Notes for Fringe season 1, episode 3, “The Ghost Network“
01:04 The camcorder being used by a bus passenger is a Panasonic SDR-H40 (2008)
01:44 The female passenger is carrying a blue Jansport T2650307 backpack
07:20 I assume that when Walter describes the drugs he’s taking, there’s some network TV liability thing that prevents the names of actual psychotics being used.
07:58 Peter’s phone is a Nokia 6110 Navigator (2007)
08:13 Peter pulls a 1GB SanDisk CompactFlash from a DSLR
10:47 It’s hard to tell what kind of phone the latin-speaking agent is using, but the chunky antenna suggests it’s a satellite phone – despite being successfully used from inside what appears to be a church crypt – normally considered suboptimal for satellite communications.
13:22 In the warehouse space where the FBI has taken the bus, you can see stacked yellow Pelican iM2500 cases.
13:39 The custom FBI computer interface has tabs for “Interpol”, “NCIC”, “TECS”, “FINCEN”, “DODMI”. Not sure what DODMI is? Military Intelligence? Major Incidents?
14:08 The FBI numbers assigned to the bus passengers appear to be incremental. I don’t know how FNU (“FBI numbers” – 7 character alphanumeric) were assigned, but the FBI switched to randomly generated 9 character UCN (Universal Control Numbers) in 2015. However, in 2008, the DEA special agent should already have a pre-existing FBI number, since they would been fingerprinted as part of a background check.
27:00 The CT scanner is a GE LightSpeed QXI. The tomography software looks very 90s. I think it’s probably running under CDE on Solaris? There’s a Dell 2009W (2008) in the operator’s room showing vitals – I’ve gotten so good at recognising the back of these.
27:10 “The machine is basically a giant magnet, you’ve got metal in your blood.” Ok, the CT machine is a prop standing in for an MRI? I guess they look similar from the front, and they do a similar job. CTs are basically X-ray machines, whereas MRIs use magnets and radio waves. This is not mentioned as a goof on the episode’s IMDb page.
27:15 “Why would there be metal in his blood?” One smart-arse answer to this is that if you had no metal in your blood you’d have iron deficiency anaemia, because everyone has some metal in their blood. (MRIs can affect ferromagnetic materials, but the iron in blood is so weakly paramagnetic that there would no effect.)
28:37 The student photo of Roy McComb shows someone with far more pronounced male pattern baldness at 18 than at 38. I guess Roy had some work done?
30:00 Walter displays the 1892 Rabbit–duck illusion, but also “Rotating Snakes” from 2003, so I guess he’s quickly catching up on what he missed in the last 17 years?
32:30 Television’s classic “have the not-FBI-agent break the law” workaround for unwarranted searches.
37:09 Walter gestures to a piece of equipment that looks like a homemade amp. It has multiple needle gauges with different labels, but all have the range 0-10. When we see it next, both the “current mA” and “kilovolt” gauges jump over 10. This is at 50 gauss – the magnetic effect of a fridge magnet.
40:27 Flashback to someone running the blunt edge of a surgical scalpel over skin in order to cut it open.
41:08 The monitor on Walter’s bench is the Stryker TPS 5100-50 Irrigation console for the endoscopy tools used to drill into Roy’s head.
44:56 The techs open up the Zero Halliburton slimline aluminium attache briefcase to find an AirPods case? Those won’t be out for another decade. But inside the not-Airpods case, a tiny circle of what looks like glass.
49:20 The device turns out to be an encrypted disk with huge amounts of data. While you can have bio-stable hand-implanted disks in 2025, the storage capacity is in the kilobytes. Less than a 1970s 8-inch floppy disk.
49:26 The Massive Dynamic user interface seems very macOS inspired. In fact we see it running on a Apple Cinema Display. Isn’t there some rule that means the bad guys on TV shows can’t use Apple products?