Author's Notes re Fringes: One of Those Days

[melworks]

Who's who?

Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop, Walter Bishop, Phillip Broyles and Astrid Farnsworth are all characters from the science fiction television show, Fringe.

The Doctor a.k.a. Doctor John Smith is the title character from the classic British sci-fi show, Doctor Who.  In F:OTD, I'm using the Tom Baker incarnation of the Doctor.

Uhura is the communications officer from Star Trek.  In F:OTD, I'm using the version from Star Trek: The Original Series, as portrayed by the talented and lovely, Nichelle Nichols.

Doctor Tony Newman is one of the lead characters from the 1960s show, The Time Tunnel. 

Napoleon Solo was one of the lead characters from the classic series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 

Agent J and Agent K are from the movie series, The Men in Black, as portrayed by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

Masado Banzai, referenced in the Masado Banzai Physics Center, was the father of Buckaroo Banzai, the title character of the cult 1980s film, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Professor Maximilian P. Arturo is one of the characters from Sliders, played by John Rhys-Davies who is probably better known these days for his role as Gimli the Dwarf from The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

Malcolm Taylor was a UNIT scientific advisor in the 2009 Doctor Who special, Planet of the Dead. Played by Lee Evans, Taylor impressed the 10th Doctor by developing a means to analyze and close a wormhole.




What's what?

The Ogri, a silicon-based lifeform resembling a column of rock, is an alien from the classic Doctor Who episode, "The Stones of Blood."

Romulans are one of the extraterrestrial humanoid species from the Star Trek franchise.

The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) is the name of the Doctor's time-space machine; it looks like an English police box and is bigger on the inside than the outside.

UNIT (The United Nations Intellience Taskforce) is an international paramilitary organization from Doctor Who.

California University is a fictional university from Sliders, set in San Francisco.



When you write a crossover fic like Fringes:One of Those Days, cannon takes a beating.  The fic is set roughly in the first season of Fringe, before the discovery of the other universe and before Peter and Olivia began their relationship.  That explains why Peter is so flirty with Uhura.
Uhura, as noted above, is from Star Trek: The Original Series.  Not NuTrek.  How did she become one of the Doctor's companions? Her backstory is sort of tragic. When the Star Trek timeline was jiggered by Nero & Spock, the F:OTD Uhura was shook loose from time and discovered by the Doctor.  She is basically a living, breathing paradox.
Tony Newman's history is just as tragic. At the end of The Time Tunnel, Newman and his friend, Doug Phillips, were stranded on the S.S. Titanic, at the same time and place of their first jaunt using the Time Tunnel.  The two became trapped in a closed temporal loop.  Trapped on the doomed ship, untouched by time, Newman spent forty years subjectively working out complex multidimensional equations in his head to find a way out.  His efforts attracted the attention of the Doctor who rescued him. The fate of Doug Phillips remains unknown, but Tony is a bit 'fragile' in F:OTD, suffering from bouts of severe agoraphobia.  I imagine he's not too fond of cruises either.
UNIT, in F:OTD, has become the dominant international organization responding to extragovernmental threats and general wierdness. As such they have absorbed a number of other organizations into themselves, including U.N.C.L.E.  This explains how Napoleon Solo is working for UNIT as head of their North American Division.
Speaking of Napoleon Solo, in F:OTD, he is older and more battered.  His history is also a bit more colorful, as he and the Doctor know each other and seem to have a cordial relationship of sorts.
I took the biggest liberties, I feel, with Professor Arturo.  In Sliders, Arturo becomes one of the quartet of adventurers wandering from one parallel Earth to another.  In F:OTD, that didn't happen. In his unrevealed backstory, our Arturo investigated the disappearance of Quinn Malory and discovered Malory's notes on sliding.  When Malory never reappeared, Arturo took the notes and cobbled together his machine, trying to access other dimensions.  Unfortunately, things went a bit pear-shaped for the professor.
Which leads us to the question of the breach.  Was it a result of Arturo not quite understanding Malory's notes? Or, was it caused by some outside influence? The Other Universe, perhaps, from Fringe?  Maybe the Kromaggs from Sliders were involved? Could it have been one of the Doctor's enemies?  Perhaps it was the chaos-mage, Ethan Raynes, working under the auspices of the Black Guardian? Perhaps the Lovecraftian horrors from the Dungeon Dimensions were trying to break out?
The world may never know.