The Ghost Network

"The Ghost Network"
Fringe episode
Roy is wearing equipment that will help the Fringe team tap into the "Ghost Network".
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 3
Directed by	Frederick E. O. Toye
Written by	David H. Goodman J. R. Orci
Production code	3T7652
Original air date	September 23, 2008
Guest appearance(s)
Michael Cerveris as The Observer Zak Orth as Roy McComb Peter Hermann as Grant Davidson Donnie Keshawarz as Gerard David Lansbury as Matthew Ziegler Peggy Scott as Mrs. Scott David Wolos-Fonteno as Father Kent Megan Neuringer as Paula Clark Jackson as Young Pastor Mira Tzur as Anna Jiminez Jacqueline Beaulieu as Nina's assistant Brian Tarantina as Nice guy
Episode chronology
← Previous "The Same Old Story" Next → "The Arrival"
Fringe (season 1) List of Fringe episodes

"The Ghost Network" is the third episode of the first season of the American science fiction drama television series Fringe. The episode was written by co-executive producer David H. Goodman and supervising producer J. R. Orci, and was directed by Frederick E. O. Toye. The episode follows the Fringe team's investigation into a bus that was filled with amber, encasing the people inside. They discover a man named Roy (Zak Orth) who predicted it and other similar events, and Walter realizes Roy has connections to a past experiment he did over twenty years ago, called the "Ghost Network".

The episode was important in the show's evolution, as the writers noted that Roy was the first guest character the audience could get emotionally invested in. "The Ghost Network" also included their quest to explain seemingly impossible and weird phenomenon through a real scientific explanation from Walter's past research.

It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on September 23, 2008. An estimated 9.42 million viewers watched the episode on its first broadcast. It received mixed reviews, with many believing the show to be finally finding its legs, while others worried over the ongoing formulaic storylines featured in each episode.

A man named Roy McComb (Zak Orth) confesses to his priest that he sees visions of bad things, including a bus where everyone is going to die. Simultaneously with this scene, a man enters a bus, unleashes a canister emitting gaseous fumes, and steals a backpack before quickly getting off. The Fringe team arrives soon after, only to find the fumes have hardened into an amber-like substance, trapping and killing those inside. Walter (John Noble) studies the substance and concludes it started out as a gas and then solidified, suffocating the passengers. While looking at a victim's video footage, Olivia (Anna Torv) discovers a backpack is missing, and traces it back to one of the victims, a Federal employee with undercover connections to a drug cartel. They interview her "handler", who comes to identify her body. The Fringe team finds out about Roy, and search through his apartment, believing he is behind the bus and other Pattern-related terror attacks. They soon realize all of his drawings are dated before the incidents took place, despite the fact that several of them were never made public. In an interrogation, Roy tells Charlie (Kirk Acevedo) he's been receiving his visions for nine months, roughly when they began seeing Pattern-related attacks.