Fringe Discussion: “Subject 9”

Those crazy Cortexiphans are at it again. This time, Fringe serves up astral projection– and returns Peter.

2 replies on “Fringe Discussion: “Subject 9””

  1. The complexities of the time line differences due to this timeline being non-Peter are getting even more complex (Apparently the world P is not equivalent to the world NP, so P != NP), and yet it makes me wonder if the alternate world is exactly the same, since it lacked Peter from the same point in both timelines.

    So now Peter wasn’t there to find and retrieve Olive back to the program, and apparently the earlier cases that required they track down the other Cortexiphan kids either didn’t happen or they found alternate solutions. Plus it sounds like this Olivia hasn’t shifted between universes at all.

    The biggest question is how the heck did they manage to build the machine and get it in place and operational without Peter…

    Only one quote comes to mind…
    “I hate temporal mechanics!”
    – Miles O’Brien

    • The problem with stories involving alternate timelines is it makes little logical sense that the worlds should have the same people after even a few changes occur, and therefore, over time, the same outcomes. Kill Hitler (because that’s what everyone does) during World War I and we would likely still have World War II, but it would take on a very different character, possibly start at a different time, and so forth. Take away Walter from the Fringiverse and we have to assume every major scientific discovery of the last twenty or thirty years happens differently.

      Charlie Jade sort of made sense because it didn’t insist on the parallel words being much alike, or always having the same people. The novel that (first?) outlined the notion, Williamson’s The Legion of Time, sidesteps huge issues– how do people from alternate futures contact the same person in the past, when the novel establishes that only one future will result from his actions?

      Don’t even get started on how Marty could still exist in the second future created in Back to the Future, or why the same people exist in the radically different Trek “Mirror” universe.

      You just have to go with some things, if the story holds you. Or decide a which point the inconsistencies wreck it for you.

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