fringe: i’m making “pete’s world” happen

J.J. Abrams’s series have long prevailed committing out-and-out thievery against its predecessors.  Alias‘s whole “the bad guys stole my eggs so they could make a crazy baby” thing was straight out of The X-Files, as were plenty of other plot points in that series.

Fringe, however, is really taking the cake these days.

Because while the parallel universe thing is a well-loved concept in a variety of media, the particulars of Fringe‘s dimension-jumping physics are directly out of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Doctor Who first introduced a parallel reality in series two of the current incarnation, and it would become a major staple in the show’s canon for the rest of the Tenth Doctor’s journey.  In “Rise of the Cybermen,” The Doctor, Rose, and Rose’s boyfriend Mickey travel to a parallel world, slightly ahead of ours technologically and about to be taken down by Cybermen.  In the parallel world, Rose’s father, Pete Tyler, is still alive and incredibly wealthy, but her parents’ version of Rose is a puppy.  Though Rose and The Doctor only stay in the parallel world long enough to defeat the Cybermen (as it is very dangerous to travel between dimensions and could result in the complete collapse of time and reality), they re-encounter the parallel world in the series two finale, “Doomsday,” where Rose gets stuck in the parallel world, known by The Doctor as “Pete’s World.”

Okay, so in order to travel to a parallel world, you have to cross the “void,” the dark space between realities.  It’s a dangerous place.  When you go through the void, you get covered with “void stuff,” which makes you shimmer a little bit when viewed through 3D glasses.  Here’s The Doctor explaining:

Flashforward three years and Fringe is explaining the laws of their parallel-reality travel.  As children, certain people were subjected to a test of the drug Cortexiphan, which allows them to differentiate between things from our world and things from the parallel world.  This applies not just to people, but to anything that came from “over there.”  Conveniently, Agent Dunham was one of those children–in fact, the only one who could ever really differentiate.  It’s like she has the 3D glasses built into her brain.  And what happens when she sees something from the other world?  It glimmers.  Here’s their explanation:

Now, this I’ll write off as coincidence or healthy inspiration.  However, the (pardon the pun) parallels got way less subtle last night.

See, Doctor Who‘s parallel world, as I mentioned before, is slightly ahead of ours technologically.  They wear earpods which download information straight into their brains and they fly around in zeppelins.  Noticing the zeppelins is the first defining characteristic of the parallel world. Here’s what it looks like:

Crazy, right? Zeppelins! There’s a word you don’t hear every day.

Cut to last night’s Fringe.  Know what’s interesting about their parallel world?  They’re a little more technologically advanced than us.  And, hey, did you know what the observation deck of the Empire State Building was originally designed for?

That’s right. ZEPPELINS.  Walter looks through a portal to the other world and, to prove it’s parallel to the military guys observing, he shows them a zeppelin.  I’m sorry, but that is just TOO random to be a coincidence.  When’s the last time you had a conversation about zeppelins?  When’s the last time you heard a TV show mention zeppelins?  At least for me, before last night, it was, well, the last time I watched “Rise of the Cybermen.”

ZEPPELINS!  Come on.

Now, the final thing, which I’m happy to write off as a funny coincidence, is that the name for Doctor Who‘s parallel world is “Pete’s World” (here at :54, a continuation of the “void stuff” scene):

So, since we now know the details of where one Peter Bishop came from, can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE call Fringe‘s parallel universe “Pete’s World”?  It’s really only fair.

Meanwhile, having learned more valuable lessons from Doctor Who–Rose falls through the void and ends up trapped in Pete’s World–some of us (like Hannah) are beginning to worry that this season finale of Fringe will find either Peter or Olivia somehow trapped in Pete’s World.  It’s an interesting theory, but don’t worry.  Fox is developing an American version of Torchwood, and those guys can help build a dimension cannon.