Fringe--White Tulip

Last night's episode of Fringe dealt with one of my favorite fictional concepts, time travel. I have always loved the idea of time travel. In an aside, Dean Koontz book Lightning is a great time travel book. Now back to Fringe. The episode starts with people on a train. The lights in the car start to flicker and then go out and then a man just appears in the middle of the aisle. The man is sweating and seems in some pain. He exits the train bumping into a young pick pocket who was hanging around on the platform panhandling. The kid enters the train car to find every person dead.
We then see Walter writing a letter. I am slow because I only realized he was left handed a couple of episodes ago. While he is writing the phone rings. It is Peter and he begs Walter to pick up the phone, even explaining to him how to turn the phone on. Peter is very kind to his father these days. Walter listens to Peter but does not pick up the phone. Peter tells him to get his kit together that he will pick him up fifteen minutes, that Olivia needs them on a train, and he knows how much Walter loves trains. Walter smiles at that last remark. Walter finishes his letter and puts in an envelope and addresses it to Peter. He then puts the envelope in this pocket.
At the train Walter is mystified by the deaths. He says it is as if they all had heart attacks at the same time. Peter discovered that all of the phones, laptops and mp3 players on board were drained of energy. An FBI agent finds Walter's letter to Peter laying in the aisle. Walter sees it and retrieves it before Peter can see it.
Using CTV footage Olivia and Agent Broyles are able to trace the unknown man as he leaves the train station. They see him enter a restaurant. When they go to the restaurant one of the waitresses immediately recognizes the man as one of the regulars. She finds his credit card receipt and it gives them a name, Alistair Peck. They get an address and go to Peck's residence. There are boards covered with formulae which even Walter has trouble following. He said if he had several years and lots of assistance he might could understand what was being worked on. However, he does know that what Peck was attempting was time travel. While they are looking around Peck's home he returns and demands that they leave. When weapons are drawn he does something and then vanishes and we are back where we started. He winks into existence on the train again. He exits the train running into the same kid. This time he tells him "I'm sorry you have to go through this again".
Olivia, Peter, Broyles and Walter are back at the train. Almost same scenario but this time they find out about Peck's work at MIT. They talk to a colleague who tells them Peck was working on time travel. She gives them three volumes that Peck had written on the subject. Walter reads these volumes very fast and figures out that Peck is a genius and very close to cracking time travel if he hasn't done so already. And he realizes that time travel would eat up a lot of energy (like maybe, a whole train car of the stuff). He then hypothesizes that maybe Peck has traveled in time alright, and that they, the Fringe group, may have done the same thing many times. Walter is brilliant and so sad. You just want him to give that letter to Peter so they can start healing.
They discover that Peck is back in his lab at MIT (dead bodies outside as proof of his time travel). Walter convinces the others to let him go into the lab to talk to Peck. Earlier Olivia has realized that Peck was trying to go back in time because his fiancee had been killed in an automobile accident and that he had been trying to go back and save her. Walter having more than a passing knowledge of grief and what it can lead you to do, wants to talk to Peck alone. He goes in with a wire and does talk to Peck. Then he unplugs the wire and talks to Peck about Peter and about what he did. He tells him that if he does make it back to his fiancee and save her he will see all the people who died each time he looks at her. Walter tells him that he had never believed in God until after rescuing Peter from the other reality. And now he thinks God is punishing him. He said he asked God for a sign, a white tulip, to prove that he is forgiven. Peck says it isn't tulip season and even in tulip season white tulips are rare. Walter says that his why he asked for that sign. The others figure Walter turning off the wire is a bad sign and rush the room. Peck travels back in time and this time he does make it back to the day his fiancee died. He runs to get to her car. He smiles at her and they are hit by another car. You see the colleague of Peck from the earlier scene. She has found a letter to her from Peck. Inside this letter is another letter addressed to Walter, sealed and stamped. Her letter asks that she mail this letter on a certain day. Today is that day. Another person asks her why she doesn't open the letter before she mails it. She said that Peck sealed it so she is mailing it as he asked. We see Walter writing his letter to Peter. He finishes it. No phone call from Peter this time. He seals it and addresses it and then walks over and throws it into the fire. Peter arrives home and asks Walter it he is alright. Walter tells him he is fine. Then Walter sorts through the mail and finds the envelope from Peck. He opens it and inside is a drawing of a white tulip. Nothing else. Water looks surprised and less sad.
I love this show. I can't wait for next week's episode. I think the shape-shifters are back.