"Lost" thoughts
Since secret_stuff has conscripted me into performing recaps, I thought I might turn the tables by sharing with you his and my discussion of last night's episode. There're SPOILERS involved if you haven't seen it, so don't read on. It starts out discussing the episode, but bra nches out into a larger discussion of the "Lost" mythology and its current state of affairs.
Quick recap: I'd watch a show with Sayid as the conflicted master assassin and Ben as his evil handler like you wouldn't believe. And given the content of the episode, shouldn't it have been entitled "Foreign Affairs?" *ba-dum-bump!*
Discussion:
Nick (9:02:53 AM): So... We know time travel is involved/possible. What strikes me is that Ben in Germany looks just like Ben in the photo the boat people have.
Martin (9:03:56 AM): Well, we don't know how far ahead in the future the Sayid/Ben flashforward is. What makes you think it's time travel?
Nick (9:06:56 AM): Interviews with cast members, including Naveen, have suggested the possibility. Naveen for example said something like "We're zooming into the 4th dimesnion" and the rocket test that was 31 minutes off already shows the island is at least somewhat 'out of phase' with the regular timestream
Martin (9:07:39 AM): Okay, there I get you. I wager that when the Losties get off the island, they're going to be amazed to find it's 2008.
Nick (9:08:03 AM): I could buy that
Nick (9:08:28 AM): and did you note that the girl Sayid killed/was sleeping with had the same bracelet as Naomi?
Martin (9:08:32 AM): It's worth noting that none of the Rescuers have said anything specifically topical to indicate what year they're from, since the Sox have won the Series twice now.
Martin (9:08:38 AM): I did, in fact.
Nick (9:08:53 AM): Also Ben has all that money/passports yet supposedly never leaves the island?
Nick (9:09:10 AM): And just how did he get Locke's dad, etc?
Nick (9:10:12 AM): Heck, Kate may be with Ben as well if he is the one who gets her out of jail
Martin (9:11:01 AM): Ben is definitely more of the Master Cylinder than we'd expected. Notice that in the flashforward, he's visibly creepier and meaner than he is in the present. Something bad clearly happens to set him off.
Nick (9:11:42 AM): You know how people speculated the car that hit Michael looked just like a car from someone else's flashback... Who is to say that all of this wasn't post-engineered a la the Terminator?
Nick (9:12:08 AM): Well he was forced to leave his island, of course he's pissed
Nick (9:12:27 AM): It would seem they are going after the Boat people, if the bracelet is indicative
Nick (9:13:07 AM): Plus there was already Desmonds semi time travel experience
Martin (9:13:24 AM): Have we seen evidence to confirm that the Boat people are not related to the Dharma Initiative?
Nick (9:13:44 AM): No evidence yet
Nick (9:14:04 AM): It would seem possible they are, or at the least, maybe related to Mittlewerk/Hanso foundation
Nick (9:14:16 AM): Who funded the now defunct Dharma
Nick (9:14:31 AM): next three eps are Kate, Desmond, Juliet centric
Nick (9:14:50 AM): then sun/jin, and finally Michael
Martin (9:14:59 AM): I'm still hoping Juliet makes it off the island, but the outcome is not looking good.
Nick (9:16:00 AM): Hell, staying on the island seems the better deal thus far
Nick (9:17:33 AM): What I am interested in, is do 6 people make it out, or do 5 and Michael gets credited as an oceanic 6 as well?
Martin (9:17:51 AM): All of the lives of the Oceanic Six that we've seen so far don't seem particularly pleasant in the future. Sayid is an assassin working for the Prince of Darkness, Jack devolves into the Unabomber, Hurley goes nuts, and Kate is--what? Some kind of celebutante?
Nick (9:18:43 AM): Well she obviously goes on to a media circus trial, presumably due to her O6 status, but what gets her out of jail? My money is on Ben at this point, no one else has proven clout
Martin (9:19:13 AM): I think Michael is separate from the O6 because he escaped the island long before the others did. The question is, where is he now and why has he not alerted the world to the Oceanic survivors?
Martin (9:19:50 AM): He and Walt were on the passenger manifest, so someone would have to know where he came from and ask how he ended up on that boat.
Nick (9:19:52 AM): Well if he's not O6 then he can never return to his old life, he'd need a new identity
Nick (9:20:05 AM): Plus we have the possibility of time
Nick (9:20:22 AM): or he could have been picked up by the same people who sent the freighter and held in abeyance
Nick (9:20:38 AM): Heck, maybe the fact they found him is why the freighter was even close to the island
Martin (9:20:43 AM): Perhaps Ben and his connections set up new identities for Michael and Walt, leading to Michael being the man in the coffin in Jack's flashforward.
Martin (9:20:51 AM): "Jeremy Bentham."
Martin (9:20:52 AM):
Nick (9:21:01 AM): oohm that would be interesting
Martin (9:24:46 AM): I totally dug Sayid as the slick master assassin. You could do a whole show just with him.
Martin (9:24:59 AM): It'd be almost as good as Sawyer and Eko fighting crime.
Nick (9:25:33 AM): Yeah
Nick (9:25:39 AM): Here's a thought as well
Nick (9:25:47 AM): What if they aren't there for Ben?
Nick (9:26:26 AM): So Miles had Ben's picture. Naomi had Desmond/Penny's
Martin (9:27:41 AM): They could be there for several people.
Nick (9:31:58 AM): They seem to have been seletced, in the RPG style of legendary coinicidence, for a special skill each brings
Nick (9:32:19 AM): Math/Physics boy... to analyze the time synch problem?
Nick (9:32:27 AM): Ghostbuster Boy... to deal with Jacob?
Nick (9:32:43 AM): Archaeology Girl, to examine the ruins?
Nick (9:33:07 AM): Which leads to open question #1... Where are the Others? Last we say, Ben sent them on "to the Temple"
Nick (9:33:24 AM): only his enforcer squad were killed
Martin (9:33:36 AM): And what have they been doing in the meantime?
Nick (9:34:05 AM): Because they are a large group, including at least 15-20 815 survivors
Nick (9:35:31 AM): The other time travel clue was a Polar Bear from the Hydra station wound up in an archaeological dig in Tunisia
Martin (9:35:55 AM): Yeah, that messed me up. Not easily explainable.
Nick (9:36:33 AM): We know that before Ben destroyed Dharma they had at least one "Incident"
Nick (9:36:49 AM): Oh, and then there are the expolding double bunnies!
Nick (9:37:44 AM): Which leads us back to the idea of potential Doubles
Nick (9:37:59 AM): Which could be different timestreams
Martin (9:39:49 AM): Or perhaps the polar bear was an experiment sent through Ben's "magic box," the same deus ex machina that brought Sawyer Sr. to the island, and may be responsible for the "time lag" between the island and the rest of the world.
Nick (9:40:29 AM): Right, it could be part of the Dharma experiments, or a result of the incident
Nick (9:40:47 AM): We still don't know why Candle, or whichever is his real name, lost an arm
Nick (9:40:58 AM): The Orchid I expect will be key to this
Nick (9:42:42 AM): And the Casimir Effect
Martin (9:43:12 AM): What's that again?
Nick (9:43:19 AM): which is related to wormholes
Nick (9:43:28 AM): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
Nick (9:43:35 AM): Its from the Orchid video
Nick (9:43:51 AM): Exotic matter with negative energy density is required to stabilize a wormhole.[6] Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever[7] pointed out that the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time, and suggested that negative effect could be used to stabilize a wormhole to allow faster than light travel.
Nick (9:44:30 AM): However, because of the scale at which the effect applies, its applications are most likely to be found in nanotechnology
Martin (9:45:02 AM): Perhaps the wormhole is what's bringing in objects that couldn't possibly make it to the island otherwise (The Black Rock, Sawyer Sr.) and is distorting the effects of local spacetime.
Nick (9:46:24 AM): Possibly, although I think the Black Rock got there on its own, the Island seems to have a kind of Bermuda Triangle effect that people DO wind up there by accident - Rousseau's ship, possibly Black Rock, possibly the original "natives", Desmond
Martin (9:47:01 AM): Maybe it's the Bermuda Triangle.
Nick (9:47:14 AM): Or something similar
Nick (9:47:21 AM): What did I say it was? Lemuria
Martin (9:47:48 AM): The Black Rock could've got there under its own, but how did it get so far inland? The wormhole barfed it up, that's how.
Nick (9:48:03 AM): Possibly
Nick (9:48:09 AM): or the Black Smoke moved it
Martin (9:48:39 AM): Could be. We know the monster has mass and the ability to grab things.
Nick (9:49:12 AM): Or maybe it 'arrived' relatively recently due to Dharma experimenting
Nick (9:49:35 AM): They obviously were originally able to get to the island easily enough to build all their infrastructure
Nick (9:50:26 AM): Actually, that's another option: What if this is the equivalent of the Mark Wahlberg Planet of the Apes?
Nick (9:50:42 AM): Dharma arrives in the 60s or whatever
Nick (9:50:50 AM): start messing with stuff.
Nick (9:51:04 AM): People get sent back in time, maybe hundreds of years.
Nick (9:51:20 AM): THEY spawn the "native population" that is already there when Dharma arrives
Martin (9:54:16 AM): So Dharma was investigating itself, essentially.
Nick (9:55:27 AM): and it could explain why the natives are "hostiles" their history
Nick (10:04:43 AM): Didn't we see Locke in a previous DHARMA video?
Martin (10:04:54 AM): Not to my knowledge.
Martin (10:05:43 AM): Another thing about this wormhole theory is that the electromagnetic radiation may be what healed Locke, enabled Jin and Sun to conceive, etc.
Nick (10:06:25 AM): right
Nick (10:06:50 AM): although what about the "plague" or whatever those injections were for, and the babies? The reason they recruited Juliet
Martin (10:07:25 AM): Or why Locke's ability to walk seemed tied to his faith in the Island.
Martin (10:07:45 AM): See, that's the problem with Cuse, Abrams, and Lindelof. They throw all this random shit out there and have no idea how to tie it together.
Nick (10:09:50 AM): yeah
Nick (10:19:17 AM): And there is still the whole mittlewerk virus deal
Martin (10:20:02 AM): I wonder if that whole plotline was confined to the ARG to give the fans something to do.
Nick (10:21:10 AM): Could be, but it did seem to tie into kind of the direction they were going at the time
Nick (10:21:22 AM): If that is the case its extra bogus and a waste of time
Martin (10:22:53 AM): That's why I don't fuck with the ARG stuff. It's just doled out to the fans to keep them interested and has no bearing on the actual product.
Nick (10:23:20 AM): Which defeats the entire purpose
Nick (10:23:55 AM): If they don't want to advance the plot, fine, but blatant untruths are hurtful to the overall story
Nick (10:24:24 AM): I suspect they changed their minds and decided to go more crazy with the plot
Martin (10:25:04 AM): Could very well be. They saw how lame Season 3 was and decided to go in a different direction.
Nick (10:29:48 AM): Another time travel/effect clue is Richard Alpert's apparent agelessness
Nick (10:39:10 AM): And Dharma was inoculating its people from day 1 when they arrived on the island
Nick (10:49:17 AM): I saw a decent theory that fits your 2008 theory... Its how they will explain Walt being "older"
Nick (10:51:36 AM): here is an interesting note supposedly from the DVD:
Nick (10:51:41 AM): According to the feature "Access Granted" of Lost: The Complete Third Season, DHARMA drilled the earth and hit an area with large contained electromagnetic buildup. They broke into the anomaly which allowed the field to leak out. The Swan was built over this area to act as a sort of cork. DHARMA then came up with a scheme to "dam" the leak but with the drawback that the field built up behind the dam and would eventually break it. The failsafe permanently "sealed" the leak.
Nick (11:23:07 AM): The Locke killing his dad thing makes more sense to me now
Martin (11:23:29 AM): How so?
Nick (11:24:03 AM): Ben's own "initiation" into the Others involved his killing his own father
Nick (11:24:19 AM): perhaps that is part of the Other's prophecy
Nick (11:30:44 AM): Some are theorizing Jacob is Locke
Nick (11:31:26 AM): Also Lindelof claims that Adam and Eve and other season 1 mysteries will be resolved at the end of the series, as a kind of proof that this is what they intended all along
Martin (11:31:38 AM): Whatever.
Nick (11:37:50 AM): heh
Nick (11:54:21 AM): The "God loves you as he loved Jacob" message appears in the Room 23 video as well
Martin (11:55:33 AM): Didn't Jacob have more hair than Locke?
Nick (11:56:04 AM): Yes, it was apparently revealed on the DVD that a propmaster on set was the actor used in that original scene
Quick recap: I'd watch a show with Sayid as the conflicted master assassin and Ben as his evil handler like you wouldn't believe. And given the content of the episode, shouldn't it have been entitled "Foreign Affairs?" *ba-dum-bump!*
Discussion:
Nick (9:02:53 AM): So... We know time travel is involved/possible. What strikes me is that Ben in Germany looks just like Ben in the photo the boat people have.
Martin (9:03:56 AM): Well, we don't know how far ahead in the future the Sayid/Ben flashforward is. What makes you think it's time travel?
Nick (9:06:56 AM): Interviews with cast members, including Naveen, have suggested the possibility. Naveen for example said something like "We're zooming into the 4th dimesnion" and the rocket test that was 31 minutes off already shows the island is at least somewhat 'out of phase' with the regular timestream
Martin (9:07:39 AM): Okay, there I get you. I wager that when the Losties get off the island, they're going to be amazed to find it's 2008.
Nick (9:08:03 AM): I could buy that
Nick (9:08:28 AM): and did you note that the girl Sayid killed/was sleeping with had the same bracelet as Naomi?
Martin (9:08:32 AM): It's worth noting that none of the Rescuers have said anything specifically topical to indicate what year they're from, since the Sox have won the Series twice now.
Martin (9:08:38 AM): I did, in fact.
Nick (9:08:53 AM): Also Ben has all that money/passports yet supposedly never leaves the island?
Nick (9:09:10 AM): And just how did he get Locke's dad, etc?
Nick (9:10:12 AM): Heck, Kate may be with Ben as well if he is the one who gets her out of jail
Martin (9:11:01 AM): Ben is definitely more of the Master Cylinder than we'd expected. Notice that in the flashforward, he's visibly creepier and meaner than he is in the present. Something bad clearly happens to set him off.
Nick (9:11:42 AM): You know how people speculated the car that hit Michael looked just like a car from someone else's flashback... Who is to say that all of this wasn't post-engineered a la the Terminator?
Nick (9:12:08 AM): Well he was forced to leave his island, of course he's pissed
Nick (9:12:27 AM): It would seem they are going after the Boat people, if the bracelet is indicative
Nick (9:13:07 AM): Plus there was already Desmonds semi time travel experience
Martin (9:13:24 AM): Have we seen evidence to confirm that the Boat people are not related to the Dharma Initiative?
Nick (9:13:44 AM): No evidence yet
Nick (9:14:04 AM): It would seem possible they are, or at the least, maybe related to Mittlewerk/Hanso foundation
Nick (9:14:16 AM): Who funded the now defunct Dharma
Nick (9:14:31 AM): next three eps are Kate, Desmond, Juliet centric
Nick (9:14:50 AM): then sun/jin, and finally Michael
Martin (9:14:59 AM): I'm still hoping Juliet makes it off the island, but the outcome is not looking good.
Nick (9:16:00 AM): Hell, staying on the island seems the better deal thus far
Nick (9:17:33 AM): What I am interested in, is do 6 people make it out, or do 5 and Michael gets credited as an oceanic 6 as well?
Martin (9:17:51 AM): All of the lives of the Oceanic Six that we've seen so far don't seem particularly pleasant in the future. Sayid is an assassin working for the Prince of Darkness, Jack devolves into the Unabomber, Hurley goes nuts, and Kate is--what? Some kind of celebutante?
Nick (9:18:43 AM): Well she obviously goes on to a media circus trial, presumably due to her O6 status, but what gets her out of jail? My money is on Ben at this point, no one else has proven clout
Martin (9:19:13 AM): I think Michael is separate from the O6 because he escaped the island long before the others did. The question is, where is he now and why has he not alerted the world to the Oceanic survivors?
Martin (9:19:50 AM): He and Walt were on the passenger manifest, so someone would have to know where he came from and ask how he ended up on that boat.
Nick (9:19:52 AM): Well if he's not O6 then he can never return to his old life, he'd need a new identity
Nick (9:20:05 AM): Plus we have the possibility of time
Nick (9:20:22 AM): or he could have been picked up by the same people who sent the freighter and held in abeyance
Nick (9:20:38 AM): Heck, maybe the fact they found him is why the freighter was even close to the island
Martin (9:20:43 AM): Perhaps Ben and his connections set up new identities for Michael and Walt, leading to Michael being the man in the coffin in Jack's flashforward.
Martin (9:20:51 AM): "Jeremy Bentham."
Martin (9:20:52 AM):
Nick (9:21:01 AM): oohm that would be interesting
Martin (9:24:46 AM): I totally dug Sayid as the slick master assassin. You could do a whole show just with him.
Martin (9:24:59 AM): It'd be almost as good as Sawyer and Eko fighting crime.
Nick (9:25:33 AM): Yeah
Nick (9:25:39 AM): Here's a thought as well
Nick (9:25:47 AM): What if they aren't there for Ben?
Nick (9:26:26 AM): So Miles had Ben's picture. Naomi had Desmond/Penny's
Martin (9:27:41 AM): They could be there for several people.
Nick (9:31:58 AM): They seem to have been seletced, in the RPG style of legendary coinicidence, for a special skill each brings
Nick (9:32:19 AM): Math/Physics boy... to analyze the time synch problem?
Nick (9:32:27 AM): Ghostbuster Boy... to deal with Jacob?
Nick (9:32:43 AM): Archaeology Girl, to examine the ruins?
Nick (9:33:07 AM): Which leads to open question #1... Where are the Others? Last we say, Ben sent them on "to the Temple"
Nick (9:33:24 AM): only his enforcer squad were killed
Martin (9:33:36 AM): And what have they been doing in the meantime?
Nick (9:34:05 AM): Because they are a large group, including at least 15-20 815 survivors
Nick (9:35:31 AM): The other time travel clue was a Polar Bear from the Hydra station wound up in an archaeological dig in Tunisia
Martin (9:35:55 AM): Yeah, that messed me up. Not easily explainable.
Nick (9:36:33 AM): We know that before Ben destroyed Dharma they had at least one "Incident"
Nick (9:36:49 AM): Oh, and then there are the expolding double bunnies!
Nick (9:37:44 AM): Which leads us back to the idea of potential Doubles
Nick (9:37:59 AM): Which could be different timestreams
Martin (9:39:49 AM): Or perhaps the polar bear was an experiment sent through Ben's "magic box," the same deus ex machina that brought Sawyer Sr. to the island, and may be responsible for the "time lag" between the island and the rest of the world.
Nick (9:40:29 AM): Right, it could be part of the Dharma experiments, or a result of the incident
Nick (9:40:47 AM): We still don't know why Candle, or whichever is his real name, lost an arm
Nick (9:40:58 AM): The Orchid I expect will be key to this
Nick (9:42:42 AM): And the Casimir Effect
Martin (9:43:12 AM): What's that again?
Nick (9:43:19 AM): which is related to wormholes
Nick (9:43:28 AM): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
Nick (9:43:35 AM): Its from the Orchid video
Nick (9:43:51 AM): Exotic matter with negative energy density is required to stabilize a wormhole.[6] Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever[7] pointed out that the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time, and suggested that negative effect could be used to stabilize a wormhole to allow faster than light travel.
Nick (9:44:30 AM): However, because of the scale at which the effect applies, its applications are most likely to be found in nanotechnology
Martin (9:45:02 AM): Perhaps the wormhole is what's bringing in objects that couldn't possibly make it to the island otherwise (The Black Rock, Sawyer Sr.) and is distorting the effects of local spacetime.
Nick (9:46:24 AM): Possibly, although I think the Black Rock got there on its own, the Island seems to have a kind of Bermuda Triangle effect that people DO wind up there by accident - Rousseau's ship, possibly Black Rock, possibly the original "natives", Desmond
Martin (9:47:01 AM): Maybe it's the Bermuda Triangle.
Nick (9:47:14 AM): Or something similar
Nick (9:47:21 AM): What did I say it was? Lemuria
Martin (9:47:48 AM): The Black Rock could've got there under its own, but how did it get so far inland? The wormhole barfed it up, that's how.
Nick (9:48:03 AM): Possibly
Nick (9:48:09 AM): or the Black Smoke moved it
Martin (9:48:39 AM): Could be. We know the monster has mass and the ability to grab things.
Nick (9:49:12 AM): Or maybe it 'arrived' relatively recently due to Dharma experimenting
Nick (9:49:35 AM): They obviously were originally able to get to the island easily enough to build all their infrastructure
Nick (9:50:26 AM): Actually, that's another option: What if this is the equivalent of the Mark Wahlberg Planet of the Apes?
Nick (9:50:42 AM): Dharma arrives in the 60s or whatever
Nick (9:50:50 AM): start messing with stuff.
Nick (9:51:04 AM): People get sent back in time, maybe hundreds of years.
Nick (9:51:20 AM): THEY spawn the "native population" that is already there when Dharma arrives
Martin (9:54:16 AM): So Dharma was investigating itself, essentially.
Nick (9:55:27 AM): and it could explain why the natives are "hostiles" their history
Nick (10:04:43 AM): Didn't we see Locke in a previous DHARMA video?
Martin (10:04:54 AM): Not to my knowledge.
Martin (10:05:43 AM): Another thing about this wormhole theory is that the electromagnetic radiation may be what healed Locke, enabled Jin and Sun to conceive, etc.
Nick (10:06:25 AM): right
Nick (10:06:50 AM): although what about the "plague" or whatever those injections were for, and the babies? The reason they recruited Juliet
Martin (10:07:25 AM): Or why Locke's ability to walk seemed tied to his faith in the Island.
Martin (10:07:45 AM): See, that's the problem with Cuse, Abrams, and Lindelof. They throw all this random shit out there and have no idea how to tie it together.
Nick (10:09:50 AM): yeah
Nick (10:19:17 AM): And there is still the whole mittlewerk virus deal
Martin (10:20:02 AM): I wonder if that whole plotline was confined to the ARG to give the fans something to do.
Nick (10:21:10 AM): Could be, but it did seem to tie into kind of the direction they were going at the time
Nick (10:21:22 AM): If that is the case its extra bogus and a waste of time
Martin (10:22:53 AM): That's why I don't fuck with the ARG stuff. It's just doled out to the fans to keep them interested and has no bearing on the actual product.
Nick (10:23:20 AM): Which defeats the entire purpose
Nick (10:23:55 AM): If they don't want to advance the plot, fine, but blatant untruths are hurtful to the overall story
Nick (10:24:24 AM): I suspect they changed their minds and decided to go more crazy with the plot
Martin (10:25:04 AM): Could very well be. They saw how lame Season 3 was and decided to go in a different direction.
Nick (10:29:48 AM): Another time travel/effect clue is Richard Alpert's apparent agelessness
Nick (10:39:10 AM): And Dharma was inoculating its people from day 1 when they arrived on the island
Nick (10:49:17 AM): I saw a decent theory that fits your 2008 theory... Its how they will explain Walt being "older"
Nick (10:51:36 AM): here is an interesting note supposedly from the DVD:
Nick (10:51:41 AM): According to the feature "Access Granted" of Lost: The Complete Third Season, DHARMA drilled the earth and hit an area with large contained electromagnetic buildup. They broke into the anomaly which allowed the field to leak out. The Swan was built over this area to act as a sort of cork. DHARMA then came up with a scheme to "dam" the leak but with the drawback that the field built up behind the dam and would eventually break it. The failsafe permanently "sealed" the leak.
Nick (11:23:07 AM): The Locke killing his dad thing makes more sense to me now
Martin (11:23:29 AM): How so?
Nick (11:24:03 AM): Ben's own "initiation" into the Others involved his killing his own father
Nick (11:24:19 AM): perhaps that is part of the Other's prophecy
Nick (11:30:44 AM): Some are theorizing Jacob is Locke
Nick (11:31:26 AM): Also Lindelof claims that Adam and Eve and other season 1 mysteries will be resolved at the end of the series, as a kind of proof that this is what they intended all along
Martin (11:31:38 AM): Whatever.
Nick (11:37:50 AM): heh
Nick (11:54:21 AM): The "God loves you as he loved Jacob" message appears in the Room 23 video as well
Martin (11:55:33 AM): Didn't Jacob have more hair than Locke?
Nick (11:56:04 AM): Yes, it was apparently revealed on the DVD that a propmaster on set was the actor used in that original scene