective reality in a materialistic, naturalistic, & effectively macro-deterministic universe.

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Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 4 Season 1, The Arrival

Posted by Karl Withakay on June 30, 2011

They were all Blue Episodes back then.

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Not Exactly Formulaic

Technically, what Walter was reciting in bed was the recipe for root beer and not the formula.  A chemical or molecular formula is a way of expressing information about the atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound.  A recipe is a set of instructions that describe the process to make or prepare something.

You are My Density

If that probe really was made of Iridium, it would have been VERY heavy.  Probably too heavy for the flimsy stand used in the lab, and far too heavy for one or two men to move without assistance.  Iridium is the second densest element known, and barely less dense then the densest, Osmium.

Trust Us, It Happened Off Screen Many Times

Olivia about Walter wanting Peter to stay so badly that he’d rather go back to the asylum than loose Peter:

“He would rather go back to St. Claire’s than work here without you.  He’s said that more than once.”

Really?   I don’t recall him saying that on screen.  I could be forgetting it, but I do recall him many times talking about how miserable it was there; I never got the impression he would willingly go back under any circumstances.  It seems more like a contrived plot point by the writers to explain why Peter doesn’t leave.

Ghost Call Log?

If I were in Olivia’s position, and I got a call from what sounded like my dead partner & lover, I’d probably check the call log on my cell phone before bothering to get a trace run.  If the incoming caller ID number showed up, I wouldn’t bother with a  trace; I’d call that number back.  If the call didn’t show up in the call history, then I might get the trace to confirm whether or not a call actually came in.

Also, as a nitpick, Olivia says “I need a call traced from my cell.”  What she needed was a call to her cell traced.

Well, That’s One Thing You Could Call It….

Peter speaking about the probe:

“I sure hope that a gigantic metallic suppository is not the pinnacle of human achievement.”

Well, given the shape and the fact that it vibrates, I can think of something else you might call it….

We’ll Just Pretend it Never Happened/ I Can’t Even Get Out of a Speeding Ticket

I can only wish to ever be so vital or important that people are willing to ignore a crime committed by me as serious as assaulting a federal officer, even if it was against a Junior Agent.

Tough Call

I’m not sure which was worse, the mind reading through nose ports or learning via osmosis.  Neither is worthy of any serious deconstruction.

Digging to China (or Auttrailia)

If the probe burrowed through the Earth and reached the mantle, wouldn’t that create a volcano, or would the magma cool and plug the hole before it reached the surface?

Unanswered Question

Will we find out in season 4 what the heck the probe was, who was after it and why, and why it was important to the Observer?

Posted in Fringe, Science, Television | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 3 Season 1, The Ghost Network

Posted by Karl Withakay on June 23, 2011

They were all Blue Episodes back then.

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Peter’s No Pharmacist

Dextromethorphan is a cough suppressant, Clonazepam is an ant anti anxiety agent, and Fluxetine is Prozac.  None of those drugs is a psychotic.

Solid Science?

The mystery gel (amber) filling a bus from a small delivery container is not so totally far fetched.  Silica aerogel is the world’s lowest density solid, and it has a density (1 mg/cm3) which is slightly less than air (1.2 mg/cm3 at 20ºC and 1 atm).  Aerogel has been nicknamed frozen smoke due to it’s very low density.  A scientist on TV once said that aerogel was as close to nothing as any solid material could be.

Unanswered Questions

Who are the people that Peter was supposed to check with before coming home?  What mystery lies in his past?  Will this mystery be addressed in season four, or will it be forgotten?

Shifting Gears Mid Stride

This is basically a copy-paste of a comment I made on Polite Scott’s site when the show originally aired.

The writers seem to have lost track and veered off in a different path at some point in this episode.  They seem to have switched from the concept of precognitive visions of future events to intercepting communication about plans for future events.  Roy was having visions of these attacks before they happened; not just foreknowledge, but actual, accurate visions of the events. If he was merely intercepting ghost network communication of the plans, he would not see accurate, detailed images of the events before they happen (or even after they happen). You could argue that his brain was interpreting the plans into visual hallucinations, but the show was clearly implying that he was pre-witnessing the actual events, which wouldn’t happen from merely intercepting ghost network communication, unless that communication included streaming video of a detailed computer simulations of the attacks.

Got it Right For the Wrong Reason

Broyles:

“The first responders were worried it was bioterrorism…ghost of the sarin subway incident in Tokyo in 1995.  They called in the CDC…confirmed the attack isn’t biological in nature.  There’s no contagion.”

Sarin gas is a nerve gas chemical weapon; it is not a contagion or a biological weapon.  If the first responders were thinking the incident might be similar to the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, they should probably have contacted the Army Chemical Materials Agency, not the CDC.

 The Guy’s Got Talent

Unless the ghost network also gave Roy drawing skills, he should try his hand at becoming a comic book/ graphic novel artist.

To Blathe…

Peter about whether Roy is lying or not:

“He’s not.  I’d like to consider myself a fairly good poker player, which requires me to have the ability to read my opponent’s tells, know when he’s bluffing.  He’s not bluffing.”

Peter is describing the process of “reading people” through mental acuity or applied psychology as used in the TV shows The Mentalist and Lie To Me.

Walter’s Idea of Simple…

Walter:

“Occam’s Razor.  All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best.”

Broyles:

“And what is that?”

Walter:

“The man’s psychic.  Theoretically, it’s all quite possible.”

Accepting that psychic powers are theoretically quite possible in Fringe World, the simplest explanation is still that Roy is part of the pattern conspiracy, not that he’s psychic.

Electromagnetic, Particle, or Ocean?

Walter:

“We posited a spectrum of waves lying outside the range of those already discovered.”

It seems like Walter is talking about electromagnetic waves, but to be outside the range of those already discovered, they would have to be beyond gamma rays, which would be very high energy waves and very dangerous.  Perhaps the mysterious waves oscillate into another dimension or universe and thus lie in a spectrum “outside the range” of any already discovered waves.

Organomatallic Magic

Walter regarding the iridium based organomatallic compound that he introduced into Roy’s brain years earlier:

“The compound must have multiplied his bloodstream over time.  Environment, perhaps diet.”

Two problems here.  First, if Walter introduce the compound into Roy’s brain, then it shouldn’t be in his blood stream, unless there was a problem with Roy’s blood brain barrier.  Second, iridium is extremely rare on Earth, 40 times rarer than gold.  How could he get iridium from the environment or diet?  (It’s also not ferromagnetic)

Seeing Should Not Always Be Believing

Walter described the first optical illusion incorrectly.  He stated that the rotary movement gives the impression of  a 3-D tunnel.  In the illusion shown, the rotary motion is the illusion as it is a static image with no motion of any kind.  There’s also no 3-D tunnel effect in this illusion.  Here is the exact image Walter was showing, see for yourself.

Believe it or not, this is a static image.  It’s hard to tell when you look at the whole thing, but if you look close enough at any particular area, you’ll see that no part of the image ever actually changes.

Astrid Farnsworth: Relegated to the Fringe Team For Good Reason

Maybe Astrid should have gotten Roy to sign those release papers before Walter drilled into Roy’s brain.  What would she do if he had said, “Nope, too late.  It’s done, I’m not signing, and I’m suing you, Walter, and the FBI.”?  Even after he signed, a lawyer could argue that due to the experimenting on his brain, Roy was not of sound mind and not capable of entering into a binding legal agreement or legally signing any release of liability.

Posted in Fringe, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 2 Season 1, The Same Old Story

Posted by Karl Withakay on June 16, 2011

They were all Blue Episodes back then.

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

The Same Old, Flawed Cliché

Where did the mass and nutrients come from for the pregnancy and baby?  The mother did not  consume 20+ pounds of food to provide the needed mass and nutrition for the baby, and the newborn did not consume 100+ pounds of food to provide the mass and nutrition required to grow it’s body to the mass it had when it died.  Plants get the bulk of their mass from carbon extracted from carbon dioxide in the air, but that it a slow process, and it requires energy in the form of sunlight.

First Time In the ER/ Delivery Room?

How hideous was the baby that the ER Delivery Nurse screamed in horror, and the surgeon gagged?

What happened to the Previous Fringe Team?

In the meeting of the Pattern Committee, Nina mentions that she hopes this Fringe/Pattern team will have more successes than the last one.  What happened to the last team?

How Previous Was that Previous Broyles Report?

Nina mentions that in a one of his previous reports, Broyles theorized that Walter’s previous work was the basis for the pattern phenomena.  Is that a previous report as in from last week’s episode when Olivia brought Walter into the Fringe team, or a previous report from before Olivia’s assignment to the Fringe unit?

Keen Eye or Dumb Luck?

Peter discovers “some kind of orange gel” in the hotel and decides he has found something worth sampling, and it does turn out that he’s right, but I’m not convinced it wasn’t just dumb luck.  I mean, orange gel in a bathroom, wow, that must be important.  It couldn’t be liquid hand soap or shampoo, could it?  There’s numerous spots of orange gel in all my bathrooms, and I’m not drugging strippers to steal their pituitary glands, I swear.  Of course, it must be that Peter is so well trained in proper forensic evidence gathering techniques and practices that he knows it’s better to collect a probably useless sample than to ignore a potentially useful one.

This Week’s Darwin Award Goes to….

Victim #2, a stripper who lets a strange, somewhat shifty and agitated man take her to a secluded and fairly abandoned warehouse district for what she believes to be a sexual encounter.  Once in this isolated location, far from the ears of anyone who could hear her scream, she is not the least bit concerned when the stranger tells her to go to the window and look at a bridge, with her back to him.

That Car Was Either Very Well Preserved, or Peter Restored it in Record Time

After 17 years in a dusty garage, that car should have been a bit of a basket case.  The tires should have been flat, and might not have been able to hold air any more.  The battery would have been dead, and probably wouldn’t have held a charge.  The oil and transmission fluid probably would have been partially sludge, and the radiator hose might have crumbled to dust.

Is Astrid an FBI Special Agent or Is she an FBI Special Agent?

Astrid identifies herself as “Junior Agent Astrid Farnsworth”.  I did some searching, and this is the only reference I can find for any use of the term junior agent in the FBI.  It’s a title the FBI gives to kids in a community outreach program.  Entry level agents are just referred to as Special Agents.  Perhaps the junior part is a quasi official term used internally, or perhaps Astrid is just being humored by the real agents.

Living in the Wild, Wild West

The whole part about retrieving the last image seen by the victim was utter nonsense, perhaps worse than the rapid pregnancy mass from nothingness.  Even if we accept the nonsense that the muscle paralyzer somehow froze the neural pathways of the optic nerve, it wouldn’t freeze the electrical impulses that are the image information traveling along that optic nerve.  I was going to speculate on way to make this plot device slightly less execrable, involving “freezing” the sate or the rods and cones of the victim’s eyes, but it’s really not worth it; it’s just a stupid idea in the first place.  How stupid of a plot device is it?  Well, they used in the horrible, awful 1999 movie, Wild Wild West.

I rest my case.

And Then They screw Up the Lame Plot Device

Olivia asks Walter:

“This would be one of the last images she saw?”

Walter responds:

“In theory, yes.”

No, according to Walter’s theory, the neural pathways on the optic nerve are frozen in place by the muscle paralyzer, preserving the absolute last image seen by the victim.  But that’s a problem, because she was looking at her attacker when the paralyzer was administered, so her attacker’s face was the last thing she saw, not the bridge.

Homeland Security or Big Brother?

Olivia:

“I want satellite images of that area for the last 24 hours.”

Does the government really have continuous high resolution satellite imagery being taken of every square foot of every major city in the U.S.?  It’s a good thing it wasn’t a cloudy day.

Safety Is No Accident

Olivia hands her spare Glock pistol to Peter and tells him,

“Safety’s on the right.”

Um, Gock’s do not have a manual safety; the safeties are all passive.  When you pull the trigger, the gun goes bang (if the gun is loaded), just like a typical revolver.

Partially Empty Magazine or Typical Hollywood Shooting Sequence?

After three shots, the slide on Peter’s gun locks back, indicating the gun is out of ammo.  This is fairly typical of shooting sequences in TV and the Movies.  The stunt prop-master typically only loads enough blanks for the number of shots in the scene, and so the last shot in the scene expends the last round in the gun, and the slide locks back because the magazine is empty.  It’s only a mild annoyance, but I wish they would load the magazine with an inert dummy round after the blanks to correct this.

Peter’s First Discharge, No Play On words Intended.

It’s only episode two, and already Peter, a civilian and not even an official FBI consultant yet, has fired Olivia’s weapon in an attempted exercise of leathal force.  The FBI must just hand out guns as party favors, or at least Olivia does.

I’m Not a Doctor, but…

I know from very good authority that you DON’T SHOCK A FLATLINE.

Just Five Minutes

For the sake of science fiction, I will accept the super rapid aging, but why would the existing hair turn gray?  New growth hair might be gray, but the existing hair is not alive and doesn’t turn gray.  Hair on corpses stays the same color, many years after death.  Old wigs made from human hair don’t go gray after many decades of aging.

Does Massive Dynamic Have a Seat On the UN?

Nina states:

“Massive Dynamic is one of the ten largest economic entities in the world.”

I can buy that Massive Dynamic is one of the ten largest corporations in the world, but countries and trading zones count as economic entities, and I think the G8, the G20, and the EU might keep Massive Dynamic out of the top ten.

Fibonacci Foul-up

The first sequence Walter is counting out while trying to fall asleep, 0,1,1,2,3,8,13,21,34,55, is a Fibonacci sequence where each number in the series is the sum of the previous two numbers (after 0 & 1), but he left out the 5 for some reason.  I wonder if that was a Walter error, a John Noble error, or a writers error.

The second sequence Walter counts out is 1,2,33,3,77,2,21,6,110.  Does anybody know what that is supposed to be?

SPOILER ALERT: DON”T READ THIS NEXT SECTION IF YOU DON’T WANT FUTURE EPISODE/ SEASON DETAILS REVEALED 

What happens to the secret Pattern Committee, other than Nina and Broyles?  They’re long gone by seasons 2 and 3.

Why does Nina acts as if she doesn’t personally know Walter when discussing him with the committee?  Is she trying to hide the fact she knows Walter, or had the writers not yet decided that she knew Walter?

As early as episode two, the ground work for Peter’s past and the aleterverse are being established, showing that the show was not being entirely made up as the writers went along.

Posted in Fringe, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 1 Season 1, Pilot

Posted by Karl Withakay on June 9, 2011

They were all Blue Episodes back then.

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Opening Theme Fringe Terms

The Fringe terms in the opening theme were:

Psychokenesis

Teleportation

Nanotechnology

Artificial Intelligence

Precognition

Dark Matter

Cybernetics

Suspended Animation

Artificial Intelligence

Psychokenesis

Dark Matter

Transmogrification

I guess the writers of the pilot ran out of fringe science terms and had to reuse three of them.  Frankly, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, dark matter, cybernetics don’t really qualify as fringe science.  The are legitimate, mainstream fields of research.  Teleportation on a quantum level is not fringe either, but anything on a larger level would qualify as fringe.  Suspended animation would fit nicely in the fringe category as well.  Psychokenesis, precognition, and transmogrification are just plain pseudoscience.

Yes, We Have COLOR TV in 2008!

The sign for the hotel at the beginning of the episode had Color Cable TV as one of the hotel features listed on their sign.  Um, when in the last 30 years did you see a hotel with a black and white TV, especially if they also had cable?

Olivia Dunham, FBI Interagency Liaison

Apparently inter-agency liaison is the position you assign the slow agents to before you transfer them to the Fringe Division.

Standard Level 4 Hazmat Suits?

I think the writers were thinking of Biosafety Level 4 biocontainment precautions, where level 4 is the highest level of precaution.  Hazmat suits come in levels A through D, where level A offers the highest level of protection.  (In Europe, hazmat suits are Types 1 through 6, with Type 1 offering the greatest level of protection.)

Fringe Division, On the Job

That plane would have been classified as a Biosaftey level 4 situation until they could determine what caused the deaths.  An unknown,  exotic , possibly infectious, possibly airborne, agent lethal to humans, for which there is possibly no known vaccine or other treatment was present inside the cabin.  If they couldn’t tow the plane to a hanger which they could then seal up, they would have probably done a better job enclosing the whole plane (or at least all hatches and exit doors) inside a containment tent system.  Also, they would never put people who had no experience with BSL-4 procedure inside that plane.  Someone might carelessly take a glove off and who knows what that could lead to?

Darwin Would be Disappointed

No wonder Olivia’s a liaison.  Olivia and Agent Scott are following up on a lead in a bioterrorism attack case where a plane load of people were killed by some unknown, possibly airborne bioagent, and they discover two mysterious, unlabeled gas cylinders in a dumpster.  What do they do?

A  Immediately call for a hazmat team to secure and investigate the cylinders.

B  Carefully secure the cylinders themselves for later investigation in the lab.

C  Hold the cylinders close to their faces and sniff them.

It’s a wonder Olivia manages to live through season one, let alone make it to season four.  (Sorry for the spoiler)

US Marine Corps Special Investigator

How was Olivia a US Marine Special Investigator?  Marine Corps criminal investigations are not the jurisdiction of the FBI.  Was she in the Marine Corps?  She had a 4 year degree, so if she was in the USMC, she should have been a commissioned officer, but US Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division Agents are non-commissioned or warrant officers.  Major crimes are referred to the NCIS, and it’s possible the sexual assaults she investigated would fall under NCIS’s jurisdiction; was Olivia previously an NCIS agent?

Quote of the Show #1

Peter:

“Sweetheart, we all care about someone who’s dying.”

Your Tax Dollars, Hard at Work

That sure was a nice plane the FBI used to fly Olivia to Iraq to retrieve Peter in luxury; there’s no flying coach on a crowded Airbus for Fringe Division.

You’re So Transparent

As implausible as the transparent Agent Scott may seem, it’s not completely out in la-la land.  Check out this extremely cool frog picture from National Geographic via P.Z. Meyers:

It’s a Moo Point

Yes, any mammal’s DNA is pretty close to a human’s, but there are far closer matches to human DNA, and better animals for research applicable to humans than a cow, such as monkeys, chimps, mice, rats, and the proverbial guinea pig.  I think Walter just wanted fresh milk.  I hope he didn’t drink it raw, but that would qualify as fringe- or pseud-oscience.

Quote of the Show #2

Walter:

“The only thing better than a cow is a human, unless you need milk.  Then you really need a cow.”

Quote of the Show #3

Walter to Olivia:

“Of course, you’d have to have an electromagnetic probe place in the base of your skull whilst emerged without clothing in the old tank, and you’d be heavily drugged.”

Character Interaction and Dialog

From episode one on, Fringe has featured great character interaction and banter involving Walter and Peter.

Peter:

“The man who was just released from the mental institution, he wants to give you a drug overdose and stick a metal rod into your head and put you naked into a rusty tank of water.”

Walter:

“No, I don’t want to.  No, no, I’d rather not.  I’m just saying I can.

Assistant to the Liaison

If the liaison position is as crappy of an assignment as Broyles keeps implying, how crappy is it to be the assistant to the liaison?  I am convinced that Astrid must have backed her car over the FBI director’s dog to have been assigned as Agent Dunham’s assistant.

Cliché Time

This won’t be the last time Fringe features a basement lair accessed via a trap door hidden beneath a carpet.

Unanswered Question

Not to spoil anything for those just watching the show for the first time, but why didn’t Peter and Olivia remember each other?  Edit to add:  Why didn’t Olivia remember Walter?  Will season four actually answer this these questions?

Posted in Fringe, Quotes, Science, Television | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Anyone Interested in Retro-Deconstructions of Fringe Season 1?

Posted by Karl Withakay on May 13, 2011

Now that Fringe has concluded season three, the question arises of what to do with this blog during the off season.  Since I seem to have a hard time motivating myself to do anything more than the rare, occasional non-Fringe post, I am considering borrowing Polite Scott’s DVDs of Fringe season one (which aired before I created this blog) and doing retro-Deconstructions of those episodes on a semi-weekly basis.

So I decided to create a poll to see if anyone would be interested in me going back and doing Deconstruction reviews of the episodes of Fringe from season one.  It probably would have been a better idea to have posted this poll BEFORE the season finale, when I was still getting the heavier, in season traffic, but better late than never.

Please take a few seconds and vote, I’d appreciate the feedback, thanks.

By the way, I’m not sure why anyone would bother taking the time to participate in the poll if they decide to choose the third answer, but I figured it was a needed option, given the nature of the internet.  🙂

Posted in Fringe, Television, This Blog | Leave a Comment »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 22 Season 3, The Day We Died

Posted by Karl Withakay on May 7, 2011

A Gray Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Neither Red Nor Blue

This episode’s credits were in all gray, with a unique set of words during the credits:

Cellular Rejuvenation

Thought Extraction

Cryptozoology

Neural Partitioning

Temporal Plasticity

Brain Porting

Dual Maternity

Chaos Structure

Clonal Transplantation

Water

Biosuspension

Hope

Hotty McHotterson

OK, red-headed Fauxlivia is hotter than regular Olivia, but Astrid with straight hair now takes the crown for me as the hottest woman on the show.  Wow, just wow.

Once And Future Product Placement

Apparently the Sprint Kyocera Echo is such an awesome cell phone so far ahead of its time that they’re still making it 15 years in the future.  Also, it doesn’t look like the launcher for the Android OS will be changing much in the next 15 years either.

Pop a Kappa

Apparently in the next 15 years (perhaps only if we use the machine to destroy the other universe), we discover at least five more types of radiation, asuuming we don’t skip any letters in the Greek alphabet.  Currently, epsilon rays are the last form of radiation named from the Greek alphabet.  There’s currently no such thing as Kappa radiation.

The Eyes Have it.

It looks like in the future it is possible to replace eyes, but it isn’t possible to make the replacement’s color match the other eye, unless Senator Broyles kept the color of the replacement different on purpose as some sort of personal reminder of whatever event caused the need for the replacement eye.

Yin and Yang

As I suspected, the two universes are tied together, and their fates are linked.  Destruction of one leads to the destruction of the other.

It’s in the Can

While we have wine in boxes now, it seems that may be the only way to get wine in the future, but vodka still comes in a bottle, while steak comes in a can.

Radioactive Signature

Strontium 90 is indeed a daughter product of nuclear fission, more from Uranium fission than from Plutonium fission.  It decays via beta decay with a fairly short half life of 28.8 years.  In order to track the “radioactive signature” of a radioactive element, you’d have to consider several aspects.  First would be the type of decay.  Strontium is essentially a pure beta emitter, and so is its daughter product, Yttrium 90.

However, there are numerous pure beta emitters, so we need something else to distinguish Strontium 90 radiation from any other pure beta emitters.  It helps a little that Strontium 90’s decay product is also a pure beta emitter, and Yttrium 90’s decay product is stable, because it means any other types of radiation detected, such as alpha particles or gamma rays, must be the result of some other radioisotope and not Strontium 90 or any of its decay products.  Eliminating readings inconsistent with Strontium 90 would likely mean excluding any readings including alpha or gamma radiation.

But we probably need more than that for a signature.  The half life isn’t quite as useful as you might think.  Unless you know the mass of the sample, the number of decay events can’t be used to estimate the half life because you can’t tell whether you have a small number of particles undergoing frequent decay, a large number of particles undergoing infrequent decay, or something in between.

I would think that this is where Sr-90’s decay product also being a pure beta emitter actually presents a problem.  If the daughter product was an alpha or gamma emitter, you could at least figure out the ratio of beta activity to other activity which would help identify the parent isotope and present a signature to track (assuming there weren’t any other radioisotopes or background radiation creating noise in the data, which wouldn’t be the case).

The energy of the beta particles would be useful as part of a signature, but you’d have to have some idea how much shielding (including air) there was between you and the radio-source to know how attenuated the strength of the radiation was.  The half lives of Sr-90 and Y-90, and the differences in the energy of their beta emissions would be useful, though.  You could measure the change in activity and energy of the decay particles over time.  All this could just maybe provide a trackable radioactive signature for Sr-90.

Some Things Never Change/ Non-Product Placement

So even in the future, some carriers will still have cell coverage issues in semi-remote locations like Reiden Lake.  Walternate must have been using a different carrier or technology to project his hologram to the cabin.  I’m not surprised that the Sprint logo wasn’t featured on a cell phone getting no signal.  Sprint should have paid to have AT&T’s logo on that phone.

Time Standing Still

Cars don’t change much in the next 15 years.

Adults seem to stop aging noticeably (other than the occasional touch of gray hair) after the activation of the machine.  Even Nina Sharp, who is likely around 65 in 2011 and would be about 90 80 in 2026, didn’t look a day older after 15 years of aging.

Misc Notes Partly For the Search Engines

Electrilight weapons

Fringe HQ is in Boston in the future.  (May 20, 2026)

Paleozoic era was 540-250 million years ago.

Theropods were members of the suborder of dinosaurs that included the famous T-Rex.

Olivia has controllable telekinetic powers in the future.

Was the name Moreau a reference to Dr. Moreau?

The title for this episode makes me think of Don McLean’s song, American Pie.  I wonder if that was partly the intention with the title choice.

Does The Retcon Make Any Unanswered Questions Moot (or Moo)?

If Peter never existed now, does that retcon give the writers an out from having to answer why Peter and Olivia had no memories of each other and the experiences they had together as children?

Will Peter be featured in Season 4, and if so, how?

Posted in Fringe, Gray Episode, Product Placement, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 21 Season 3, The Last Sam Weiss

Posted by Karl Withakay on April 29, 2011

A Blue Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Blatant Product Placement

Gee, the backup camera on the cars sure was cool.  If only I had a way of knowing what model car that was so I  could get one…

You know, there’s a distinction between product placement and writing elements into a show just to feature products and their features.  Showing that a person is driving a Ford Focus by the camera pausing on the car’s name plate is a product placement.  Intentionally inserting a scene where a car backs up just so you can show the backup camera of a Ford Focus is artistic compromise.

Today’s Winner of the Darwin Award Is…

What kind of idiot gets out of his car during a freak electrical storm like the one in this episode in order to see what’s going on, even if he thinks the storm is over?

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Lightning does strike cars, and being insulated from the ground by the tires does not make much difference.  Just as lightning is powerful enough to travel through the air to the car, it can also arc from the car to the ground.  What keeps you safe in a car that is struck by lightning is the metal skin of the car conducting the electricity around you.  (Sorry fiberglass bodied Corvette owners.)  If you are in a car and lightning is striking around you, the advice is to pull over, shut the engine down, and keep your hands in you lap and wait for the storm to pass.

Wait, What Did He Just Say?

Sam Weiss (not to be confused with Samwise Gamgee):

“It’s not a doomsday device, but it’s acting like one.”

Uhh, isn’t that exactly what everybody so far has been thinking it is, a doomsday device?  It does present the intriguing possibility that the devices were not designed to be doomsday devices but were intended for some other purpose.  Perhaps they are really anti-doomsday devices indeed to fix problems like the ones caused by Walter, and Walternate is using his device incorrectly.

 Are You Sure You Have a PhD in Physics?

Astrid:

“Walter this can’t possibly be safe.”

Walter:

“Nonsense, I’m fully insulated.”

So were the cars, Walter.  The lightning has enough current to overcome the resistance of the air, I don’t think Walter’s rubber boots and gloves are going keep him safe.  Rubber tires don’t keep cars from being struck by lightning, and Walter has no metal skin to harmlessly conduct the electricity around him, though that didn’t seem to help the people at the beginning of the episode very much.

Top Notch Care

How come no alarms went off when Peter ripped off his monitors?  The display went flat line, and not one alarm went off?  I know the hospital was overwhelmed by the large number of lightning victims, but it sure took a long time to notice the monitors had flat lined and their patient was missing.  Apparently Peter could have actually arrested and died, and nobody would have noticed for quite a while.

Are You REALLY Sure You have a PhD in Physics?

Walter:

“These two magnets create a magnetic field between them.  As a result, these iron filings line up in a pattern consistent with that field.”

Walter is explaining his demonstration wrongly.  In Walter’s demonstration, each magnet had its own magnetic field, and the iron filings lined up with the magnetic field lines of each field.    The filings would be lining up even with only one magnet.  The intersection of those patterns indicates the overlap of the two magnetic fields.  Also, if Walter had re-agitated the table after bringing the two magnets together, he would seen that the magnetic fields combined rather than disappeared, and the pattern would have look something, like this.

Security By Acme Solutions

Why would the alarm system be controlled by breakers in the regular breaker box?  How secure would that be?  I would think they would be on their own, secured bus with a battery backup system so the system could still be active in a power outage.

Secrets Of the Ancients

That paper was remarkably flexible and robust for something that was presumably thousands of years old.

What If You Believe Really Hard?

Olivia:

“But believing doesn’t make it true.”

Please tell that to the Birthers.

Quantum Entypement or Just Telekinetic Typing?

Just curious, how would they be able to tell the difference between Olivia controlling the typewriter in the other universe, causing the typewriter in our universe to work, and her just controlling the typewriter in our universe?

Oh, God!

The quote in the magazine Sam was reading,

“I love to sing.  And I love to drink Scotch.  Most people would rather hear me drink Scotch.”

is from George Burns.

Official Personnel Only, No Exceptions

I know you’re in the loop on everything that’s going on right now, and you might prove invaluable, but I’m sorry, you aren’t an official member of the Fringe team.  You aren’t allowed to come along and try to help save the universe.  There’s liability concerns, after all.

Product Placement Question

Does Fox give the writers a list of things (like a Sprint tablet or Ford backup camera) that they have to figure out a way to work into the episode each week?

Are You Sure You Know What Exponential Means?

Walter:

“Exponential microquakes building towards a massive event.”

If they were building exponentially, they wouldn’t remain micro for very long.

Did they Use Giant Rubber Gloves?

How did they move the device when it was protected by a force field that wouldn’t allow even a pen to touch it?

Unanswered Questions

What did Peter want to show Walternate when he went to Liberty Island?  Was it important or significant to the future resolution of the plot?

Why do Peter and Olivia have no memories of each other as children?

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Product Placement, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 20 Season 3, 6:01 AM EST

Posted by Karl Withakay on April 23, 2011

A Purple (Both Red and Blue) Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Genetic Noise

The need to strip out Fauxlivia’s chromosomes from her child’s genetic material was an important technical point.  If it would have worked to still have her chromosomes in the mix of the genetic sample form her son, then Walternate’s DNA would have worked just as well, since he has 23 chromosomes in common with Peter just like Peter’s son has, though likely not the exact same 23 chromosomes.  Apparently the presence of non-Peter Chromosomes is a bigger problem than having only half of Peter’s chromosomes.

It’s Electric!

The phenomenon whereby charge accumulates in certain solid materials as a result of applied mechanical strain is called piezoelectricity.   The most familiar use of piezoelectricity is in flintless cigarette lighters and gas barbecue igniters.  Quartz is a material that exhibits piezoelectricity.  Peizoelectricity does not, however, create something analogous to a battery that holds a change after the strain is relieved.  Those rocks should not have been holding a charge as they no longer had a force applied to them.  For plot convenience sake, I will have to assume that the effects of the device partially dematerialized the rocks and reassembled them such that the quartz crystals were held in strain in the matrix of the rocks.

It’s Epic!

Nina’s Sprint phone in the hit you over the head obvious product placement was the Sprint  Epic version of the Samsung Galaxy S.  It’s a pretty sweet phone, and basically the top phone out there with a physical keyboard (as of April 2011).  It is a 4G phone with slide out keyboard, front and rear facing cameras, and an LED flash, and it runs the Android OS.

The All American Sport

Ebbets Field was the home to the Brooklyn Dodgers, and apparently still is their home in the alterverse.  Also, the Montreal Expos either never moved to Washington D.C. in the alterverse, or they never changed their name to the Nationals if they did move.

Am I Missing Something Here?

I watched the episode online, and it was extremely inconvenient  to backup and replay a scene.  Fauxlivia has previously traveled to our universe and back.  While she may not have technically understood how it worked, she should remember the basics of how it was done.  I’m not sure why Fauxlivia seemd to have no inkling how inter-universe travel is done, or why her universe’s Brandon Fayett (the Chief Fringe scientist in the alterverse) would bother to pretend trans-universe travel can’t be done.  Perhaps Fauxlivia wanted to know how to bring someone back and not just how to travel between universes, but the she has accompanied someone a return trip across universes herself.

Fauxlivia:

 “Ten months ago, the secretary brough Peter Bishop back from the other side, How?”

Presumably it was similar to the way you traveled between universes, Fauxlivia.

Fauxlivia:

“I read the mission logs.  I know the secretary developed technology to cross between universes and bring back Peter Bishop.”

Uhh, she didn’t just read the logs, she met Peter Bishop when he was here, and she accompanied him back to our universe.

Better In the Dark?

So does Fauxlivia prefer to sit in the cell in the dark, or is she being punished and have no ability to turn the lights on?

Note For Saint Louis Viewers

If you missed this episode last night due to local Fox coverage of the storm that hit Saint Louis and attacked Lambert Airport, this episode will air again on Fox tonight (4-23-11) at 10:35PM .

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Product Placement, Purple Episode, Red Episode, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Post Delayed :(

Posted by Karl Withakay on April 22, 2011

Due to the fact that tonight’s broadcast of Fringe has been entirely preempted locally by coverage of severe weather in the Saint Louis area, my Deconstruction of this week’s episode of Fringe will have to wait until after the episode goes live on Fox’s web site for online viewing tomorrow.  Depending on what time the episode is available, I may not be able to post my Deconstruction until Sunday.

Posted in Fringe, Television, This Blog | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 19 Season 3, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Posted by Karl Withakay on April 15, 2011

A Blue Episode

As always, an episode synopsis will be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent

Yeah. 220… 221, Whatever it Takes -or- Do Not Reset or Power Off Your Olivia

I know the effect of dimming lights and blown breakers added drama, but wouldn’t you make sure you had enough current capacity to properly power your mind transfer device?  You always get a warning not to shut down or reset when saving a game on the Xbox360 or flashing the ROM on your computer or electronic devices.  Who knows what could happen if you lose power when in the middle of a consciousness transfer?

Did You Make Sure To Select the Right Volume?

How do you make sure your soul transfer machine transfers the right soul anyway?  What if Olivia had ended up in the body of the bearded guy on ice?

Does This Rat Seem Like that Other Rat to You?

Who knew rats had souls?  How exactly would you tell that a rat had the soul of another rat inside it?  I guess you would use the magic soul reading EEG for the rats just like you do for people.

First In, First Out?

Why is it that the natural host soul (which is presumably better anchored to the host brain) is the one to be lost rather than the invasive guest soul?

Chi, Why Did it Have to Be Chi?

Bellivia:

“OK, what if we try and activate her Chi”

Walter:

“Acupuncture?”

Bellivia:

“Yes, we try and stimulate her seventh chakra.  Pure consciousness.”

First of all, Chi and Chakras are related but different forms of vitalistic woo.  As for acupuncture and Chi points, studies have shown that the location of needling in acupuncture is irrelevant.  (They have also shown that it doesn’t matter whether you penetrate with needles or just poke with toothpicks.)  Chi points have never been demonstrated to exist, and their origin lies more with astrology than with anatomy.  Chi is a prescientific, concept based on vitalism, devised before the modern understanding of the circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems.

The Emulator is Legal, But are the ROMs Copywrited?

Walter:

“Whole brain emulation.  It’s another one of Belly’s old projects.  It describes how an inorganic host can house organic material.”

I think the writers are getting confused and mixing up concepts here.  If William Bell has an incorporeal soul that is independent of his old brain, as it must be since his body is now dead and his soul has moved into Olivia’s body, then that soul cannot be considered organic.  If the mind is exclusively the result of the organic brain, then there is no way to transfer the mind or soul.  Though it could be possible to copy the mind, the original would be left behind in that case.

More Mental Confusion

Mind, soul, brain, consciousness, the writers seem to randomly interchange these terms so much that it becomes difficult to tell what they’re actually talking about at times.  Are they going into Olivia’s mind to look for her consciousness or going into her brain to find her mind/soul.  The language seems clear that they are going into her mind to find her consciousness, but that means her mind is there and reachable.  Is there a danger that her consciousness will disappear while her mind is still in her body?  Is the danger that her mind will follow her consciousness if it disappears from her body?  Is this all just an elaborate excuse to do an Inception episode?

Astrid Farnsworth, M.D.?

Should Astrid really be supervising the whole LSD trip into Olivia’s mind all by herself?  What if one of them seizes, arrests, or experiences some other form of serious complication?

She’s Got a Lot On Her Mind

That’s a very large, complicated, and involved world that Olivia’s mind was generating.  No wonder her consciousness was suppressed, it was too busy generating a dream consisting of a large portion of the United States with a cast of at least thousands of people in it.

Peter, I Made a Skid!

Normally, that would have a different meaning coming out of Walter’s mouth.  Enough said.

A Mind Scanner Darkly

It seems like they did the animation just for scenes involving Leonard Nimoy as Bell.  Nimoy had retired from acting, but he returned for Fringe and to voice Sentinel Prime in the next Transformers movie.  It’s almost like Nimoy will only do voice acting work now, so they animated his scenes.  The other option presumably would have been to make Bell a large transforming robot from another planet.

Explosive Decompression?

Hydrogen filled rigid airships typically cruised at about 3,000 ft, with the highest altitude achieved by a hydrogen filled rigid passenger airship being 5,500 ft on the Graf Zeppelin’s maiden voyage.  As far as I can find from very limited research, explosive decompression does not even begin to be a concern until sometime around or after 15,000 ft.  That guy should not have been sucked out of the zeppelin like that.

Mostly For the Search Engines

The ECL82 is an actual vacuum tube used in record players with crystal pickups.  I’m not sure why Walter’s digital soul computer would need one, or where he would plug it in.  Perhaps Walter was looking to mellow out Bell’s soul a little bit.

Fear Is The Mind Killer

The resolution seemed a little anticlimactic/ Deus Ex Humana to me.  All it took to resolve the situation was for Olivia to become a Bene Gesserit.

Product Placement

It’s strange.  The SPRINT tablets I see online and in the stores don’t seem to have SPRINT in GAINT LETTERS across the top to let you know they are SPRINT tablets like the one in the show did.  I wonder if it was supposed to be a product placement, kind of like an in-show ad or something?  🙂

Posted in Blue Episode, Fringe, Product Placement, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

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