100-Episode Sci-Fi Masterpiece Predicted So Many Modern TV Tropes

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Although the show’s creator had an earlier hit that was better known, one underrated sci-fi series that aired on Fox managed to shape huge swathes of the genre’s output in the decade and a half that followed. It can often be tough to predict which TV shows will prove influential while they are still on the air. For instance, Twin Peaks season 2’s fall from grace was viewed as a major failure in 1990.

Nowadays, though, the small-town murder mystery is viewed as one of the most influential TV shows ever made despite this sophomore slump. Similarly, while the ‘90s sensation The X-Files was both phenomenally popular during its original run and incredibly influential afterward, one of the show’s best successors rarely gets credit for its innovations. The X-Files shaped shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Evil, and Supernatural, but one Fox series was almost an unofficial sequel to the series.

Airing on Fox for five seasons of exactly 100 episodes, Lost creator JJ Abrams’ Fringe was a blend of police procedural, sci-fi, and fantasy that owed a clear and acknowledged creative debt to The X-Files. Fringe actually canonically confirmed that the show took place in the same fictional universe as Twin Peaks, but its structure and story had more in common with The X-Files. Like that earlier Fox hit, Fringe centered on a group of unconventional law enforcement agents tasked with investigating paranormal phenomena.

Fringe Brought Many Major Sci-Fi Concepts To Mainstream TV

Anna Torv’s Olivia Dunham was Fringe’s Scully equivalent, a comparative skeptic who entered the so-called Fringe Division with one eyebrow perpetually raised. Joshua Jackson’s taciturn Peter Bishop was Dunham’s first point of call in this strange department, a Joint Federal Task Force committed to investigating anything related to fringe scientific theories. His estranged father, John Noble’s eccentric scientific researcher John Bishop, rounded out the department’s central trio.

While John was a true believer in everything from cryptos to alternate history, Peter was less easily convinced, while Dunham was new to this entire world of fringe theories. This was a helpful plot contrivance, as it allowed Fringe to explain complicated sci-fi tropes that went beyond standard network TV depictions of time travel in their complexity and obscurity.

By borrowing the recognizable police procedural format of The X-Files, Fringe was able to introduce ideas like multiverse theory, complicated forms of time travel, quantum physics, and parallel universes in a way that mainstream network TV viewers could follow. In the process, the show normalized a slew of sci-fi tropes and storylines that are now seen everywhere these days. Well before Spider-Man: Homecoming, Fringe had a “guy in the chair” providing real-time technological assistance to the heroes out in the field.

Fringe’s Influence Can Be Felt Throughout 2020s Sci-Fi Shows

Joshua Jackson as Peter Bishop in Fringe

Fringe was effectively The Flash half a decade before The Flash premiered, using scientific mumbo jumbo to explain plots in a way that was satisfying to the average viewers without feeling like pure hokum. Where classic shows like the Stargate franchise or Quantum Leap often operated on a “Take our word for it” approach to science, Fringe gave viewers enough plausible-sounding technical info for the “sci” part of sci-fi to feel earned.

To be clear, Fringe’s storylines were entirely reliant on theoretical science, almost all of it unproven, meaning the “fi” end of the sci-fi bargain was also heavily relied on. That said, like a Christopher Nolan or Dennis Villeneuve movie, the show set a standard for sci-fi exposition that felt earned, natural, and believable, and it is one that sci-fi TV and movies have borrowed ever since.

Without the mainstream success of Fringe, it is unlikely that viewers would ever have gotten Foundation, Silo, Severance, Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, Westworld, Tales from the Loop, or any of the unapologetically ambitious sci-fi shows that juggle complicated theoretical concepts with their storylines. As such, Fox’s Fringe remains Abrams’ most underrated effort.