page_title: White Tulip
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: White Tulip / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: J. H. Wyman at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego
context_page_description: "White Tulip" is the 18th episode of the second season of the American science fiction drama television series Fringe. It follows a scientist in his quest to time travel back and save his fiancée, while the Fringe team investigates the consequences of his actions, and Walter struggles to tell his son Peter he was stolen from the parallel universe as a boy.
  The episode was co-written by J.H. Wyman and Jeff Vlaming, and was directed by Thomas Yatsko. Wyman later stressed the importance of "White Tulip" in the show's evolution, calling it a "mythalone" because its elements were designed to create the ideal episode to satisfy both new and hardcore viewers. Elements from this episode, in particular the idea of the white tulip as a sign of forgiveness, would be reused in later episodes.
  It first aired in the United States on April 15, 2010 on Fox to an estimated 6.624 million viewers. It received positive reviews, and earned a nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Series at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards. It was ranked the best episode of the entire series by Entertainment Weekly, while IGN and Den of Geek ranked it as the second best.
context_section_description: "White Tulip" was co-written by executive producer J. H. Wyman and supervising producer Jeff Vlaming. Cinematographer Thomas Yatsko directed the episode, his first directing credit for Fringe.
  IGN announced in January 2010 that actor Peter Weller had been cast in a guest starring role for an upcoming episode. Though he had normally kept his distance from episodic television because it "burns [him] out" and he was pursuing a Ph.D at UCLA, his wife, a big Fringe fan, read the script and convinced him to accept the part of Alistair Peck, telling him "You've got to do this, it's beautiful, it's about a guy who wants to save his wife". During a conference call with journalists, Weller also cited the character's "tremendously romantic and very moving" storyline as another reason he accepted the part. He thought the four-page scripted scene between him and John Noble was "rare for television [and] wonderfully written. I was thrilled to do [Fringe]". Weller has since become a fan of Fringe because of his work in the episode, and would love to return and direct for the show. In a later Twitter post, Wyman dismissed speculation and confirmed that Weller's character Alistair Peck did indeed die at the end of the episode.
  For the episode's time travel elements, sound effects editor Bruce Tanis explained his choices of sound during an interview with Designing Sound: "I used vocals from the dialog to create high-pitched jittery tones that played against the visual of his time-jumping. He would start to flicker faster and faster as he ramped up to the moment of leaping so I wanted to play up the fragmented sense of time we had visually and create the idea that he was somehow jumping over other people to land at a different point in time. It also had electrical humming and zapping to support the electrical nature of the device".
  Executive producer J. H. Wyman later indicated how "White Tulip" helped with the evolution of the show in an interview: "It's very important to constantly try to attract more viewers and to try and not make the show alienating... Our solution came in the form of ‘White Tulip' and episodes like that, because we realized what we need to do to satiate both our hardcore fans and our financial responsibility is to create a term that we coined a 'mythalone.' It sounds really simple when you say it now, like, ‘Yes, sure, you have a great standalone case, plus you thread in some great mythology.' But I've got to tell you it took us a long time to get there and realize it. Now we have that our template for telling stories that we think satisfies both parties". He and Pinkner later listed "White Tulip" as one of their favorite episodes.
  As with other Fringe episodes, Fox and Science Olympiad released a lesson plan for grade school children based upon the science depicted in "White Tulip"; the lesson's intention was for "students [to] learn about scientific concepts related to time such as astronomy and physics, with a focus on timekeeping."
caption: Executive producer J. H. Wyman particularly loved "White Tulip" because it was a love story.[2]
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