Fringe premieres 9/9 at 8/7 Central on FOX.

J.J. Abrams reteams with writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci- who wrote next year’s Star Trek movie produced by Abrams- for a procedural rooted in “fringe science” aka the paranormal. “The X-Files was an inspiration” Orci admits. “But we’ll differentiate this through the characters , who are a weird surrogate family.” The series opene with FBI agent Olivia Dunham ( newcomer Anna Torv) and nonplatonic partner John Scott ( Mark Valley) investigating the flesh-liquefying deaths of passengers on a transatlantic flight. When John is K.O’d, a desperate Olivia recklessly teams with a shifty, shrewdly intellectual Peter Bishop ( Joshua Jackson, best known as Pacey from Dawson’s Creek) and his mad-genius father( John Noble). Count on more conspiratorial strangeness confronting them. “I was reading the Chinese are experimenting with weather control for the Olympics” Orci says. “If that’s not a Fringe story, I don’t know what is.”

SOURCE: TVG 7/14/2008