io9
This morning, we've got tons of forbidden secrets of Fringe, the X-Files clone from J.J. Abrams. And there are new pics from the Knight Rider TV movie, plus some images of a Speed Racer toy that gives some clues about the film. All that, plus new spoilers for Star Trek and Sarah Connor. It's all part of our plan to spoil you rotten first thing in the morning.
IESB has a super-detailed review of the pilot script for Fringe, J.J. Abrams' attempt to revive the X-Files, except with daddy issues.
Fringe starts out with two FBI agents investigating a case where a guy on an airplane injected himself with a weird chemical that caused his skin — and everybody else's as well — to melt. The plane lands full of horribly deformed corpses. The two FBI agents, Olivia Warren and John Scott, are having a secret affair.
But there's a complication, because another senior FBI agent, Broyles, has a huge grudge against Olivia because she blew the whistle on sexual harrassment and sent Broyles' buddy to prison.
Olivia and her lover John investigate the background of the skin-melty chemical from the airplane. John chases a suspect who is the twin brother of the guy who injected himself with the chemical. And then John winds up getting exposed to another weird chemical, which turns his skin transparent and slowly kills him.
The only person who can save John is a super-scientist named Walter Bishop, who's been in a mental institution for 20 years after his experiment killed some people. But Olivia can't get permission to visit Bishop because of Broyles and his sexual-harrassment grudge. The only other way to get to see Bishop is through a family member, so Olivia tracks down Bishop's estranged son Peter.
Peter is a wacky gambler and rogue who has comedy moments involving urinating himself. Olivia finally convinces him to come back and sign his hated mass-murderer dad out of the mental institution, so dad can do some super-science. It turns out Bishop's old business partner, William Bell, is super rich and runs an evil company called Prometheus. Olivia visits Prometheus and meets a woman with a sinister bionic hand.
Instead of just coming up with a cure for John's skin-disintegrating condition, Bishop figures out a way to send Olivia inside John's comatose mind. This involves putting her in a bikini inside a water tank, then zapping her. Olivia (still wearing a bikini?) travels inside her colleague/lover's memories and manages to see the face of the guy whom John chased after. She figures out this was the twin brother of the guy who injected himself on the plane. And he worked for Prometheus, the evil corporation.
Olivia tracks down the twin-brother, and manages to get a cure for John's skin condition. But then it turns out that John is actually a traitor, who pressured the guy into killing his twin brother with the injected skin-melty stuff. Olivia confronts John, who runs and is killed (or is he?) in a car chase.
Then Broyles, the guy who hates Olivia because of all that sexual-harrassment stuff, shows up and recruits her to join his secret FBI group that investigates the paranormal. And somehow, Walter the crazy mass-murdering scientist gets to join too. And his son Peter, the pants-wetting Han Solo-esque guy also joins. They vow to investigate weird goings on every week, until the show gets canceled. Which sounds like it would take about a month. [IESB]
Other spoilers:
- The Romulan villain Eric Bana plays in Star Trek, Nero, is more of a "cameo" than a full-fledged role, Bana says. [TrekWeb]
- Summer Glau's Terminator on The Sarah Connor Chronicles may not be on Sarah's side after all, Glau says. Or at least, her Terminator may have a different agenda than we've been led to believe. [E! Online]
- And here are some new pics from TV Guide's coverage of the Knight Rider TV movie, airing a week from Sunday. Check out that silly fight scene! [SpoilerTV]
- And here are three new pics of the "Battle Morph Mach 5" toy from Speed Racer, which gives some hints of what Speed's car may have in store for his competitors. It includes "jump-jacks" to pop the car up onto two wheels, and it can spit out saw blades and other weapons. [SuperheroFlix]
Comments
Thats the Mach 6 if you didnt notice. Something tells me a major plot point in this movie is a race thats less a rally like Speeds normal races and more a indie 500 type affair based on the trailer.
Mike Tracer throws an elbow! Look at him go!
Fringe sounds like it's suffering my a pilot episode bloat-quest.
@braak: suffering *from.
How the hell did I do that?
I can only imagine what the Fringe pitch meeting was like:
JJ: It's like the X-files, but the two agents are doing IT!
Execubot One: Goood. It will play well in Peoria
Execubot Two: Why can't you add a cute kid to the cast?
Execubot Three: That's an original idea! We never thought of that before!
As for the Knight Rider. In best GOB voice: "Come ON! Michael, you call that a punch? Buster's tougher than that!"
Cue the repetitiousness... I want new ideas!
Fringe sounds less like the X-Files and more like that cop show with the Leprechaun.
Fringe sounds all over the place.
You think "Fringe" could actually last a month? And wouldn't it go against Abrams' principals to actually resolve a storyline in episodic TV? Which would mean more of the same: endless plots and plot twists and red herrings, all never actually going anywhere.
So the pilot for Fringe has weird skin melty chemicals, invisible chemicals, bionic hands, mind transference and a mad scientist? Are you sure that isn't the first season because that sounds like a dozen or so episodes.
APRIL FOOL'S!!!!
oh, fuck. wait. Fringe is real?
That guy that Mike Tracer is elbowing looks a lot like Rob Schneider in Demolition Man.
@El-Zilcho: Do you think Mike Tracer knows that he's, like, a foot away from actually be able to hit that guy with his elbow?
Peter is a wacky gambler and rogue who has comedy moments involving urinating himself.
You can't kill me fast enough.
Fringe sounds fucking fantastic. Where do I sign?
My Zod, it sounds like the rambling story a 13yr old would tell her parents to explain being out past kerfew.
It's almost like something Little Britain's Vicky Pollard would spew forth: "Ya but no but ya but no but anyway ..."
You had me all the way till This involves putting her in a bikini inside a water tank, then zapping her.
jeeeeezus.
Frozen-Tex said "And wouldn't it go against Abrams' principals to actually resolve a storyline in episodic TV?"
Yeah, the original X-Files was *so* good at that, wasn't it? [/sarcasm]
And the new KITT is a Mustang? Woot!
so, daddy issues. just like lost. i'm sensing a theme with jj.
@firesign: Daddy issues AND evil corporations. JJ is so predictable.
Could you please clarify the point at which the actual Fringe pilot-script ended, and you just started making shit up.
Because I don't have 480 hours to spend on a single pilot episode.
@92BuickLeSabre: Well, I'm assuming the guy who reviewed the script for IESB wasn't just making the whole thing up. That being the case, it's all in there...
JJ is awesome, as are his works. He's unpopular with hardcore fanboys mostly, as far as I can tell, because (a) human beings who leave the house sometimes actually like his stuff and (b) women get to act like human beings.
@ElijahDProphet:
Except that the show with the Leprechaun helping out the paranormal/alien/whatever investigations was actually FUN.
Fringe just sounds like a fanboy on meth scrawling things out in ever smaller handwriting until you can't see it anymore...
@picardia:
Sorry, pal. I love Lost and I loved Cloverfield, but this thing sounds like William Burroughs cut up some random thoughts and then picked them out of a hat.
Wait, that would actually work BETTER.
@Plague: Hell, I'd watch that show. A pedophile heroine addict with a midget leprechaun sidekick fighting giant centipedes and evil chaos magicians in a psychically-constructed Egyptian afterlife?
@picardia: You mean that women have been historically dehumanized because we, the Patriarchy, have refused to let them be in bikinis in giant water tanks?
@The_Real_Quiet_Desperation: X-Files was great at giving us resolutions to their monster of the week episodes. They may have been ambiguous at times but they resolved. The Conspiracy arc could have resolved but then money was waved and Carter decided to add an extra spin and things got wacky. But it had an ending, maybe not as satisfactory as one could have been reached earlier but it did resolve.
Unlike say, anything Abrahms has been in control of, which just sort of meanders around in vaguely mysterious circles for a few seasons until all characters have become a mass of contradictory cliches and plots are so tangled that nothing makes sense without a scorecard. And then it stops.
@ManchuCandidate: Um, I live in Peoria, and I don't know that it will play here any better than anywhere else.
@ElijahDProphet: Good lord, no. Special Unit 2 was a great, funny show that died because it had the bad luck to be on UPN.
@charliejane: Mother of God!
@92BuickLeSabre: Your god cannot help you now. This is J. J. Abrams' world.
@braak: That on Fox or UPN?
Wow!! The Hoff looks alot like Leno in that bottom picture there!
Elbow fight! Elbow fight!!
Fringe may be the first show that takes longer to watch than it does to download a copy via bittorrent
I was saying booo-urns.
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