FRINGE gets 4th Season

[Jax]

13 episode season 5 will get to 101 episodes, good for weekend reruns.

100 actually 20 + 23 + 22 + 22 + 13 and thats a good number to end on IMO.

The full pickup makes me think that 4 will most likely be it bar some amazing ability for Fringe to stay at 1.7-1.9 throughout the entire season. 87 episodes and 4 seasons is enough for decent sydnication packages but leaves the option of a short 5th season order to break 100 episodes should FRINGE really perk up.

The real beauty is the writers who by winter will probably know there chances of a 5th season pickup, so they can plan a proper ending for us all .

 

[bigdaddy]

The writer's are like "we have stories for several. More seasons", o dear...

 

[startrekwatcher]

Yes the writers keep saying they have 7 or 8 years worth of stories to tell but in this day and age rarely does a series get that long of a run--so if they really do they need to quit dragging stuff out and cut out all the filler that would easily allow them to tell the whole myth story they think they have before the show is canned and in my opinion would also make for a much more consistently enjoyable series since I'm tired of forgettable fringe plots of the week and myth elements set aside for weeks at a time.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If Fringe does get a proper conclusion, what the odds that:

• Anna Torv is pregnant during the final season
• A new female character takes over kicking ass
• Both Walter and Walternate die in the finale

 

[Deckerd]

Started watching this again. I got season one about a year ago and didn't really pay much attention. Now watching it again because I ordered season 2 on a whim. It's very strange compared to just about any other TV show. It couldn't be called sci fi since it's all based on magic as far as I can see. Not that I don't enjoy magic but let's not confuse the genres. Perhaps it gets less magical in later seasons?

 

[bigdaddy]

Magic?

Isn't that what religious people called science they didn't understand hundreds of years ago (and continuing to today)?

 

[Deckerd]

Magic indeed. In the second episode a man was going round taking the pituitaries out of young women (why they had to be young women and still conscious was not explained). When he was finally caught he ran away and aged 100 years or something in 5 minutes. He went from having brown hair to long white hair in that time too. Laugh? We nearly shat.

 

[startrekwatcher]

The science is horrendous and I think of it as pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo--it is tolerable early on but it gets worse as the series proceeds and hurts the show.

 

[Deckerd]

If you think of it as magic, it works perfectly.

 

[Starbreaker]

Science FICTION.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The science in Fringe isn't nearly quite as mad or bad as the fringe-science ideas that were floating around in the 70's. Like Lost, you pretty much have to go with the flow, although in the case of Lost, the introduction of an explicitly religious mcguffin ruined the whole thing for me.

 

[label]

The science in Fringe isn't nearly quite as mad or bad as the fringe-science ideas that were floating around in the 70's. Like Lost, you pretty much have to go with the flow

Yeah........I don't see a lot of difference between the science in Fringe and Lost in terms of believability and in neither case was my ability to enjoy the show affected.......I mean, I do realize it's a Science Fiction show that like Star Trek, Bab5 and every other Sci-Fi show, it takes many liberties, but I bet you at least some of the science isn't nearly as far out as you might think.

although in the case of Lost, the introduction of an explicitly religious mcguffin ruined the whole thing for me.

Not sure what you're referring to...........the fact that's there's some sort of existence after death........the island itself and it's function.......something else?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

although in the case of Lost, the introduction of an explicitly religious mcguffin ruined the whole thing for me.

Not sure what you're referring to...........the fact that's there's some sort of existence after death........the island itself and it's function.......something else?

Mainly the revelation that the parallel world in the final season was some sort of Unitarian waiting room or Limbo state in a progression to a higher "plane" (hopefully, not an Oceanic one). The fact that not everything was given an explanation, even though the show's creators said otherwise, wasn't so much of a big deal as you hand wave it away as a mash-up of runaway AI/nanotech/strangelet matter from a crashed alien spaceship. Probably wise not to reveal too much there.

 

[Deckerd]

Science FICTION.

FANTASY

 

[Christopher]

I really hate it when people use the argument "It's science fiction, therefore it's not supposed to have real science." That's a completely nonsensical, wrong, and ignorant argument. "Science fiction" does not mean "Stories where all the science is made-up nonsense." It means fiction that is predicated on speculative advances in science or technology. Yes, there is science fiction in which the speculative science is fanciful, but there is also an extensive and successful category of science fiction in which the science is as solid and rigorous as the author can make it. "Hard" science fiction has been around since the time of Jules Verne, and authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Gregory Benford, Robert L. Forward, Charles Sheffield, and the like have built their careers upon it quite successfully. Many SF writers, including most of those I just mentioned, are working scientists and their fiction reflects their actual research. Often, hard SF inspires actual scientific research and discoveries. There's a long-standing symbiosis between science and science fiction, as they mutually inspire one another. There is plenty of real, solid science in the science fiction genre, even if it's very rarely represented on film or television. The characters and the events are fictional, and yes, a lot of the science is conjectural, but often it's very solidly rooted in known fact and theory.

So please, don't stress the word "fiction" in science fiction as if that somehow "proves" that it's all supposed to be gibberish. Don't paint the entire genre with that single broad brush. There have always been many science fiction writers -- including myself -- who care about getting the science right. It's just that very, very few of them work in TV or film. Something like Lost or Fringe represents, well, the more fanciful fringe of the genre, often closer to fantasy than SF. They are not exemplars of what science fiction is or what the label means.

 

[Starbreaker]

I'm wrong, nonsensical, and ignorant? Thanks. You really don't realize how smug and superior you act, do you? The last time I checked, parallel universes, amber that fills cracks between them, and a giant destructive machine buried all over the Earth was fiction.

 

[bigdaddy]

I agree with Starbreaker, shocking I know, it's science fiction. There is some science in some of the episodes. Where do you draw the line between "magic" and just being fiction? You can download thoughts from one person to computers, scientists for 15 years have been trying to get thoughts and images out of dead victims so you can see who killed the person. It's only fantasy because we don't know what's possible. Sure soul tea and just going in salt water to change universes is insane, but it's a TV show.

 

[Pingfah]

I really like this show, although I do wonder if the ratings have suffered from the tendency to devote entire episodes to alternate versions of characters, often omitting some of the leads entirely.

I think people miss the chemistry between those characters when they do alt episodes or extended alt sequences, and just the plot alone is not enough to keep some people interested, since the alternate versions of the characters are not as well fleshed out or familiar.

 

[Christopher]

I'm wrong, nonsensical, and ignorant? Thanks. You really don't realize how smug and superior you act, do you? The last time I checked, parallel universes, amber that fills cracks between them, and a giant destructive machine buried all over the Earth was fiction.

But that doesn't mean that the very name "science fiction" indicates that the entire genre is equally nonsensical. Try to look at it from my perspective. I write hard science fiction for a living. It's my career. I take great care to research the science in my work and keep it as credible and believable as I can, and I take pride in that. So when people like you come along and treat the very term "science fiction" as if it intrinsically, universally means stories about nonsensical, gibberish science, it's dismissive and insulting to me as a professional and to countless other skilled professionals in the hard-SF field. You are the one who is being smug, superior, condescending, and insulting to an entire genre of literature, and as a practitioner of that genre, I am defending my profession against your smug attacks.

I'm not disputing the fact that Fringe's science is a load of unadulterated bullshit. What I'm saying is that when you phrase your comment as "It's science fiction, therefore it's bullshit," you're unknowingly dismissing an entire genre that doesn't deserve it. Criticizing the show is one thing, but the terms you use to do so are hurtful to an entire profession.

 

[bigdaddy]

The ratings didn't drop when they had AU episodes, the ratings dropped once Fox fucked the show nad stuck it on Thursdays instead of leaving it after House.