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" Science Fiction: &amp;quot;Nothing is off-limits&amp;quot; Tracking the conspiracy and science behind the television show Fringe is so complicated that actor Joshua Jackson, who plays Peter Bishop, has a flowchart. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m such a nerd. I&amp;#039;m an actor with a flowchart,&amp;quot; he sighed to a packed house at last weekend&amp;#039;s New York Comic Con. But it is, he has found, a necessary evil. &amp;quot;In case you didn&amp;#039;t realize, it&amp;#039;s hard to keep track of all the little pieces.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s also hard to pin down the show&amp;#039;s science. In half a season of investigating everything from radioactivity to killer parasites, Popular Mechanics has found that the truest science is the connection the show makes between music and math. But that scientific irreverence is, in fact, what the show&amp;#039;s two main characters love most. &amp;quot;The brilliance of the genre is that there&amp;#039;s actually really nothing that&amp;#039;s off-limits,&amp;quot; Jackson tells PM. &amp;quot;On our show, the whole point is, if you can dream it, it can be done. If you haven&amp;#039;t dreamed it yet--we&amp;#039;ll show it to you next week!&amp;quot; He laughs. &amp;quot;I actually want to see the show cover everything.&amp;quot; John Noble, who plays mad scientist Walter Bishop, agrees with Jackson. &amp;quot;A lot of the things we deal with, even though they&amp;#039;re not available to us yet, we know them conceptually,&amp;quot; Noble says. &amp;quot;The nature of string theory has revealed to us that there are possibilities beyond our wildest dreams. It&amp;#039;s even possible to travel faster than the speed of light. So you think, &amp;#039;my God, where can this show go?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Anywhere. What we&amp;#039;ll do is we&amp;#039;ll stay with the inconceivable--that&amp;#039;s what I would do.&amp;quot; Research: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s definitely a frantic Web search&amp;quot; Even though Fringe&amp;#039;s actors are obsessed with the fantastic, they still do their research. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s definitely a frantic Web search of what it is that you&amp;#039;re doing that week,&amp;quot; Jackson laughs. &amp;quot;I think I&amp;#039;m probably number four on the Wikipedia log-in because every episode is: &amp;#039;Is this possible? How do I say this? What does this drug actually do?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; When it comes to science, in general, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m pretty well read,&amp;quot; Noble says. But, he admits, &amp;quot;Googling is an extraordinary thing.&amp;quot; For his part, Noble spent a lot of time researching mental illness because he felt a responsibility to get that facet of Bishop correct. &amp;quot;My analysis is that Walter is bipolar,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;So I&amp;#039;ve taken a lot of symptoms of that. I looked at all the drugs that would be applied, what their physical effects would be and how long that would last.&amp;quot;  Fans of the show can expect more outrageous science from Fringe in the future. According to executive producer Jeff Pinkner, the show&amp;#039;s network, Fox, wants to the show to go further. That&amp;#039;s fine with Jackson--he thinks last week&amp;#039;s transformation episode is the best episode they&amp;#039;ve done so far--but he draws the line at brain goo and eye removal. &amp;quot;It was the most disgusting thing, getting on my hands and knees and hoovering up brain goo, pretending it was just a normal Tuesday afternoon,&amp;quot; Jackson recalls. &amp;quot;And the eyeball--that&amp;#039;s beyond the pale of disgusting.&amp;quot; Legacy: &amp;quot;If I get compared to X-Files, that&amp;#039;s a good thing&amp;quot;  While brain goo is unpleasant for Jackson, he doesn&amp;#039;t mind references to another often gory sci-fi show. &amp;quot;If I ever get compared to X-Files in my life, that&amp;#039;s a good thing,&amp;quot; Jackson says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s one of my favorite shows of all time. Even though the content [of X-Files and Fringe] is, genre-wise, the same, the structure of the dynamics between the characters is entirely different. [Fox] Mulder was a man on a mission; it didn&amp;#039;t matter what questions needed to be asked or what answers needed to be found, he had to find his sister. Olivia is a cop, she wants to solve her case, she wants to know why, how, who, what and where, and she&amp;#039;s not interested in green aliens. It doesn&amp;#039;t matter to her,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;And I guess I would be the Scully in this, but Scully was also a cop. Scully was morally a completely clear character. So I think Scully is actually both Peter and Walter. They&amp;#039;re not morally clear people. Walter has absolutely no moral compass at all. He is not an immoral man; he is an amoral man. The human cost of things means nothing to him. And Peter is not a man who is invested--he doesn&amp;#039;t care if the FBI solves the case. So it&amp;#039;s a very different dynamic between the lead characters in this show.&amp;quot; Spoilers During the rest of the season, fans can expect to meet another Observer--yes, there&amp;#039;s more than one--and Pinkner says they may have already met elusive Massive Dynamic CEO William Bell. There will be payback for the deal Peter made with Nina. And according to Kirk Acevedo, who plays FBI agent Charlie, the cast and crew is working on an episode that will deal with his character&amp;#039;s feelings for fellow agent Olivia Dunham. As for what those feelings might be? &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t talk about it!&amp;quot; Acevedo laughs.  One thing&amp;#039;s for sure: Jackson will be tracking all the mythology along with the show&amp;#039;s fans. And he&amp;#039;s sure all of the show&amp;#039;s little clues will pay off. &amp;quot;[Executive producer] J.J. [Abrams] is good at that,&amp;quot; Jackson says. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s still that 15-year-old boy who thinks that it&amp;#039;s wicked cool that Beastmaster III used the same sword as He-Man ... which it did.&amp;quot; As for that flowchart? It got too big for the wall of Jackson&amp;#039;s dressing room--so he took it home.   RELATED STORIES * EARLIER: Could a Designer Virus Turn You Into a Monster?  * PLUS: Experts Recall West Nile in Fight Against Dengue Fever  * DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD: TV, Sci-Fi Coverage, Including Every Episode of Fringe!   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a12249/4303367/>