'Fringe' Teeters On the Edge Of Nowhere

"Fringe," a new Fox series from "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams, is sewn together, Frankenstein-like, from parts of "The Matrix," "Scanners" and "The X Files." In other words, it's another in the ever-popular medico-horror-pseudoscience-mumbo-jumbo-conspiracy genre.

The two-hour pilot, which airs tonight at 8, brings together a beautiful-and-spunky FBI agent (Australian actress Anna Torv), a literally mad scientist (John Noble) and his estranged son ("Dawson Creek's" Joshua Jackson) to investigate the deaths of a planeload of passengers whose flesh is melted by a mysterious toxin. Talk about cabin pressure.

Complications pile up as the unlikely trio pursues leads and overcomes various obstacles. For one, Torv's boyfriend (Mark Valley), another federal agent, gets blasted in a chemical explosion that leaves him looking like a Hebrew National hotdog that was left on the grill too long. From time to time, Torv's boss ("The Wire's" glowering Lance Reddick) shows up to scowl at her.

Torv's FBI agent is the center of the action here, but the marginally more interesting character is the scientist, Walter Bishop. Torv recruits him from a mental institution with the reluctant assistance of his son, who keeps warning everyone about how nutty his pop is. Dad has all the requisite crazy-genius tics -- the Unabomber beard, the trembly fingers, the unidentifiable Vincent Price-ish accent -- until he gets back into business at his abandoned lab at Harvard, which so strongly suggests Dr. Frankenstein's workshop that you half expect lightning flashes and cries of "It's alive!"

Before Bishop was institutionalized, we learn, his work involved research on "mind control, teleportation, astral projection, invisibility [and] reanimation." This not only suggests Dad's inability to focus but tells you that "Fringe" is keeping its options open for future story lines. Personally, we're rooting for invisibility.

Unfortunately, apart from the opening sequence -- think gooey, taffy-pull flesh and projectile viscera -- there's not all that much that's freaky or creepy about "Fringe." The big set piece is some kind of Vulcan mind-meld hokum that enables Torv to pick up a key plot point by "communicating" with her comatose boyfriend. This is effected by drugging her out (with LSD yet) and having her lie in her underwear in a warm salt bath, a la "Minority Report." The scene goes right to the precipice of ludicrous and seems like an excuse to show Torv as close to naked as the FCC allows on broadcast TV (not entirely a bad thing, mind you).

The mysterious force underlying the action in "Fringe" -- its Dharma Initiative or Matrix -- is some kind of corporate-controlled conspiracy called "the Pattern." It's not exactly clear, of course, what the Pattern's pattern is, and this is quite possibly a huge sign of trouble for "Fringe." Judging from "Lost," the Pattern is likely to be just about anything that Abrams and his "Fringe" co-creators decide to phone in each week.

The good news here is the pilot often has the look of a feature film, as, with a reported budget of $10 million, it should. The opening special effects, the snowy locales (Brooklyn and Toronto), the requisite car and foot chases look better than what you'd expect from series TV. There are also occasional flashes of humor and serendipity -- the gang recruits a cow for one of its experiments -- that offer a wink about its intentions and keep "Fringe" from being too dark.

The rest, however, is uneven and not terribly compelling. Blending genres is one thing, but "Fringe" merely throws together a lot of ingredients in a not-very-satisfying salad.

Fringe premieres tonight at 8 on Channel 5.