Cloak
05-21-2008, 06:59 PM
Televisionary has seen the pilot of Fringe and has posted an article of what to expect from the pilot and upcoming series:
Every once in a while a pilot comes along that is so perfect, such a shining indication of what the final series will be, so perfectly cast and directed, that it's impossible to look away.
That pilot, ladies and gentlemen, is definitely FOX's phenomenal science-tinged drama Fringe.
In a nutshell, Fringe is The X-Files for the new millennium: eerie, gripping, and still haunting even after the final credits have rolled, albeit containing a humor that never existed in that series. In this case, the aliens aren't from outer space: they're the mega-corporations that dot the American landscape, pushing science and technology past their limits and exploiting that for their own gain. It poses several ethical questions: when does the pursuit of scientific discovery go too far? Who is monitoring the rapid advances in technology in today's day and age? And what happens when a scientist--or a group of scientists--decides that the world is their laboratory?
Longtime readers of this site know my longstanding love for the pilot script, from Transformers scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman... who previously worked with executive producer J.J. Abrams on his seminal ABC series Alias and on the feature films Mission Impossible III and Star Trek. My original review of Fringe's pilot script from last October can be found here.
A quick recap: a German plane self lands at Boston's Logan Airport with no signs of life on board and the windows covered in what appears to be blood. An inter-agency team is quickly assembled to investigate the incident; a team which includes Agents Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and her secret lover/colleague John Scott (Boston Legal's Mark Valley) and is overseen by Philip Broyles (Lost's Lance Reddick). Broyles puts Olivia onto a possible lead involving a storage facility; they discover a makeshift lab, which their suspect detonates, unleashing a wave of chemicals onto Agent Scott... and then he escapes into the night. Looking for a way to save John's life, Olivia tracks down the only man capable of saving him: Dr. Walter Bishop (Lord of the Rings' John Noble), a genius scientific researcher who had been committed to a mental hospital years before. But the only way she can get to him is through his estranged son, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), a genius misfit with no love lost for his father.
Still with me? During his years working on a classified project for the US government, Walter Bishop investigated the shady area of fringe science (ha, not just a clever name), studying things like teleportation, telepathy, reanimation: the inexplicable things hovering on the, well, fringes of pure science.
The produced pilot of Fringe, which I ran home to watch last evening, doesn't differ all that much from the written script. Under the master direction of Alex Graves (Journeyman), it's even more taut, suspenseful, humorous, and downright scary as the pilot script but now has the added benefit of a top-notch cast and stunning visuals. Hell, even the on-screen graphics that announce the varied locations of the pilot episode are creative and innovative, existing not so much as words on the screen but words embedded in the actual landscape, through which the camera moves like thick smoke. It's a genius visual and one that gives the action a distinctive and unique flair. And the special effects--particularly those involving Agent Scott's transformation into a transparent, crystalline structure--are absolutely breathtaking.
I wont copy all of the article but you can see the rest here (http://www.televisionaryblog.com/2008/05/pilot-inspektor-foxs-fringe.html).
All I can say is; I CAN'T WAIT!!:D
Every once in a while a pilot comes along that is so perfect, such a shining indication of what the final series will be, so perfectly cast and directed, that it's impossible to look away.
That pilot, ladies and gentlemen, is definitely FOX's phenomenal science-tinged drama Fringe.
In a nutshell, Fringe is The X-Files for the new millennium: eerie, gripping, and still haunting even after the final credits have rolled, albeit containing a humor that never existed in that series. In this case, the aliens aren't from outer space: they're the mega-corporations that dot the American landscape, pushing science and technology past their limits and exploiting that for their own gain. It poses several ethical questions: when does the pursuit of scientific discovery go too far? Who is monitoring the rapid advances in technology in today's day and age? And what happens when a scientist--or a group of scientists--decides that the world is their laboratory?
Longtime readers of this site know my longstanding love for the pilot script, from Transformers scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman... who previously worked with executive producer J.J. Abrams on his seminal ABC series Alias and on the feature films Mission Impossible III and Star Trek. My original review of Fringe's pilot script from last October can be found here.
A quick recap: a German plane self lands at Boston's Logan Airport with no signs of life on board and the windows covered in what appears to be blood. An inter-agency team is quickly assembled to investigate the incident; a team which includes Agents Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and her secret lover/colleague John Scott (Boston Legal's Mark Valley) and is overseen by Philip Broyles (Lost's Lance Reddick). Broyles puts Olivia onto a possible lead involving a storage facility; they discover a makeshift lab, which their suspect detonates, unleashing a wave of chemicals onto Agent Scott... and then he escapes into the night. Looking for a way to save John's life, Olivia tracks down the only man capable of saving him: Dr. Walter Bishop (Lord of the Rings' John Noble), a genius scientific researcher who had been committed to a mental hospital years before. But the only way she can get to him is through his estranged son, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), a genius misfit with no love lost for his father.
Still with me? During his years working on a classified project for the US government, Walter Bishop investigated the shady area of fringe science (ha, not just a clever name), studying things like teleportation, telepathy, reanimation: the inexplicable things hovering on the, well, fringes of pure science.
The produced pilot of Fringe, which I ran home to watch last evening, doesn't differ all that much from the written script. Under the master direction of Alex Graves (Journeyman), it's even more taut, suspenseful, humorous, and downright scary as the pilot script but now has the added benefit of a top-notch cast and stunning visuals. Hell, even the on-screen graphics that announce the varied locations of the pilot episode are creative and innovative, existing not so much as words on the screen but words embedded in the actual landscape, through which the camera moves like thick smoke. It's a genius visual and one that gives the action a distinctive and unique flair. And the special effects--particularly those involving Agent Scott's transformation into a transparent, crystalline structure--are absolutely breathtaking.
I wont copy all of the article but you can see the rest here (http://www.televisionaryblog.com/2008/05/pilot-inspektor-foxs-fringe.html).
All I can say is; I CAN'T WAIT!!:D