It centers on a Fringe investigation of a Massive Dynamic employee who, after believing himself to be under attack by a swarm of sharp-winged butterflies, jumps out of a window.

Meanwhile, Olivia (Anna Torv) continues her visions of the deceased John Scott (Mark Valley), and discovers how he is related to a deadly psychoactive drug synthesized by Massive Dynamic.

"The Dreamscape" was written by series staff writers Julia Cho and Zack Whedon, and was directed by Fred Toye.

Massive Dynamic executive Mark Young (Ptolemy Slocum) delivers a presentation at the company’s Manhattan office.

Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), despite preparing to go out to dinner with her sister, instead agrees to Phillip Broyles' (Lance Reddick) demand that she join the Fringe team's investigation at the scene.

While examining the body, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) sees lacerations on Young’s skin and notes a lack of corresponding tears on his shirt.

At the lab, Walter finds that the toads contain a "psychoactive compound", a hallucinogen that affects the fear center of the brain.

Wishing to discover what else John knew and prevent any further visions from occurring, Olivia insists on returning to Walter’s sensory deprivation tank.

Olivia believes the group were looking to sell the compound as a street drug, and she's able to track down the other man, George Morales (Yul Vazquez).

[5] In an interview fifteen days before the broadcast of "The Dreamscape", showrunner and executive producer Jeff Pinkner stated that it and several surrounding episodes would be "stand-alone in quality, but at the same time we [will] start to peel back another layer of the onion" to transition the second half of the season into a "new chapter.

"[7] The writers inputted small scenes to shine more light on her character, which included Olivia dressing up for a night out but then "the phone rings.

Series co-creator Roberto Orci preferred the opening scene to involve a "more subtle" death, so Young was made to die from falling out a window, which was "a real thing, something that's not imagined or whimsical".

Two cameras, one high and one profile, were positioned to shoot the fall, and were composited together later into a matte painting of the World Trade Building.

But perhaps because I've come to trust Fringe more over its recent run of entertaining episodes, I enjoyed it fairly well, and found myself trying to figure out what kind of thematic connections I could make using the notion of the body reacting to mere thoughts.

SFScope reviewer Sarah Stegall enjoyed Peter's sideplot and hoped to learn more of his past, but thought the "cute in-jokes" were meant to distract the audience from a "thin" plot "full of holes".

[16] She added that "the shallow, cookie-cutter plotting" was starting to annoy her, and noted that while the series had the potential to become "a breakout show like The X-Files or Lost... its major weakness is the continual reliance on the worn-out cliché of the Big Bad Corporation," which had become "stale and dry.

Club writer Joshua Alston considered "The Dreamscape" as a strong example of Fringe's "monster of the week" episodes that predominated the first season, showing "how much effort and imagination went into the self-contained stories".