Subject 13 (S03E15)
Airdate: 25 February 2011
Written by: Jeff Pinkner, J. H. Wyman & Akiva Goldsman Directed by: Frederick E. O. Toye
Running Time: 44 minutes
There exists within long-form television drama a peculiar hazard that even the most accomplished series struggle to navigate. When a programme ventures beyond its established narrative formula to deliver something genuinely extraordinary, that very extraordinariness risks dilution should the same trick be attempted again. Star Trek: The Next Generation discovered this the hard way with Q, the godlike entity whose initial appearances carried genuine weight and menace, but whose increasingly frequent visitations eventually reduced him to something approaching an irritating uncle who overstays his welcome at family gatherings. Fringe, J.J. Abrams' ambitious science fiction procedural, finds itself confronting precisely this dilemma in its third season. The episode in question, Subject 13, serves as perhaps the most instructive example of how a well-intentioned return to fertile narrative ground can yield diminishing returns.
Penned by the show's established triumvirate of Jeff Pinkner, J.H. Wyman, and Akiva Goldsman, "Subject 13" functions essentially as a direct sequel to Peter, that pivotal sixteenth episode of the second season which stands among the finest instalments the series ever produced. Peter had transported viewers to 1985, unfolding as one extended flashback that revealed the precise sequence of events setting the entire series mythology in motion: Walter Bishop's desperate theft of his dying alternate son from a parallel universe, an act of parental grief that would cascade across decades and dimensions. Subject 13 picks up the narrative thread six months later, examining the immediate aftermath of that cosmic abduction and its psychological toll upon all parties involved.
The episode's central storyline concerns young Peter Bishop (Chandler Canterbury), a child caught between worlds in the most literal sense. Having been snatched from the Alternate Universe by Dr. Walter Bishop, Peter finds himself struggling with memories and emotions that refuse to align with his present circumstances. Despite the earnest efforts of Walter and his wife Elizabeth to convince the boy that he is indeed their son, Peter yearns only for home—a longing so acute that he attempts to drown himself in Reiden Lake, believing this will somehow return him to his proper reality. Faced with the impossibility of maintaining their deception and terrified by what this pressure is doing to the child's sanity, the Bishops reach the painful consensus that Peter must be returned to his biological parents. This resolution, however, places extraordinary pressure upon Walter to perfect his cross-dimensional travel methodology, eliminating the destructive dimensional fissures and reality-warping anomalies that have plagued his previous attempts.
Running parallel to these developments, the episode charts the corresponding devastation unfolding in the Alternate Universe. Walternate—Walter's mirror self, now elevated to the position of national security czar and among the most powerful figures in his world—grapples with the inexplicable disappearance of his son. Though his public stature has never been greater, privately he is consumed by despair. His wife Elizabeth, displaying remarkable emotional intelligence, eventually coaxes him into travelling to Florida, where he continues work on significant projects connected to his company, Bishop Dynamics, hoping perhaps that professional distraction might offer temporary respite from his anguish.
Back in the prime universe, Walter's experiments in Jacksonville begin to centre upon one child in particular: "Subject 13," otherwise known as Olivia Dunham (Karley Scott Collins). Walter gradually suspects that the girl is suffering physical abuse at the hands of her stepfather, Chris Bradford, though Olivia steadfastly refuses to confirm his suspicions. The suspicion proves well-founded when, during one particularly brutal attack, Olivia spontaneously transports herself to a strange location that subsequently becomes the subject of her drawings. When Walter examines these sketches and discovers they depict zeppelins—airships that never achieved widespread use in the prime universe but remain commonplace in the Alternate Universe—he becomes convinced that Olivia has achieved the very thing he has been desperately attempting to engineer: uncontrolled, spontaneous travel between dimensions.
Determined to replicate these conditions, Walter embarks upon increasingly traumatic experimentation, eventually realising that fear serves as the crucial catalyst for Olivia's abilities. His attempts to artificially recreate these circumstances, however, backfire spectacularly. Rather than triggering cross-dimensional travel, his traumatic test instead unleashes pyrokinesis—Olivia's alternative cortexiphan-derived ability. Fire erupts throughout the facility, and in the ensuing confusion, Olivia vanishes.
Peter, meanwhile, has examined Olivia's sketchbook and discovered a drawing of white tulips—an image that resonates with particular significance for viewers familiar with the series' mythology. Following his intuition, he locates Olivia and introduces himself. In this vulnerable moment, Olivia admits her terror of her stepfather, and Peter persuades her to return to the daycare centre. She produces a sketch depicting herself alongside Peter before tearfully making her way to Walter's office, where she finally reveals the truth about her stepfather and hands over her sketchbook. The episode's crucial twist arrives when Walter turns to discover another version of himself standing there: Olivia has inadvertently crossed over to the Alternate Universe, delivering the sketchbook not to Walter but to Walternate. The prime universe Walter subsequently confronts Olivia's stepfather, threatening to deploy his considerable institutional influence to make the man's existence thoroughly miserable should Olivia suffer further harm.
The concluding sequences find Elizabeth and Peter returning to Reiden Lake, where Peter finally begins addressing Elizabeth as "mother"—a moment of apparent reconciliation that carries troubling undercurrents. The ordeal has clearly shattered Elizabeth, who turns increasingly to alcohol as a coping mechanism. Across the dimensional divide, Walternate studies the sketchbook and experiences a devastating epiphany: his son lives. The determination that will eventually transform him into the series' primary antagonist crystallises in this moment.
Subject 13 is, without question, a well-acted and emotionally ambitious episode. Yet it remains deeply flawed, its most glaring deficiency being structural redundancy. The inevitable comparisons with its predecessor Peter expose its limitations; where that earlier episode generated genuine dramatic tension and narrative revelation, Subject 13 plays more like an extended epilogue, the sort of contemplative coda that might have concluded Peter had the producers chosen to extend its running time. The dramatic stakes feel diminished precisely because we already know the outcomes these events are working toward.
From a mythological perspective, the episode offers frustratingly little that viewers hadn't already deduced or imagined. We know Peter's fate and the devastating consequences his abduction wrought upon both his biological and adoptive families. By explicitly depicting these events rather than permitting the audience to imagine them, the series sacrifices considerable mystique. Moreover, the episode suffers from a fundamental predictability that undermines its emotional impact. The cold opening, featuring young Peter's suicide attempt on the frozen lake, lacks genuine dramatic power because every viewer understands implicitly that the child will survive—after all, we have watched the adult Peter Bishop across three seasons.
Practical production considerations further complicate the episode's effectiveness. The decision to produce a sequel months after the original introduces inevitable difficulties with child casting. While Karley Scott Collins acquits herself admirably in her introduction as young Olivia, Chandler Canterbury's assumption of the Peter role—necessitated by original portrayer Quinn Lord having outgrown the part—creates a subtle but noticeable discontinuity. Canterbury delivers a solid performance, yet the recasting unavoidably disrupts continuity.
The episode's romantic mythology also risks overkill. Following the previous instalment "6B," which delighted Peter/Olivia shippers with its parallel universe romantic complications, Subject 13 reveals that the pair actually met as children and experienced immediate mutual attraction, establishing a connection that apparently transcends dimensional boundaries. For viewers already sceptical of the show's romantic plotting, this revelation may prove one coincidence too many.
Frederick E.O. Toye's direction, generally reliable throughout the series, falters slightly in conveying the episode's climactic twist, potentially confusing less attentive viewers about precisely which universe contains which characters during the sketchbook handover sequence. Additionally, the episode suffers from geographical implausibilities that have long plagued Vancouver-produced American television—most notably, snow falling in Florida, an extremely unconvincing detail that strains suspension of disbelief.
The episode's single genuinely provocative contribution lies in its subtle suggestion that Peter's eventual acceptance of his new identity represents not genuine emotional reconciliation but rather an act of convenience, a child's desperate attempt to please the strangers claiming parental authority. This interpretation recasts Peter's subsequent character development in intriguing light, suggesting that his adult persona as a skilled conman and manipulator finds its origins in this childhood performance of acceptance.
Subject 13 thus stands as a competent but ultimately unnecessary addition to Fringe's third season—a chapter that illuminates without truly revealing, that moves pieces across the board without significantly advancing the game. For completists, it offers welcome context; for casual viewers, it represents an hour that might have been spent more profitably elsewhere.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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