On one level, the television drama Fringe is an intricately crafted science fiction adventure about two worlds – our own and an alternative reality – that find themselves at war with each other but discover that the only way to survive is by working in harmony.
It is also the story of main characters Olivia Dunham, Walter Bishop, and Peter Bishop as they come to terms with their past while finding both redemption and the human bonds necessary to make their way through life. Thus within the framework of Fringe, the past is just as important as the present, and it is the prologue of Walter Bishop that serves as the catalyst for the main narrative.
During the 1970s, Bishop was a brilliant scientist who conducted cutting-edge experiments for the government at his Harvard University laboratory. Walter Bishop had an equally brilliant partner in William Bell, and the two conducted research in the field of fringe science that often defied the laws of physics.
In the series of video introductions to Fringe that premiered online shortly before the launch of the show’s fourth season, actor John Noble – who portrays Walter Bishop – comments, “Bishop and Bell were once the Lennon and McCartney of science, lab partners intent on pushing the boundaries and blurring the perceptions of reality.”
Other comparisons could likewise be made, including with Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Just as many of the scientific breakthroughs came at the hands of Walter Bishop, for instance, it was Wozniak who developed the initial personal computer that established the company in the 1970s. It was William Bell and Steve Jobs, however, who ultimately had the charisma and internal drive to transform both the fictional Massive Dynamic of Fringe and Apple Inc. of the real-world into major corporations.
Given the nature of their research – as well as the use of Harvard University as the location for their experiments – a more fitting similarity for Walter Bishop and William Bell can be drawn from the quartet of Timothy Leary, Huston Smith, Richard Alpert, and Andrew Weil. These four individuals found themselves at Harvard University during the early 1960s, and in his 2011 book The Harvard Psychedelic Club, author Don Lattin notes, “They changed the way we view the world, heal ourselves, and practice religion. They changed the way we see the very nature of reality.”
Timothy Leary was arguably the leading proponent of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs during the time period and was once dubbed the “most dangerous man in America.” Richard Alpert, meanwhile, was initially both a colleague and disciple of Leary who eventually embarked on a personal journey to India, were he returned as the spiritual teacher Ram Dass.
Huston Smith was a theologian who saw similarities between the world’s religions and advocated a deeper understanding and appreciation of conflicting belief systems as a result, while Andrew Weil became the predominant advocate for integrative medicine, which combines alternative treatments with that of conventional methods.
To varying degrees, all four of them found inspiration for their work within the psychedelic drugs of the 1960s. As explained during the first season of Fringe, the same holds true for Walter Bishop and William Bell.
“When Belly and I were younger men, we regularly ingested large quantities of LSD,” Bishop explains. “We became convinced what we saw on the drug was real. We believed that we were catching glimpses of another reality, another world just like ours but slightly different. Populated by slightly different versions of ourselves. We all experience it momentarily as deja vu and Belly and I could prolong it with hallucinogenics but the question of course was, how to get there without LSD.”
Timothy Leary once made a similar observation. “At its core, you have to understand that this is not an intellectual exercise,” he said of his own experiments. “It is experiential. It shows us that the human brain possesses infinite potentialities. It can operate in space-time dimensions that we never dreamed even existed. I feel like I’ve awakened from a long ontological sleep.”
Although similarities between Timothy Leary and Walter Bishop abound – one could argue that Walter Bishop was likewise “the most dangerous man in America” because of the repercussions of his own actions and experiments – it is William Bell who serves a better representation of Leary within Fringe.
According to Don Lattin in The Harvard Psychedelic Club, Timothy Leary “was different things to different people. He was reviled. He was revered. He was a prophet. He was a phony. He was a brilliant, innovative thinker. He was a fool. He captured the irreverent, rebellious spirit of the Sixties. He was a fame-seeking, manipulative con artist.”
The competing viewpoints that others had of Timothy Leary are shared by Walter Bishop in regards to his own relationship with William Bell. In the season two flashback episode of Fringe entitled “Peter,” Walter Bishop remarks to a colleague, “You don’t understand him. Like everyone else, you’re blinded by the charming man, of the air of intelligence and the whole damn show. All William Bell ever cared about was finding a way to increase the power and the wealth and the legend of William Bell.”
But just as Paul McCartney and Steve Wozniak needed their more flamboyant and theatrical partners to achieve their greatest successes, so too when it comes to Walter Bishop and William Bell. “I need you, William, I don’t know what to do,” Bishop tells Bell when they are briefly reunited in the season three installment appropriately named “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.”
“The men of the Harvard Psychedelic Club, each in his own way, changed the way Americans think, practice medicine, and view religion,” Don Lattin reflects in his book. “That is, they changed nothing less than the way we look at mind, body, and spirit.”
Similarly, John Lennon and Paul McCartney showed the potential of popular music as a means of expression, while Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak transformed the way technology can impact the lives of every day Americans. Within the fictional world of Fringe, Walter Bishop and William Bell achieved the same results in science.
The legacy of Timothy Leary, Huston Smith, Richard Alpert, and Andrew Weil – along with John Lennon and Paul McCartney and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – is also closely tied with the basic ideals of the 1960s. Despite the turmoil and violence of the decade, there was an underlying current of universal harmony, peaceful resolution of conflict, and the importance of human interaction and meaningful relationships in one’s life. The same holds true for Fringe and its own equally tumultuous, yet ultimately hopeful, intersecting narratives.
“Perhaps the historical importance of Leary, Alpert, Weil, and Smith is not so much any particular vision, but the very process of envisioning,” Lattin concludes. “For a moment in time, we had the experience of expanding our minds, and one of the side effects of that condition is envisioning an alternative way to live.”
It is a fitting epitaph for not only the four members of the Harvard Psychedelic Club but the groundbreaking partnerships of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and yes, even Walter Bishop and William Bell.
Anthony Letizia