Science fiction TV series Fringe featured quite a few Macs during its five seasons.
Its characters have used desktop Macs, iMacs and a lot of MacBook Pros. But while matching models to recent events is pretty easy, things get a bit trickier when you try to go back in time…
It’s the case of Episode 15 of Fringe’s third season, which takes place in the past, in 1985 to be exact.
In this episode we see Walter Bishop entering his son’s room and in the background there’s a “classic” 68k Macintosh.
Cool, right? Well, not really. Unfortunately it looks like the prop consultant[s] didn’t do their homework and got the wrong Macintosh and even the wrong keyboard.
The Mac and keyboard placed in Fringe’s 1985 are actually from more than two years later.
Instead of a smooth Mac 128k or a 512k, the Mac in the background is actually a SE, with horizontal grooves in the front and a slimmer floppy drive slot in a lower position. And it’s not paired to one of the early minimal keyboards but to a bulky Apple Extended Keyboard, which Steve Jobs wouldn’t approve while at Apple.
The Macintosh SE and the keyboard were released in March 1987. It’s quite improbable for both to appear on a kid’s desk in 1985, even if it’s in a science fiction show. ;-)
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