Season 3, Episode 6:
6955 kHz
The Fringe team, including Fauxlivia still posing as Olivia, is brought in on a case where several people, part of an online group attempting to decode the information sent by a numbers station, have been stricken with amnesia. They discover the station broadcasting the signal, finding its workers killed and a strange box connected to the broadcast equipment. They identify fingerprints on the box belonging to a Joseph Feller, but his current location is unknown. Walter attempts to decipher the workings of the box, while giving hope to some of the affected people that they will get their memories back in time.
Peter discovers that the rare book dealer, Edward Markham, was part of the online group but did not listen that night. Edward provides his theory of the numbers stations to Peter and Fauxlivia: that it is a signal left by the "First People", an advanced civilization that existed before a mass extinction event. He provides them with a book about the First People. As they return the book to Walter, Peter notices numbers in the astrological charts in the book are the same as the broadcast numbers. They give the book to Astrid, a skilled decoder, along with copious volumes of data from Massive Dynamic about the numbers stations.
Later, the crash of a small commuter aircraft is attributed to a similar signal from a numbers station, and when the team identifies the source, they find a second box. Taking the box to Walter, Peter identifies one of the electronic components as rare, and engages his contacts to find Feller's address from its purchase. Fauxlivia feigns returning to headquarters, instead traveling to Feller's apartment, warning him that Fringe is onto him, but he insists on continuing his job. She throws him out the window as the Fringe team arrives, killing him and revealing him to be a shapeshifter. Fauxlivia claims she killed the man in self-defense.
Meanwhile, Astrid has decoded the numbers as a series of geographical coordinates. The closest one is in Milton, Massachusetts, the site of where a mysterious box was found ("The Box"). Teams are quickly sent to the other sites given across the globe, and they discover many more parts of what Walter and Peter believe to be the same doomsday machine that Walternate has already constructed in the alternate universe, and which the First People book claims can destroy or create universes. Fauxlivia later communicates this finding to the alternate universe through the typewriter shop, and is ordered to initiate "phase two".
In the alternate universe, Olivia, having broken Walternate's conditioning making her believe herself to be Fauxlivia, is told that no further tests are needed. A vision of Peter warns Olivia that her usefulness to Walternate has ended and her life is in danger.
Tropes:
- Beyond the Impossible: Lampshaded in-series. Supposedly, the Numbers Stations had existed even before Guglielmo Marconi had invented the radio. In fact, when he turned on his prototype, the numbers were the first things he heard. The First People book takes this even further, cementing them as a human(oid) civilization that predated even the dinosaurs, and had planted the number stations.
- Black Comedy: "If you break the Universe, this time it's on YOUR head!"
- Doomsday Device: The Vaccuum. It's the machine the Walternate plans to use to destroy the Blue Universe, and it has an alternate version in our world. The First People book describe it as having "power over creation and destruction", so we can assume it involves terraforming and quantum mechanics.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Peter when he sees the connection between the book's numbers and the number stations. Then Astrid when she realizes the number are coordinated when she and the sun blocks a few of the numbers on the board.
- Expendable Alternate Universe: Discussed and Defied. Fauxlivia suggests Peter will have to save their world no matter what. Peter counters that the Alternate Universe is filled with normal, innocent people, and that he MUST find another way without destroying billions of lives just because they're from another world.
- Identity Amnesia
- Numbers Stations: The source of the signal that kicks off the plot.
- Red Right Hand: That shapeshifter Joseph Feller has got to be the most obvious bad guy so far. He's got an unnaturally long chin, he's shorter than Olivia and has heterochromia(one eye is silver-blue, the other is brown). Maybe he's defective?
- Shout-Out: Tickets to U2 is a Continuity Nod to how Fauxlivia found Bono attractive.
