“Pilot” is episode one of season one of Fringe.
This, typically unimaginatively named, feature-length episode opens on a plane flying through a storm. One of the passengers is really worried and self-injects with medicine. The man next to him tries to reassure him, but he gets out of his seat as the plane starts losing a bit of control. A flight attendant tells the man to get back to his seat, but something is happening to him. His face has melted. The person who was next to him is similarly affected, as are the rest of the passengers. The co-pilot opens the cockpit door to check what’s happening. He, too, is affected as the pilot engages autopilot.
A man and woman are in bed in a motel room. It seems they are keeping their relationship secret, as their department isn’t a fan of office romance. The woman, Olivia Dunham, thinks Charlie knows; the man, John Scott, doesn’t. He thinks if Charlie knew, Olivia would be transferred. Olivia’s phone rings and she answers it. There’s been an incident at Logan with an international flight; Charlie is on his way. She leaves. Scott’s phone rings after she’s left.
At Logan Airport in Boston, Charlie fills Olivia in. The tower lost contact and F-18s were called to escort. There was no sign of life onboard. CDC doesn’t want the jet opened. It seems the airport has a new autopilot capable of landing the plane. Scott arrives at this point. Charlie says one team member looked in and he threw up.
A man arrives at the airport to be turned away. He’s identical to the first passenger affected on the plane.
Special Agent in Charge Phillip Broyles calls everyone over. This is a joint task force with Homeland in charge. One CIA agent and two from the FBI, Charlie and Scott, are going into the plane in hazmat suits. Olivia protests to Broyles; she wants to see first-hand. He does agree, but he knows who she is and seems to have something against her. Inside the plane, it looks like flesh melted from the passengers’ bones.
The news on at the Federal Building in Boston says the plane was deliberately set ablaze by the CDC. Agents are going through the passenger list and Olivia is clashing with Broyles. Charlie calls out a tip; a man saw two suspicious-looking Middle Eastern types handing a white guy a briefcase at a storage unit. Broyles tells Olivia to go there.
Olivia arrives at the U-Case Storage in Chelsea, Massachusetts. It seems she put away Broyles’ best friend for assaulting three Marine privates. They find empty ammonia cylinders in the rubbish and Scott starts picking the locks of the units. He opens one that contains scientific equipment and test animals. Olivia heads outside for a signal to call it in. As she leaves, the opposite unit opens, revealing more equipment and the man from the plane and the airport. Scott pursues him and calls Olivia’s phone. The man leads Scott into a trap; he detonates a series of bombs in the units from his phone. Scott is enveloped by the blast; Olivia is thrown back.
Olivia wakes in the hospital. Scott survived the initial blast but was exposed to synthetic chemical compounds from the labs. It’s not contagious, but they can’t identify the substance. He’s been put in a coma and his body temperature lowered to slow the process. Because his flesh is turning transparent and hard.
Olivia searches for details on this and comes across a Dr Walter Bishop. She heads to see Broyles and says there’s a connection. Bishop might have info. Though he’s been confined to St Claire’s for 17 years after his assistant died in a lab accident and he was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial. It comes up that as a US Marine Special Investigator, Olivia put Broyles’ best friend away. Bishop can’t have visitors other than family or those escorted in by them and Broyles won’t use the Patriot Act to gain access. If Olivia can talk to Bishop and come up with something substantial, he will have her back, though. Olivia has found that Bishop has a son. He’s not local.
Peter Bishop has an IQ of 190 and is a high school dropout. Hasn’t kept a job longer than two months. Olivia thinks he sounds like a pain in the ass. Peter is currently negotiating to run the construction of an oil pipeline. Olivia finds him afterwards, and tells him about the flight and how Peter’s father may be able to help. She tries begging him, then resorts to threatening to let the people who are after him know where he is.
Peter agrees after that. But he says his father, though brilliant, was only performing research for a toothpaste company in a Harvard basement, and he fails to see how a toothpaste researcher can help. Except, according to Olivia, he wasn’t. Dr Bishop was working for a classified U.S. Army programme called ‘Kelvin Genetics’. He could research whatever he wanted, primarily in ‘fringe science.’ Peter asks if she means pseudoscience. Yes (truthfully, not exactly; the line between fringe science and pseudoscience is blurred, but some fringe theories have become mainstream). Mind control, teleportation, reanimation, invisibility and more.
Dr Bishop doesn’t seem entirely stable. He is in a psychiatric facility, though. His help is needed, however, as is his old equipment. Which was state of the art. The best part of two decades ago. Peter has a rather fraught relationship with his father, too, though he’s perhaps equally brilliant. Albeit more stable. Olivia ends up discovering that this is only one of many weird things that are currently going on.