Fringe Theories

 
Photo courtesy: http://www.seriemaniacos.com.br/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/walter-bishop-fringe.jpg

Today, while watching one of my new favorite shows, Fringe, I was bothered by the word usage of one of my all-time favorite conflicted characters Dr. Walter Bishop. While speaking on the mysterious virus he was studying and elaborating what he called a 'theory' on its behavior and ability to exert its will on its host, he threw out the phrase that it was "just a theory". This bothered me, because this is the line used by those wishing to dismiss Evolution. What Walter had was "just" a hypothesis, which in his dialogue he correctly indicated needed testing to be either proven or disproved. Later dialogue repeated this error in usage, and made me question the writers of this show. I realized they did not understand, like most people in our society, that a large number of tested, and to present confirmed, hypotheses collaborate into a cohesive idea stated as theory.

I also realized the futility of my taking issue with this show's writers when in the next episode they had a character state that some micro-quakes that had occurred were "probably just some by product of global warming."  I yelled, "Climate patterns hold no bearing on plate tectonics," at the character's stupidity, just like those people at the theater watching a horror film shouting "B----, don't go in there!" at the next victim to the gratuitous slaughter.

I guess my issue is with the idea of plausibility. Even when completely implausible, a writer should at least make dialogue seem intelligent. Later in the same episode of the global-warming-caused-micro-tremors, Dr. Bishop hypothesized (not theorized) that it might have been a Quantum Tectonic Event. Here was some sci-fi pseudo-scientific babble I could stand behind.

I wonder what Dr. Bishop would think of my stories involving Simulated Density Fields and Braided Gravitational Propulsion Arrays.