messier object

Look! Way in the back, behind John Noble's wig! There it is!

So, Fringe was actually good for once this week so I’ll cover that later but for now! Look! It’s the Post-War New World Order Map (even bigger for your desktop wallpaper needs here)!  I’m not sure why it pops up so often (it was in that Jonny Quest documentary, too) but my guess would be either 1) it looks official and secret, since it’s a bit like real life but not really 2) it’s free 3) there’s high-quality scans online and set dressers need some junk to fill space.

Still, weird that they’re using an alternate-reality map to document the alternate reality that’s supposed to be our reality except everything was invented by Leonard Nimoy as a surrogate for the messy process of the creation of new technology (just like Edison in For Want of a Nail) and also you can travel through dimensions and people turn into scorpions occasionally.  (In a show which, itself, is pretty obsessed with counterfactuality – Walter and Peter, the World Trade Center reveal, “President Kennedy,” some of the Olivia/dead agent boyfriend stuff S1 was getting into near the midpoint)  That is, a reality to which the alternate-reality map is, presumably, an alternate.  Sheesh.

Also, let’s take time to note Fringe’s new 1985 intro look – while the alternate intro has a long and atrocious history of denoting parallel universes in SF teevee over the past decade (‘sup, mirror universe episodes of Enterprise*) this is actually pretty decent at capturing/pointing out the somewhat goofy nature of the Fringe opening credits, along with its more obvious homages to the credits from The X-Files.  Plus it sorta looks like a cross between Look Around You and the Dharma initiation films from Lost, which is always nice.

*of course, this implies I thought the legitimate intros to Enterprise were good, which, well, who the heck would ever say that in the history of the world?