NOVA - Official Website . As researchers and writers for the sci- fi television series Fringe, Robert Chiappetta and Glen Whitman hope to continue that tradition. No doubt, their series—now heading into its fourth season—is helping to shape today's pop- culture image of what it means to be a scientist. Here, Chiappetta and Whitman talk about why science fiction often paints a negative picture of science and technology, why it's tricky to work time travel into a storyline, and more. From the very beginning, Bob was calling on us and asking us about scientific concepts and big new ideas that we could infuse into the show. We also then helped to write what's called a show bible, which sort of sells the show to the network.
Robert's father is a professor of science education at the University of Houston, and my dad is a chemical engineer. Robert's background is that he's a lawyer.
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My background is that I'm a professor of economics. Where can we go with this? Then we go and read the very technical articles, or talk with scientists, and then translate that into the storytelling medium of our show. WHITMAN: We're also writers on the show, so we have an interest in narrative and story. We understand the needs of the show.
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It can't be an entire scene of nothing but science gibberish. You need a way of coming up with a human connection. Certainly the idea is that the fringe is something that is at the edge. In a typical episode, you'll see some familiar science concepts mentioned—things that are happening right now—but connected to some stuff that we really don't know how to do yet—perhaps never will know how to do—but we're playing with the idea that it could be possible. CHIAPPETTA: I like the tagline . Real, that's absolutely real.
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And the episode just takes that to a crazy extreme that may or may not be possible. Predicting the future in some ways. WHITMAN: Exactly. But one of the conceits of Fringe that distinguishes it from many of the great sci- fi classics, like Star Trek and Star Wars, is that Fringe is set in the present day. So, to a greater extent, we draw on things that people are familiar with.
People who watch the news are aware of the fact that science is doing some pretty amazing and mind- blowing things right now. Where did that idea come from? WHITMAN: Everybody was sort of aware of the science—if you're paying attention to the science literature, you know the idea of parallel universes. But the idea of using it came from character .
And in that world, Peter Bishop was still alive. So Walter went over to that world and effectively kidnapped that child in the context of trying to save him. Bringing that kid over to our universe set in motion a ripple effect that was going to lead to terrible consequences in the present day. That was the origin. Having a parallel universe allows you to do that in a really fun way, because you get to see an alternate version that could have turned out differently. Anna Torv plays both the heroic special agent Olivia Dunham and her sinister red- headed doppelg. Also, from the very beginning, we had this concept of an observer, a person out of time.
Their code, their instruction, is that they're not really supposed to intervene. So there's an omniscient point of view.. WHITMAN: .. that sees the whole time line. It's very speculative. So that gives us a certain freedom in setting the rules for how it's actually going to work—how you can cross over from one universe to the other, how they can affect each other, and so forth. We definitely have an internal set of rules that we try to abide by.
If we're going to break from those rules, then it's a big deal and it often ends up being a story point that a way has been found to break those rules. We try to limit time travel as much as possible on the show. WHITMAN: Or at least we have. CHIAPPETTA: This next season we'll see how time shifting, time travel, new time lines play into our storytelling. We're working through that right now.
WHITMAN: If you've ever tried to write a story in the world of time travel, you know it's easy to tie yourself into knots. You have to commit yourself: Okay, what kind of time- travel physics am I working with? Do we allow feedback loops?
If you have feedback loops, does that imply a kind of fate- driven universe where what happened in the future causes what happens in the past, which causes what happens in the future, and there's no escaping it? The original Terminator movie is the classic example of this. For instance, the original Back to the Future movie was built on that concept. But it's very easy to get confused and to drift from talking in terms of one set of rules into a different set of rules. On Fringe, we're definitely trying to come up with a set of rules that we feel are sufficiently consistent and yet don't prevent us from telling stories we want to tell. Fringe's writers concocted ways to allow characters to travel between universes.
Olivia Dunham can manage such trips because she was treated with the fictitious drug Cortexiphan. What's best for telling a story about human beings who are engaging in this crazy adventure and trying to learn something about themselves, protect each other, and stop big cataclysmic events. On the other hand, if you're constantly creating rules and then breaking them, the audience will feel like you're cheating. Any time that you break a rule that you've established yourself, you really have to justify it and earn it. We look to science for inspiration, so a lot of us will spend time just reading periodicals, whether it's New Scientist magazine or Science News or Wired or whatever, and then use that as an inspiration for a wild idea that provides a jumping point for the plot.
That's where Robert and I often come in—we get tasked with trying to come up with the best possible explanation. CHIAPPETTA: The two things that we usually need in every episode, outside of just the big arc, are, first, What are the bad guys doing? Are they doing some experiments or using some piece of new scientific technology to achieve some evil end?
So, we go looking for how science can do bad things. Then the flip side of that is, how does our mad scientist in his laboratory fight back or solve these problems? It's how you choose to use it that puts a moral spin on whether it's good or bad. WHITMAN: Right. If you look at a lot of science fiction, sometimes you find that the perspective on science and technology ends up being inadvertently pessimistic or negative. I say inadvertently because I don't think the people who write science fiction are often anti- science. But if you're going to tell a good story—with conflict and danger—a natural place to go is where the science is being used for evil ends.
We show the dark side and the light side. I think, ultimately, if you look at the show as a whole, it's a story about hope. I think you'll come to see that in the upcoming season. CHIAPPETTA: Also, everyone who's a recurring character is a really, really smart person. What we're showing is that smart people asking really smart questions and coming up with complex answers is not something to be afraid of.
It's something to be embraced. WHITMAN: Yeah, something that I love about the show—and you can probably tell that we love our show—. That's a good thing. WHITMAN: Yeah. One of the things that I really love about it is, I just can't think of many other things that I've watched on TV or film where you have a scientist as your hero. The one other example that comes to mind is Doc Brown in the Back to the Future movies.
I just love that we have this really central character who's a scientist, and who's not just a cartoon. I think he is the character who, in many ways, is the center of the show in terms of being the most sympathetic, and the character that you most feel sorry for, and the character that you most want to see redeemed. One, they're just happy that we start at a place that's real. You can go to Wikipedia or open up a textbook and go, . It's dynamic. It's people asking big questions and wanting to go on that adventure.
Science is a form of adventure. It's a form of discovery. I think they love that.
WHITMAN: Something that we've heard a lot from Robert's father, and also from science advisors that we've talked to, is that the current generation of working scientists, many of them were inspired by science fiction, shows like Star Trek. It was seeing those possibilities that made them want to become scientists themselves. It's not that everything that you see on Fringe is going to be scientifically accurate—far from it. But what you are seeing is the excitement and wonder associated with science.
You see scientists as real people and potentially heroes. And that might be something that inspires a new generation of scientists. Interview of Robert Chiappetta and Glen Whitman conducted on June 1. Susan K. Lewis, senior editor of NOVA Online.
Shows like X- Files & Fringe : scifi. Missing them a lot.
Was wondering if you guys here had any recommendations.