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beccatoriaSo I was looking for something in Fringe S1 cus I only half paid attention to parts of that and accidentally found two totally different things that nonetheless I feel the urge to inflict on my overwhelmingly non-Fringe-watching flist. :)
1. I was wondering what Olivia's inherent Cortexiphan-related power was gonna be, except now I think that I got it a bit backwards. Looking at the three Cortexikids in the finale, each one of them got destructively "activated" by the ZFT. This I remembered. What I forgot is that it seems the activation is not blind activation of the subject's inherent abilities but rather a process that is designed to induce a specific response. This is best exemplified with the fire starter - the episode actually has at least one and maybe two other Cortexikids subjected to that experiment which makes them spontaneously combust, it's just that Olivia manages to save the last girl in time, ultimately allowing her to be rehabilitated into a pyrokineticist by Massive Dynamic. That suggests that had Olivia or Nick Lane or Cancer Guy been put through the same process the same thing would happen to them. We know less about Cancer Guy but we do know that he was approached while he already had cancer and then his power turned out to be cancer-related and we don't know much about Nick Lane but we know that his projecting abilities were all the more destructive because of his pre-existing mental health conditions. So I think I got it backwards and Cortexiphan allows a range of abilities based on perception as always stated, but also renders the subjects more susceptible to medical experiments designed to provide more outlandish abilities. We have, after all, seen the ZFT "weaponise" ordinary people in a similar vein to the Cortexikids, just with either less success or more fatality on the part of the subject.
2. SPEAKING OF ZFT. I really wish we hadn't just abandoned that whole plotline for a whole season. I do get that season one established "our" side's ZFT - the people on our side secretly preparing for the war of the universes in dodgy, horrible ways, while season two concentrated on "their" side - the shapeshifters sent through: their secret universe warriors. The ones the ZFT hopes the Cortexikids can stop. But there was that whole thing at the end of season one, where they found the ZFT manual and worked out that it was written by William Bell himself, just distributed by either accident or design without the chapter on ethics. Which okay, I could handle; someone else gets hold of his work, twists it or misunderstands it, and he's too busy on the other side trying to keep things calm, trying to help the other side's armies enough not to raise suspicion but not enough to actively help them? Except two things I wish had been clarified and I'm vaguely worried his "noble sacrifice" will take off the "unanswered questions" table:
(a) Season one also strongly implicates William Bell as funding ZFT. Now, writing a manuscript that they got hold of and misunderstood/misused is very different from actively funding an organisation as horrifying as that. One could argue that Bell may not have been entirely aware of the ZFT activities, but even if he'd been on the Other Side for a very long time indeed, we know he's getting messages from Nina. I find it hard to believe he'd be that out of touch with an organisation he's funding/ideologically inspired/believes is necessary/any of the above. Which begs the questions - why is he funding it if they're that eeeeeeeevil? Why doesn't he correct them if they're working from a version of his manuscript without the most important chapter? It doesn't add up.
(b) Okay, fine, so Walter asked Bell to remove parts of his brain, but I'm pretty sure that Walter didn't also ask Bell to store those parts of his brain that knew how to travel between universes in the minds of innocent people thus driving them insane. And it strongly implicates Bell as being the one who gave up that information to Newton, who we know works for Walternate. I suppose he could have been forced to, and that's why he then pulled Olivia over in a desperate attempt to balance the books, but I don't know.
I JUST SUSPECT SHENANIGANS IS ALL. I like the character, but even with his Spock-like sacrifice, I don't trust him or his altruism. There is a larger game afoot, that, given who wrote this show, may never be explained, or might come down to a giant red ball floating over Russia and lots of zombies.
1. I was wondering what Olivia's inherent Cortexiphan-related power was gonna be, except now I think that I got it a bit backwards. Looking at the three Cortexikids in the finale, each one of them got destructively "activated" by the ZFT. This I remembered. What I forgot is that it seems the activation is not blind activation of the subject's inherent abilities but rather a process that is designed to induce a specific response. This is best exemplified with the fire starter - the episode actually has at least one and maybe two other Cortexikids subjected to that experiment which makes them spontaneously combust, it's just that Olivia manages to save the last girl in time, ultimately allowing her to be rehabilitated into a pyrokineticist by Massive Dynamic. That suggests that had Olivia or Nick Lane or Cancer Guy been put through the same process the same thing would happen to them. We know less about Cancer Guy but we do know that he was approached while he already had cancer and then his power turned out to be cancer-related and we don't know much about Nick Lane but we know that his projecting abilities were all the more destructive because of his pre-existing mental health conditions. So I think I got it backwards and Cortexiphan allows a range of abilities based on perception as always stated, but also renders the subjects more susceptible to medical experiments designed to provide more outlandish abilities. We have, after all, seen the ZFT "weaponise" ordinary people in a similar vein to the Cortexikids, just with either less success or more fatality on the part of the subject.
2. SPEAKING OF ZFT. I really wish we hadn't just abandoned that whole plotline for a whole season. I do get that season one established "our" side's ZFT - the people on our side secretly preparing for the war of the universes in dodgy, horrible ways, while season two concentrated on "their" side - the shapeshifters sent through: their secret universe warriors. The ones the ZFT hopes the Cortexikids can stop. But there was that whole thing at the end of season one, where they found the ZFT manual and worked out that it was written by William Bell himself, just distributed by either accident or design without the chapter on ethics. Which okay, I could handle; someone else gets hold of his work, twists it or misunderstands it, and he's too busy on the other side trying to keep things calm, trying to help the other side's armies enough not to raise suspicion but not enough to actively help them? Except two things I wish had been clarified and I'm vaguely worried his "noble sacrifice" will take off the "unanswered questions" table:
(a) Season one also strongly implicates William Bell as funding ZFT. Now, writing a manuscript that they got hold of and misunderstood/misused is very different from actively funding an organisation as horrifying as that. One could argue that Bell may not have been entirely aware of the ZFT activities, but even if he'd been on the Other Side for a very long time indeed, we know he's getting messages from Nina. I find it hard to believe he'd be that out of touch with an organisation he's funding/ideologically inspired/believes is necessary/any of the above. Which begs the questions - why is he funding it if they're that eeeeeeeevil? Why doesn't he correct them if they're working from a version of his manuscript without the most important chapter? It doesn't add up.
(b) Okay, fine, so Walter asked Bell to remove parts of his brain, but I'm pretty sure that Walter didn't also ask Bell to store those parts of his brain that knew how to travel between universes in the minds of innocent people thus driving them insane. And it strongly implicates Bell as being the one who gave up that information to Newton, who we know works for Walternate. I suppose he could have been forced to, and that's why he then pulled Olivia over in a desperate attempt to balance the books, but I don't know.
I JUST SUSPECT SHENANIGANS IS ALL. I like the character, but even with his Spock-like sacrifice, I don't trust him or his altruism. There is a larger game afoot, that, given who wrote this show, may never be explained, or might come down to a giant red ball floating over Russia and lots of zombies.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 01:30 am (UTC)The relevant season one info is that Bell is on the other side in dubious levels of communication with Nina. An ex-ZFT member who due to the context of the episode is about as trustworthy as one of them will get, says Bell is funding ZFT. A ZFT leader, David Robert Jones, is working to get to the other side and attacks Nina, stealing part of her arm, to do so. He implies to Olivia before he dies that he is going to see William Bell and the tone of voice is arguably threatening and certainly indicative of some rivalry. Nina herself says that Bell would never fund a terrorist organisation and that this is all Big, Bad Jones' doing to try and get back at Bell for firing him years ago and not thinking he was a genius.
I. . . barely remember any of this. I am a deficient casual viewer. Anyway I am totes on board with your theory. I don't need Nina to be Evil, I just want to see her be IN CHARGE OF SOME SHIT and Making Stuff Happen on her own. I don't know if the show intends to realize the potential for awesome of Nina and Broyles knowing more than they let on, about each other and about Bell, and just generally. I do kind of hope that we see that she had an agenda apart from Bell's in some way, because the whole messenger/hero worship thing was just annoying.
Ugh there's no way she wasn't in love with Bell, is there?no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 07:47 am (UTC)As to Nina being in love with Bell, I don't know - mostly I think at the moment we can write that off as Walter's juvenile jealousy over Bell and his fame and success and his personal rather petty feelings about Nina. The only place it's really made explicit is in the Noir Musical episode where everyone is a weird inversion of themselves to show what Walter really thinks of them. So I don't know that the Nina in that episode is Nina so much as Walter being upset with Nina.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 11:41 pm (UTC)