Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “Momentum Deferred,” originally broadcast 10/8/09.

Why is it perfectly fine for a series like ‘Fringe’ to so brazenly straddle the line between episodic and serialized drama? Because of episodes like this. Even though viewers don’t seem to have remembered that its timeslot has changed this season (it’s now on Thursdays, folks: drop on by!), it’s still every bit as excellent as it was last season, when it emerged as a true successor to J.J. Abrams’ work on ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost.’ If you were simply waiting for that Leonard Nimoy episode, “Momentum Deferred” was it.

Now, either the title was changed or Fox itself was getting a little antsy about it, because I had it as “This Is the Night Mail” up until recently, and then it became “Momentum Deferred,” which at the very least is certainly more descriptive of the episode (another sign that things might have been played around with, or perhaps just me, is that the preview showed last week distinctly featured the Observer, who wasn’t around quite so obviously after all, but who is just as welcome as William Bell for the truest fan; however, given the role of Charlie Francis, it’s somewhat impossible for anything but a renaming to have occurred, unless succeeding episodes have resulting creative editing going on). Either way, I doubt those watching, however many there were, ended up being terribly disappointed. Astrid chops up a worm and then sticks it in a blender, forgets to add in a strawberry, Olivia drinks it, and then she’s finally able to remember her time in the alternate reality. That’s the short of it (and allows me to mention Astrid quite prominently, from a sequence where she also quite impishly answers the phone in response to the latest weird thing Walter Bishop has had her do).

From the start, of course, viewers have known that the series would quite deliberately straddle that line, and it’s been a steady case of waiting to see just how things develop. Last season much of the arc built around David Robert Jones, but once Olivia started realizing her unique role, and her past with Walter and William Bell, the momentum started to mount of its own accord. When the new season began with just as deliberate a decision to delay that momentum (hence the title of the episode), keen viewers had to know that there was going to be a pretty good moment when it started back up again, and so we reach the finest hour of year two so far. The shape-shifting villainy of the season premiere becomes relevant again in a big way when one of the devices used to affect the ability is retrieved from a crime scene where one of the victims has bled mercury. The stolen property happens to be cryonically-preserved heads, too. Hey, it’s ‘Fringe,’ folks.

Anyway, it’s quickly determined that the mercury-bleeding victim is a shape-shifter, which leads to a trip to Massive Dynamic, where it’s hoped that Nina Sharp’s boys can study the damaged device from “A New Day in the Old Town” with the intact model, once Peter Bishop has determined that they carry not just a load of useful information, but patterns of the last persons to have been assumed. I promise this all makes perfectly clear sense in the episode, even if it becomes a little complicated to write back in a review. Anyway, what this basically means is that Agent Francis, or the shape-shifter who has assumed his identity, will finally be found out, and just in time, too, because staying in one body turns out to not be a great thing, even if those he reports to don’t seem to care. Without his device, it’s success and death, or just death in his mission regarding Olivia Dunham. He ends up with the latter, even though a counterpart succeeds in retrieving the head the bad guys need.

We learn the importance of that mission during Olivia’s revived memories of her time on the other side, in which we finally see the rest of her experience with William Bell (Nimoy), one-time associate of Walter Bishop, ally of Nina Sharp and Massive Dynamic, and the one voice capable of giving viewers the answers, at least at this point, that they’re terribly eager for. Bell explains that, among other things, the bad guys are looking to retrieve their leader. It’s entirely possible, even though these specific details aren’t among those that he goes over, that the elaborate lengths needed to do so are because very few people are capable of, or have the access to technology that will facilitate an easy means to, relatively harmless travel between realities. Turns out, Bell and Walter’s experiments on children, including the young Olivia, were meant to discover just such a person, to identify a gatekeeper who would become pivotal in an impending conflict, a Last Great Storm. The entire sequence would have been plenty to satiate fans, revisiting Bell, and no doubt viewers who were keen on seeing Nimoy again after his charming reprisal of Spock over the summer, creating an opportunity to debate which performance may be considered more satisfying. They’re actually quite similar, even if Bell becomes more important, with a more active, more continually intriguing (dare I say fascinating?) role.

Those interested in the experiments of the past have another look at the woman able to identify individuals from the alternate reality. Personally, I think drugs are a shortcut, and maybe that’s exactly what they are for Rebecca, too, but time is short, so Walter recreates them for her to help in the team’s investigations (she notices what makes Peter not like the others, but is discreet enough to let everyone carry on like they don’t know at least one more detail from last season). The fun part about this particular element of the episode is that Rebecca is the rare participant from those days who remains perfectly happy with her experiences. Walter still feels apologetic (another nod to past details, perhaps of the dead assistant who was so pivotal to his psychological state last season), but Rebecca won’t have any of it. She’s glad to see him again, and that’s perhaps all the more rare.

What else to mention, what else to emphasize? Suffice to say, “Momentum Deferred” was an episode not to be missed.