3.11 Reciprocity I’ve decided not to spoil it, which means I can’t really say what it is that’s flummoxed me so completely, but it’s reasonably safe to divulge that there is a game changing event that happens in here that could turn the Fringe universe(s) entirely upside down. Massive Dynamic has constructed the machine that Peter was drawn at the centre of, and when he approaches, all manner of weird things start to happen. That provides one thread of the story, while the other is spawned from the discovery of a shape-shifter body. At a simple level, this plot is a simple 10 Little Indians rehash, where someone is going around killing off shape-shifters that are embedded in Massive Dynamic, but who is it? But what I really enjoy in Fringe is the character interactions, and Reciprocity doesn’t disappoint. There’s a wonderfully obtuse subplot about Walter trying to regrow part of his brain using a retrovirus developed by William Bell. Without labels for the lab samples, Walter tries pot luck and ends up with DNA from a chimp in his system. While he doesn’t climb trees, he becomes very partial to bananas, and there are some wonderful exchanges with Astrid on the subject. Astrid Farnsworth is probably the least developed Fringe persona, so it was good to see she got plenty of screen time this week. The question posed by the events is this story is: now that they’ve built the doomsday machine, how long will it be before Peter can’t resist the temptation to get in it? He looked eager to have a go when he first saw it, irrespective of the potential mayhem it might unleash. It’s a certainty he will end up in it, probably in the season finale. But will it kill him or the entire other dimension? On an entirely different subject, it was good to see that Fringe initially did better on Friday in last week’s figures than it had in its previous slot. I’m interested to see if it can maintain the momentum with this story or head the way that Fox intends it to go. If it doesn’t, then some Fox exec is going to be sitting with a Persian cat on his lap asking, “Mr. Fringe, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you…” There’s also been tweets from the supposedly retired Leonard Nimoy suggesting he might be returning to the show, presumably to play the alternate William Bell? No, Fox. Fringe isn’t dead just yet. It might yet be a very lively corpse, from all accounts. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.
