Mark Fringe's Second Season with an X

Sometimes a strong first season is followed by a weak second one. But this is certainly not the case with Fringe. Fast-paced yet also almost eloquent in its delivery, Fringe has created some of the most entertaining characters currently on television with plot lines that instill a reason to watch the show the following week.

It is interesting when the first episode of the new season of Fringe pans across a room, the television in the room shows an episode of the X-Files with Mulder and Scully on the screen. Aside from paying tribute to a show that is only behind Star Trek in cult popularity, I think the other intent of this allusion was to foreshadow that the plot development in Fringe will feel strikingly similar to what viewers saw in the X-Files.

In the X-Files we have the "super soldiers" who are part and parcel of a larger conspiracy for world domination. Similarly, in Fringe we have the "hybrid soldiers" who are part of a plan to dominate the Earth. In this case, however, the takeover plan does not include aliens from another planet, but mysterious players from a parallel universe.

The super soldiers from the X-Files are vulnerable in the back of the neck. Stick a weapon that looks like an ice pick in the back of the neck, and you can wave goodbye to your alien foe. The hybrid soldiers appear oblivious to the penetration of bullets unless you can place one in the middle of their forehead. That appears to be the bulls-eye in bringing these guys down.

The biggest similarity between the super and hybrid soldiers is their ability to shape shift. Mind you, it seems to come a lot easier for the super soldiers of the X-Files who did not have to carry around a travel pack with them that included a device that enabled them to shift into the appearance of the person they killed.

X-Files' Diana Scully and Fringe's Olivia Dunham also have interesting parallels. Both appear to have a personal connection to the conspiracies. That connection is the suggestion they themselves were part of experiments which are linked to some of the cases they investigate. Scully's involuntary involvement in experiments is gradually unveiled as the show progresses. Understandably, Dunham's involvement is still unknown, but the suggestion is it may have occurred when she was a child.

Scully and Dunham also have sisters to whom they are extremely close and both of their sisters become innocently entwined in the cases the FBI agents are investigating. The two woman both struggle emotionally with the threat their jobs impose on family members.

Loaded with mystery and conspiracy, the X-Files contains characters who sometimes are a foe and sometimes a friend to the main characters, Diane Scully and Fox Mulder. One such character is the Cigarette Smoking Man. The audience realizes the threat he is to the agents Scully and Mulder, but at other times you can not help but feel affection towards this man when he protects the agents from imminent danger. He is a vicious man who would go to any lengths to protect secrets of the Syndicate. But every now and then he takes some action that almost redeems him of his sordid history. He has connections and influences within top level government departments and agencies, and he seems to have inexhaustible resources at his fingertips. Yet this becomes juxtaposed to the fact that he is an unhealthy man who is slowly dying.

A character in Fringe who has some of the traits of the Cigarette Smoking Man is William Bell of Massive Dynamics. Bell's background and history is certainly not as mysterious as the Cigarette Smoking Man's. Granted, the Cigarette Smoking Man is at least in the same universe, but Bell too is a man with unlimited resources, and as founder of Massive Dynamics his company has close ties to many powerful and influential people in government agencies. Further, Bell's health also seems to be in jeopardy. Is Bell's involvement in the domination of the planet evil or good? As Fringe develops hopefully we will find out. But then again the debate is still on whether or not the Cigarette Smoking Man's involvement in the X-Files was for the betterment of humankind. Certainly he thought he was doing the right thing.

It seems clear to me that some of the development of Fringe has taken its inspiration from the X-Files. I think that is a good thing. While the last few seasons of the X-Files underwent major changes and the second movie was disappointing, the series, as a whole, was excellent. It was campy at times, for sure, but the series knew when it was being campy and took the viewers along for the ride, and we all enjoyed the joke. At the same time, the X-Files series developed some wonderful, almost poetic, episodes that explored some of the bigger more ambitious themes about life.

Fringe has a few similarities to the X-Files, but I believe the similarities stop with the development of conspiracy theories that tend to create archetypes that are standard with any plot development that requires strong elements of suspense and mystery. I hope the show gets a long enough run to develop its plot and characters like the X-Files did. Like the X-Files, Fringe demands a loyal fan-base who have to make some investment into the show's developing theories and characters. It is an investment I think many previous X-Files fan and new fans will make as Fringe brings the theme of conspiracy theories into the 21st century.