“White Tulip” is episode seventeen of season two of Fringe.
A train is heading into Boston. On the platform, a teenager is supposedly begging for change, but lifts the wallet of someone he pumps into. The lights on the train flicker, go out and then a man appears. The pickpocket sees the train arrive, asks for spare change from the man who arrived on it as he gets off, then gets on himself. Finding everyone in the carriage dead. He panics, shouting to get him out of there as the train departs.
Walter is writing a letter to Peter; in the previous episode, “Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver”, he decided to tell Peter the truth. Peter rings from the lab, gets the answerphone and tells Walter to pick up pick up the phone, explaining how. Walter doesn’t. Peter says they have an incident on a train and he knows how much Walter loves trains. It might cheer him up. He’ll be there in 15 minutes.
At the train, Peter asks Olivia if she’s noticed anything weird. No, but give it 10 minutes. Peter meant with Walter. Olivia claims not. On the train, Walter is checking to see if the passengers had bladder release. One of the techs takes offence and tells him to get off when Olivia boards and says Walter’s with her. Walter’s first guess is collective heart failure. Possibly contagious, like yawning. Olivia checks the next carriage and asks Walter why all the lights are out in the one with the dead people.
Broyles boards and takes Olivia to see the pickpocket. He describes the man he saw. Peter takes a mobile out to show Olivia and a tech finds Walter dropped his letter. Peter returns with Olivia. Everything with power has been completely drained of it. Walter wants six or seven bodies taken back to the lab. An agent has an image of the man on the platform camera. It’s not very good.
Walter and Astrid are examining the bodies at the lab when Peter arrives. They are looking through some data and speak the exact same words together. With the dead, the mitochondria have been drained like the batteries of every electrical device in the carriage.
Olivia and Broyles follow the man through Boston on CCTV. He spends 45 minutes in a cafe then moves out of the range of any cameras. Olivia heads to the cafe and speaks to a waitress. The waitress recognises the man; he comes in all the time and is kind of weird. He’s drawing some kind of maths on everything. She has a credit card receipt. Alistair Peck.
Peck’s address is stormed. It’s empty, but there are lots of equations and some odd equipment. Walter and Peter come in; Walter is impressed with the maths. Peter says Peck teaches astrophysics at MIT. Walter isn’t sure what Peck is doing, but is impressed.
Peck is watching from the other side of the road. He heads home and asks the FBI what they’re doing with his things. He gets lots of guns pulled on him. Upstairs, Olivia has found some surgical stuff when they’re called downstairs by the other agents.
Peck has wires and other things in his arms. Olivia asks what he did to the people on the train. Peck says they aren’t dead. Not permanently. They soon won’t be dead, but others will be soon he’s afraid. And what are they doing with his equations? They will mean nothing to them and it’s within his power to make sure they never get them. Walter says Peck has implanted a Faraday mesh in himself, to shield a temporal pocket around his body. Peck flickers, disappears and arrives on the train. In the station, he tells the teenager he’s sorry he has to go through this again.
Walter is writing a letter; Peter calls him and they arrive at the train. The teenager this time says what Peck told him. The events are similar this time, but not the same. And it does make you wonder about Astrid repeating Walter’s words at the same time. At the federal building, Broyles tells Olivia they have an ID from a fingerprint. This leads them to Peck’s house; it looks like the equations are missing. And Olivia gets deja vu. Peter finds a photo of Peck with a woman.
Time travel features heavily in the episode, which Walter twigs to. He’s also struggling about telling Peter. Peck has implanted devices into much of his torso as well as his arms. It’s frankly surprising he’s still alive, given what they look like. Peck has a definite destination he wants to travel to.