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"We here at Digital Spy are long-time fans of acclaimed sci-fi drama Fringe and will doubtless be sobbing uncontrollably when the series finally comes to an end later this year after five seasons... The show&amp;#039;s final 13-part run kicks off on Sky1 in the UK tomorrow night, so DS caught up with showrunner Joel Wyman to discuss his approach to the final episodes, whether or not we&amp;#039;ll be seeing any fan-favourite characters again and how Fringe might finally draw to a close... &amp;gt; Fringe: Will the Fox sci-fi drama&amp;#039;s final season win an Emmy? How long was it planned that the final season of Fringe would be set in the year 2036? &amp;quot;Not long at all really. We like to jump around a lot in time, as you know, and when we did episode 4.19, we were up against a couple of things that were sort of uncertain - what was the fate of the show, what was going to happen, how can we satisfy the fans... you know, have the best of both worlds. We usually have a spot reserved for the shows that are off the beaten track, traditionally slot number 19... &amp;quot;If we weren&amp;#039;t going to be renewed I would have had an ending in season four but I was going to do a short run of comics that we could aim at the hardcore fans, to imagine how the story would have gone.  &amp;quot;We thought, &amp;#039;Why don&amp;#039;t we use episode 19 to maybe suggest a direction that we&amp;#039;d would like to go in and see how that works?&amp;#039; And if it works, then we go back to pilot in a weird way. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not a new show at all but it&amp;#039;s the idea of... this is a nice way to go. It&amp;#039;s like, if they didn&amp;#039;t decide to renew the series, then we would have a nice way to go and closure for the end of season four - like I said, a push-off point for the graphic novel.&amp;quot;  When Fox made it clear that season five would be the last, what was your initial reaction? &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;ve been terrific partners as far as transparency is concerned - we&amp;#039;ve been fortunate to have a lot of love with Fox and they&amp;#039;re big supporters of the show... creatively, they really love it. It&amp;#039;s no secret that it&amp;#039;s a niche audience - you know, it&amp;#039;s a science-fiction programme, but then again the show is manageable financially, it makes sense on some level for them. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;ve been so transparent and when they said we were going to be renewed to allow the story to be concluded, I was thrilled. That was just the right order for me - I wanted very much to deliver to the fans what I feel is the send-off that they deserve, a great emotional ending to a five-year investment.  &amp;quot;Literally all of those fans have helped keep us on the air. It&amp;#039;s a big cheer for them, because I feel like this is one of those times where the little guy won.&amp;quot; When you&amp;#039;re wrapping up a show like Fringe, how much of what you write is inspired by what you think the fans want? &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s an interesting question. I feel like the fans have been influencing me from moment to moment, because when the fans have a reaction to an episode, it&amp;#039;s something I&amp;#039;ve long finished, so you can&amp;#039;t really be influenced in that way. &amp;quot;But in this day and age, when you&amp;#039;re talking to fans of the show... I can see when they&amp;#039;re connected to it. You know, we&amp;#039;ve done some great things in the past and I feel like when everything is working, the fans dictate to me that, yeah, they&amp;#039;re feeling good about where the show is going.&amp;quot;  Was it daunting for you to return this season as sole showrunner, following the departure of Jeff Pinkner? &amp;quot;Listen, it takes a lot of people to make the world go round. I am so fortunate that, since season one, we&amp;#039;ve had a great crew in New York, and then we moved to Vancouver and I have to tell you it&amp;#039;s the most sensational group of individuals that are doing this show... for the love of it really - it&amp;#039;s certainly not the money! (laughs) &amp;quot;I really try and truly inspire my crew and the people that I work with to feel a sense of ownership - that they own a brick of the building themselves and they should feel very proud. I have so much help and we have very hardworking individuals that make the show so good. Everybody&amp;#039;s been doing the job for so long now, and I&amp;#039;m very thankful for that.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve described this final season as a 13-part feature film - do you worry about keeping the episodes standalone, or is it now all about the story arc and pleasing the fans? &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s also a great question. You know, there was a time where I had to say, &amp;#039;Okay, there&amp;#039;s been all these great ideas that we&amp;#039;ve had floating around throughout the years&amp;#039;, and a lot of the things I liked, and there were some other things where I thought, &amp;#039;Well, that&amp;#039;s not really relevant&amp;#039;. &amp;quot;What we&amp;#039;re talking about is what the series is really about, and I know what that is for me. There were times where I had to lock myself in a room and I did that for like, three or four days, to sort of think about I would want to watch - that&amp;#039;s the only thing I can give... my own heart and my own soul and say, &amp;#039;What would I want?&amp;#039; and the answer to that was two-fold... &amp;quot;Number one; I would want everything to make sense and I would want everything to make me feel as a viewer that I totally understand now, I get it and it all wraps itself up - you know, the things that really matter. I would require that all the characters came to an end that was logical to the viewer and we accept it and think, &amp;#039;Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense and how moving...&amp;#039; &amp;quot;Then the other part of it was... I hate to say goodbye. If you know me in real life, I rarely say goodbye because I just don&amp;#039;t like to, I don&amp;#039;t wanna think of the emotion! &amp;quot;So I wanted to have that feeling of finishing the show and you have a night to think about it, react to it and once you go into your car in the morning, you can actually sit there and imagine as you&amp;#039;re going through traffic where these great characters are and what they&amp;#039;re doing in the future. I want to leave people with that feeling, that it&amp;#039;s hopeful at the end of it all.&amp;quot;  There&amp;#039;s been some controversy about Fringe being snubbed at the Emmys. Do you think there is a snobbery about science fiction? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s so weird, because I was discussing this with a colleague the other day. Every single movie that comes out, whether it&amp;#039;s Christopher Nolan&amp;#039;s movie Inception or whether it&amp;#039;s ET... science fiction rules at the box office. So [the snub] just sort of shocked me.  &amp;quot;In America, science fiction does have this connotation that&amp;#039;s it&amp;#039;s not deep, but science fiction is always ultimately about existentialism and that is deep! There have been science fiction shows in the past that have maybe not dug as deep as we&amp;#039;re endeavouring to do, but there&amp;#039;s other ones that really have. &amp;quot;When JJ Abrams did Lost, there was some science fiction, but it went through the front door of a very interesting drama about this group of people on an island - then there was this science fiction drawn into that and people accepted that.  &amp;quot;Maybe time will tell, you know, down the road we&amp;#039;ll look back on Fringe and people will say, &amp;#039;Wow, there were truly some great performances and some inspirational storytelling and those guys were really trying&amp;#039;. That&amp;#039;s how I feel about it. &amp;quot;I think everyone&amp;#039;s done an incredible job, so in my opinion, yeah, it&amp;#039;s sort of criminal that a guy is doing the work that John Noble is doing and isn&amp;#039;t even recognised, but at the end of the day I really truly believe that he is okay with that, because it&amp;#039;s not really about the nominations. What does that mean as long as he is doing great work and he can step back and examine it, and think, &amp;#039;Wow, I really delivered something that I am proud of&amp;#039;? John is really a gentleman if you&amp;#039;ve ever had the chance to talk to him.&amp;quot;  One of the major changes in season five is bringing Etta (Georgina Haig) on board as a regular - what motivated that decision? &amp;quot;You know, we&amp;#039;ve been fortunate to have many great performers on the show and sort of expand what they&amp;#039;re doing. Sometimes when we have a character and the actor absolutely knocks it out of the park, we expand on it - we&amp;#039;re working with what we have in front of us. &amp;quot;But actually that character of Etta was specifically designed - that character was absolutely necessary to bring forth some of the dramatic elements that I&amp;#039;m absolutely obsessed with right now.&amp;quot; Will characters like Broyles (Lance Reddick) and Nina play smaller roles this season? &amp;quot;Well, in the 13 episodes, there&amp;#039;s not a lot of room for all of the characters like we had in the 22 [episode] order so they&amp;#039;re in it, I guess percentage-wise probably the same, but [their screen time] probably seems a little bit shorter - but they are definitely important to the season.&amp;quot; So does that rule out appearances from fan-favourite characters like Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel) or Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo)? &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want to give out spoilers. I feel like that there are so many people that have their own favourite character and I had to make a decision again to sort of look at it and say, &amp;#039;No, I&amp;#039;m telling a story here and the story is what&amp;#039;s most important, so who can help me tell that story?&amp;#039; &amp;quot;It always comes back to what I&amp;#039;m trying to say... you know, who&amp;#039;s going to help me illuminate the things I am trying to say? I believe the story always has to come first.&amp;quot; The fifth and final season of Fringe debuts in the UK on Sky1 tomorrow night (Wednesday, October 24) at 10pm. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/fringe/interviews/a431979/fringe-joel-wyman-final-season-qa-its-hopeful-at-the-end/>