“Novation” is episode five of season four of Fringe.
At the end of the previous episode, “Subject 9”, Peter became real again, though no-one knows who he is. He’s taken to the federal building and put into holding. Olivia arrives at the lab and finds Walter rigged up to IVs. He’s using chemicals to sleep and wake because he’s been haunted for weeks by a strange man and now can’t even see him. Olivia explains that the man has stopped talking and will only speak to Walter. And says his name is Peter Bishop.
In Hillsdale, New York, a man arrives home. A woman has been tossing the house; she tells him she couldn’t find the electric bill. She sees keys on his belt and, when he’s in the shower, takes them, opening a safe. The man finds her and asks about her face. It’s transparent. She demands to know where the files are. The real version of her is dead under the bed; she’s one of the new shapeshifters encountered in “Neither Here Nor There”.
Broyles tells Walter as he and Astrid arrive that they’ve run a DNA sample of the man claiming to be Peter Bishop. There’s a 99.7% chance he’s related to Walter. Walter suggests that maybe he’s from a third universe. Walter enters the interview room and Peter says Walter doesn’t know who he is. He needs Walter’s help to figure out why no-one remembers him. Peter explains about the two universes and how Walter built a machine to create a bridge between them that Peter powered. He was told there would be consequences. Walter says he didn’t build the machine. He admits he had a son, but he died, and when Walter crossed over to save the other, the ice broke on the way back. He drowned. Peter says that the Observer didn’t pull them out. Astrid, outside, asks what an Observer is. Peter says he was supposed to die, but when he didn’t, he became a paradox. For the two worlds to heal, he had do be removed. But he’s back. Walter isn’t handling this well and leaves the interview room.
Lincoln calls Olivia and she arrives in Hillsdale. He shows her the dead woman, who’s flesh is transparent. She’s the wife of Dr Malcolm Truss, formerly of Massive Dynamics. But the dead man is her boyfriend; Truss left Massive Dynamics ten years ago and split from his wife and dropped off the grid. Truss is in Eden, Vermont, and the shapeshifter finds him and demands his help.
Lincoln and Olivia head to Massive Dynamics; it seems Nina Sharp took Olivia and her sister in after their mother died. Nina looks Truss up; Olivia tells her he’s been abducted, probably by a shapeshifter. Nina says Truss was working on a project to repair tissue damage, but William Bell shut it down, citing ethical concerns.
Truss is with the shapeshifter in his car. She says there are people willing to pay him to continue his research. Truss doesn’t think his work went anywhere, but she shows him her transparent skin. She had stage 4 melanoma and it’s now in complete remission, but the cells aren’t stable. She’s still dying. Truss tells her the files are in his head. And he’s willing to help.
Peter is working on the intercom in his cell. Olivia arrives and fills in Broyles. The discussion turns to the strange tech found in the shapeshifters, and Peter uses the intercom to tell them they are memory discs. He’s seen them before.
Peter says he knows quite a lot about shapeshifters, though not the new ones. He says he decrypted discs from the old ones. Lincoln suggests letting him try again and Broyles is talked into allowing it. In return, Peter wants to talk to Walter again. He realises he talked to Walter as if he wasn’t different.
Truss is enthused to be helping the shapeshifter, but he doesn’t know that she killed his former wife. And others. Peter suggests some very scary possibilities about the new shapeshifters. And still no-one remembers him.