# Lost 4/08/09 Dead is Dead



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

So if Whatever happened happened, and dead is dead, did Ben kill the losties stuck in 1977?

This is the fastest hour on TV. Show just keeps getting better IMHO.


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

I think this episode gives credence to Rob H's theory last week. Dead is dead, except now it's not for John. So whatever happened, happened, except for whatever happened to bring back Dharmaville, which hadn't previously happened. 

And it's all pretty damn scary.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Gunnyman said:


> So if Whatever happened happened, and dead is dead, did Ben kill the losties stuck in 1977?


Not if they got out before he killed the Dharma Initiative...


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!! Penny lived!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

any idea WHEN John and Sun and Ben are? were the houses in Dharmaville destroyed by Widmore's team? My memory is lacking.


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!! Penny lived!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Yeah after that "Tell Desmond I'm sorry" I was ready to throw something at my TV.


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## flyers088 (Apr 19, 2005)

Who the heck are the new leaders of the crash site? They seem to have a purpose for being there.


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

flyers088 said:


> Who the heck are the new leaders of the crash site? They seem to have a purpose for being there.


They also seem to have the same crazy the French team had.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

So Rob, Ben's house was Ben's house, complete with that painting of a blond that looks suspiciously like Juliete. Do we agree there's less evidence now that the universe is broken?


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

jkeegan said:


> YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!! Penny lived!!!!!!!!!!!!!





Gunnyman said:


> Yeah after that "Tell Desmond I'm sorry" I was ready to throw something at my TV.


I was there with you, my first thought was "oh no, please tell me they didn't go there" because they certainly could have. Then when Charlie came up, I was thinking, that's even worse, Ben couldn't be that evil...

Then Des knocks him down and I let out a huge cheer!
*gawd I love this show*

They really have picked up the pace, they're giving us regular pay offs answering significant questions, the more I adore this season, the more I'm convinced that giving them an end date really let them get back to where they needed to be from a writing and storytelling perspective.

Diane


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

jkeegan said:


> So Rob, Ben's house was Ben's house, complete with that painting of a blond that looks suspiciously like Juliete. Do we agree there's less evidence now that the universe is broken?


Yes, less, but not a lot less.

I wasn't sure whether or not Ben's house _was _Ben's house. The smoke monster controls were obviously there before the Others took over. Ben's always playing Ben's game; if all that mattered to him was getting to the controls, I could see him ignoring the fact that the village has changed, if that's the case.

I'm just not sure what the writers are up to at this point. In the last village episode, they pointed very clearly to the village having been abandoned after the Purge. It seemed strange to me that this time they didn't deal with what's up with the village at all. I guess we'll just have to wait and see where they're heading.

As for the universe being broken, though, I don't see any room for doubt on that point. I think the only question is what the symptoms are and are not.


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## ElJay (Apr 6, 2005)

Emmy for Michael Giacchino

Who would've known the smoke monster sounds like a dot matrix receipt printer?


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## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

Wow, an incredible episode. I need to digest it more before commenting too much.



Rob Helmerichs said:


> Yes, less, but not a lot less.
> 
> I wasn't sure whether or not Ben's house _was _Ben's house. The smoke monster controls were obviously there before the Others took over. Ben's always playing Ben's game; if all that mattered to him was getting to the controls, I could see him ignoring the fact that the village has changed, if that's the case.


I'm pretty sure it was Ben's house as we last saw it in The Shape of Things to Come. The furniture was moved around the door and the window was broken like we last saw it. Also, the Risk game was still out from when Hurley and Sawyer were playing before the freighter folk attacked. I still don't think the village changed. My guess is that we just never saw the processing center on screen and that is what is causing people to think of an alternate universe. Though I could still be wrong


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

brermike said:


> I still don't think the village changed. My guess is that we just never saw the processing center on screen and that is what is causing people to think of an alternate universe.


Could be, but that kind of misdirection would be very, very uncharacteristic of this show.

We shall see!


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## pcguru83 (Jan 18, 2005)

brermike said:


> Also, the Risk game was still out from when Hurley and Sawyer were playing before the freighter folk attacked.


Yes, this exactly. I thought for sure this would clear up whether or not the village had changed. Apparently still not completely for some. 

Seems in that scene or series of scenes they went out of their way to show that we were seeing that room exactly as it had been before.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

brermike said:


> I'm pretty sure it was Ben's house as we last saw it in The Shape of Things to Come. The furniture was moved around the door and the window was broken like we last saw it. Also, the Risk game was still out from when Hurley and Sawyer were playing before the freighter folk attacked. I still don't think the village changed. My guess is that we just never saw the processing center on screen and that is what is causing people to think of an alternate universe. Though I could still be wrong


I agree. I didn't notice the painting that jkeegan mentioned, but I did notice the Risk game. I think at this point there is more evidence that things have not changed than evidence that things have changed. With all the talk in past threads of the 1977 pictures indicating an alternate timeline, I took the scene of Ben finding a picture of him and Alex in his old office as an indication that the timeline hasn't changed.


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

And what do you make of the fact that when Ben saw the 1977 picture, he didn't seem to the slightest recall that he had seen Hurley, Jack and Kate back then?


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## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

brermike said:


> I'm pretty sure it was Ben's house as we last saw it in The Shape of Things to Come. The furniture was moved around the door and the window was broken like we last saw it. Also, the Risk game was still out from when Hurley and Sawyer were playing before the freighter folk attacked. I still don't think the village changed. My guess is that we just never saw the processing center on screen and that is what is causing people to think of an alternate universe. Though I could still be wrong


I think the RISK game is the biggest clue that they're giving that things are still the same in Dharmaville. It's just...empty. I find it interesting one of the questions Locke asked Ben was why did they take over the village after the Purge. Because they brought that up, I'm sure they're going to answer that.

And here we see the season's most blatant evidence of growing Egyptology. Obviously Anubis and the ideas of some form of eternal life or the power of holding life after death is tying the statue, the ankh necklace, and the temple that we saw today. Makes me wonder where they're going with this.

So, what did Widmore do to get himself handcuffed and thrown off the island via sub? (Not via the wheel as some here had mused.)

I was surprised Cesar's dead. Definitely caught me off guard there. And what's in that crate? Hmmm...

And finally, notice how the smoke monster's judging of Ben was the same as the judging of Eko -- showing scenes of their past. Apparently Eko was weighed and found wanting, but not Ben. So, what's the smoke monster's criteria and more importantly, WHAT is it?


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

mqpickles said:


> And what do you make of the fact that when Ben saw the 1977 picture, he didn't seem to the slightest recall that he had seen Hurley, Jack and Kate back then?


You are right, that is curious. Of course it is Ben we're talking about...


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## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

mqpickles said:


> And what do you make of the fact that when Ben saw the 1977 picture, he didn't seem to the slightest recall that he had seen Hurley, Jack and Kate back then?


Well, so far we never saw young Ben see Hurley, Jack and Kate. They had only been there a day before he got shot. He was unconscious the entire time Kate was near him. Plus, we know he doesn't remember the shooting so he probably doesn't remember Sayid either.

I bet he remembers Juliet though since she had been there for 3 years.


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

tewcewl said:


> And finally, notice how the smoke monster's judging of Ben was the same as the judging of Eko -- showing scenes of their past. Apparently *Eko was weighed and found wanting*, but not Ben. So, what's the smoke monster's criteria and more importantly, WHAT is it?


Wanting? Or complete?

Another interpretation is that Eko had accomplished everything he needed to and was ready for the afterlife. Ben still has work to do, as evidenced by the follow-up of Alex telling him that he must follow Locke.


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## Peter000 (Apr 15, 2002)

flyers088 said:


> Who the heck are the new leaders of the crash site? They seem to have a purpose for being there.


Speculation, but I'm fairly sure they're Widmore's people. Ben told Widmore he and the 06 were going back to the island, so Widmore probably had the 06 shadowed and figured out what was going on. He probably even facilitated Sayid's "arrest" by the woman who was one of the leaders.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

So according to Richard's conversation w/Widmore, can we guess that Jacob = the island?

Btw, Penny's son Charlie had the same sort of hairdo that the first Charles Widmore actor in the episode did.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

...and... what DOES lie in the shadow of the statue?
(and how did any of them get brainwashed way over on this island?)


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

jkeegan said:


> YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!! Penny lived!!!!!!!!!!!!!


More importantly, Des kicked Ben's ASS! Rule #1: don't mess with Des. Rule #2: don't mess with Des's lady. He most definitely will NOT see you in another life, bruthah.



flyers088 said:


> Who the heck are the new leaders of the crash site? They seem to have a purpose for being there.





Gunnyman said:


> They also seem to have the same crazy the French team had.





Peter000 said:


> Speculation, but I'm fairly sure they're Widmore's people. Ben told Widmore he and the 06 were going back to the island, so Widmore probably had the 06 shadowed and figured out what was going on. He probably even facilitated Sayid's "arrest" by the woman who was one of the leaders.


I'm absolutely with Peter there. They're Widemore's people, especially given that handshaking question. What's in the shadow of the giant statue? Trick question: Smokey, of course, IS the statue's shadow. 



ElJay said:


> Emmy for Michael Giacchino
> 
> Who would've known the smoke monster sounds like a dot matrix receipt printer?


Actually, it's the receipt printer in a NYC taxicab.

Greg


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## bacevedo (Oct 31, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> ...and... what DOES lie in the shadow of the statue?
> (and how did any of them get brainwashed way over on this island?)


My guess....

The temple lies in the shadow.

And they were already on the island at one time and were returning like our O6. They may have been from way back when the statue was actually intact. But that's just a guess - who knows what the writers have in store for us.

Bryan


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Could be, but that kind of misdirection would be very, very uncharacteristic of this show.
> 
> We shall see!


Again, I don't think they ever meant to imply that the village was abandoned way-back-when. I always took it as three years having passed since we last saw it and it was now in disrepair. I think any misdirection was unintentional.


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## DUDE_NJX (Feb 12, 2003)

tewcewl said:


> And what's in that crate? Hmmm...


The Ark of the Covenant


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## Philly Bill (Oct 6, 2004)

I :heart: LOST


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

Gunnyman said:


> Yeah after that "Tell Desmond I'm sorry" I was ready to throw something at my TV.





dianebrat said:


> I was there with you, my first thought was "oh no, please tell me they didn't go there" because they certainly could have. Then when Charlie came up, I was thinking, that's even worse, Ben couldn't be that evil...


When Ben said "Tell Desmond I'm sorry", my first thought was "Oh crap, he killed little Charlie!"

Nice to know I was wrong.



tewcewl said:


> So, what did Widmore do to get himself handcuffed and thrown off the island via sub? (Not via the wheel as some here had mused.)


They stated that he had been making (unauthorized) trips off the island and had a daughter (Penny) by an outsider.



tewcewl said:


> I was surprised Cesar's dead. Definitely caught me off guard there. And what's in that crate? Hmmm...


He is now an ex-Ceaser.

Wow!
I do have to admit that the writers are turning out gold week after week.

And while Alex's ghost told Ben to follow Locke's orders, do you think he's going to do it with a smile on his face?


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

mqpickles said:


> And what do you make of the fact that when Ben saw the 1977 picture, he didn't seem to the slightest recall that he had seen Hurley, Jack and Kate back then?


Well, Ben lies. A lot. 

Speaking of which - who did he lie to about Locke's re-animation, Sun or Locke? I'm gonna guess he lied to Locke, and that he killed him in order to get everyone to the island, but that he didn't expect Locke to come back to life.

Great episode again. I keep finding myself checking the time and dreading the end of each episode, I just want them to go on and on right now.


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

JYoung said:


> And while Alex's ghost told Ben to follow Locke's orders, do you think he's going to do it with a smile on his face?


Whoever said it was Alex's ghost?

Smokey surrounded Ben, read his thoughts, descended, then took the form of who he loved the most in order to communicate the message that needed to be communicated.

That was Smokey, not a ghost.

Greg


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## Michael S (Jan 12, 2004)

I think that John is dead and thats Jacob taking the form of Loche.


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## Peter000 (Apr 15, 2002)

Michael S said:


> I think that John is dead and thats Jacob taking the form of Loche.


I keep going back and forth about that. Obviously Christian is an island manifestation. But Locke seems to be special. The island cured his paralysis right away, and healed his gunshot very quickly. As well as a broken leg. So it's not a stretch to think the island brought him back.


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## TiVoJedi (Mar 1, 2002)

So the first thing Ben does when he returns to his house 3 years later is go to the secret bathroom cave in the back and remembers to flush the toilet????Bout danm time! No wonder the monster wouldn't come out.


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## rgr (Feb 21, 2003)

brermike said:


> Well, so far we never saw young Ben see Hurley, Jack and Kate. They had only been there a day before he got shot. He was unconscious the entire time Kate was near him. Plus, we know he doesn't remember the shooting so he probably doesn't remember Sayid either.
> 
> I bet he remembers Juliet though since she had been there for 3 years.


Isn't it irrelevant if Ben saw or didn't see H, J, and K as a kid? That picture's been around since 1977 and wasn't it found in his house? So he must have seen it at some point. And he never thought to wonder why these folks from a picture 30 years old crashed in a jet without aging a bit?


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## Snappa77 (Feb 14, 2004)

No Jack this entire ep.....sniff....sniff......
*THIS IS THE BEST EPISODE EVER*!!!!!!!


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

tewcewl said:


> And finally, notice how the smoke monster's judging of Ben was the same as the judging of Eko -- showing scenes of their past. Apparently Eko was weighed and found wanting, but not Ben. So, what's the smoke monster's criteria and more importantly, WHAT is it?


Well, there was the second discussion between Whidmore and Ben when Whidmore was handcuffed and being escorted off the island. Whidmore suggested that Ben might have been wrong about the island not wanting Alex dead and, if that's the case, then it's only a matter of time. So maybe that fact that Bet let Alex die is actually what saved him.



gchance said:


> Whoever said it was Alex's ghost?
> 
> Smokey surrounded Ben, read his thoughts, descended, then took the form of who he loved the most in order to communicate the message that needed to be communicated.


I saw that as the island talking to Ben, not Smokey.


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

rgr said:


> Isn't it irrelevant if Ben saw or didn't see H, J, and K as a kid? That picture's been around since 1977 and wasn't it found in his house?


It was found in the Processing Center building. Sun just showed it to him in his house.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Adios, Cesar. We hardly knew ye.

I guess either Ben missed Desmond or Desmond had his super bat-bullet deflecting Polo shirt on.


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

cheesesteak said:


> I guess either Ben missed Desmond or Desmond had his super bat-bullet deflecting Polo shirt on.


I think it was more like that Desmond must have just bought some Kevlar at the store he was returning from since it was his shopping bag that was hit.


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## pcguru83 (Jan 18, 2005)

bacevedo said:


> My guess....
> 
> The temple lies in the shadow.
> 
> And they were already on the island at one time and were returning like our O6.


I thought the same thing during one of the early scenes with the other poeple from the plane this episode. I immediately dismissed it though, as I thought that seemed maybe a bit out there.

But from that ending we saw...maybe not so much. I'm guessing they are either another O6 from an earlier (later?) time, or as someone mentioned before, they are now "sick".


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## Fool Me Twice (Jul 6, 2004)

Locke and Ben. Emerson and O'Quinn. When those two team up you know it's going to be a good show. I couldn't stop smiling watching Ben watch Locke walk around like he owned the place. 

I was confident that Ben didn't harm Des or his family--it was telegraphed too much and the fan revolt would be tremendous. But, they completely shocked me with Caesar's death. Here I've been wondering what his purpose in the story was going to be--it was beginning to look like he was going to be a pawn of Ben and a foil of Locke--and then BAM! 

Michael Emerson playing young Ben was a bit of a tough sell (I never noticed before that he resembles Paul Reubens). I liked the guy they chose for young Widmore.

When Rousseau captured Ben back in Season Two, shouldn't she have remembered the man that took her Baby? I suppose you could point out that it was dark and that it was a long time ago and that she's crazy, but I don't know... I think she should have remembered that.


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## Fool Me Twice (Jul 6, 2004)

Oh, and Locke is alive, that's no ghost or island manifestation. He is always present. He doesn't just appear and disappear like the other manifestations. He has private moments where he appears to be in thought. Just the whole way he's presented by the camera has a different feel than the way Christian, Walt, et al are presented.


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## Fool Me Twice (Jul 6, 2004)

"What's about to come out of this jungle, I can't control."

Enter John Locke. 

Hilarious.


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## danplaysbass (Jul 19, 2004)

They did a superb job casting the different Widmores and the makeup used on old widmore to make him look young was excellent.

What a crazy episode! I think Desmond did get shot but it wasn't fatal. I'm fairly certain that when he jumped Ben you could see blood on his shirt.

The effects for smokey were nicely done and it was cool to get a better view of what it looks like on the inside.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

This should have been a nightly mini-series. Everytime I have to wait a week to see what happens...well lets just say, it's hard. I think that those of us who knocked season 2, are starting to realize that it really was setting up a lot of what is going on now. So looking back, it really wasn't that bad, now was it?

I love the constant role reversal between Ben and Locke from episode to episode. Ben is just not a very good follower


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Gunnyman said:


> Yeah after that "Tell Desmond I'm sorry" I was ready to throw something at my TV.


I saw it coming knowing that LOST is great at misdirection. Also, Ben's flashback where he refused to kill Alex as a baby defying Widmore also left room for the possibility that although set on revenge to make Widmore suffer as he had from losing his 'adopted' daughter Alex, Ben would see her child and at least hesitate. Remember we all knew that he looked as if someone had beaten the crap out of him. Before or after he killed Penny was the question.


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## crowfan (Dec 27, 2003)

I thought it was absolutely *brilliant* the way Ben set up the situation with Caesar. 

He manipulated Caesar into thinking that Locke was crazy and was on already on the island -- not hard to do, since Locke sounds crazy and seems to know stuff he shouldn't know. So Caesar was primed to pull the gun on Locke when Locke stood up to him. But Ben saves the day by pulling the gun on Caesar instead, and kills him to "save" Locke. 

I'm not sure if that had any effect on Locke at that point, because he seems to be in some sort of communion with the island. Ben's petty games may not be affecting him the same way they used to. But either way, Ben just can't stop himself.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

gchance said:


> Whoever said it was Alex's ghost?
> 
> Smokey surrounded Ben, read his thoughts, descended, then took the form of who he loved the most in order to communicate the message that needed to be communicated.
> 
> That was Smokey, not a ghost.


Agree. Smokey in the past has manifested itself as dead people such as Eko's brother. Whether Somkey = The Island may be at issue, but I think of Smokey as one aspect of the Island in a way it can interact directly and presonally with humans.


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## Honora (Oct 16, 2006)

danplaysbass said:


> What a crazy episode! I think Desmond did get shot but it wasn't fatal. I'm fairly certain that when he jumped Ben you could see blood on his shirt.


It looked like Desmond was shot in the right shoulder through the grocery bag. Something in the bag could have slowed the bullet a bit, and it looked like he was clobbering Ben with only one fist.


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## Honora (Oct 16, 2006)

philw1776 said:


> I saw it coming knowing that LOST is great at misdirection. Also, Ben's flashback where he refused to kill Alex as a baby defying Widmore also left room for the possibility that although set on revenge to make Widmore suffer as he had from losing his 'adopted' daughter Alex, Ben would see her child and at least hesitate. Remember we all knew that he looked as if someone had beaten the crap out of him. Before or after he killed Penny was the question.


Ben actually seems to have one redeeming quality. He can't seem to kill a mother in front of her child.


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## NoThru22 (May 6, 2005)

There is no alternate timeline. They never intended for us to think that the village was altered. The producers even named an episode "What Happened, Happened" to possibly clear up this confusion.

The smoke monster's judgment is limited to how useful a person can be to island. It must have perceived Eko as a threat, or at least not useful.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Egyptology...
_Ammit sits beneath the Scales of Justice before the throne of Osiris where she waits for the daily flow of souls to come before Osiris for judgement. During the Judging of the Heart, if the deeds of the soul being judged are found to be more wicked than good, Anubis feeds the soul to Ammit. This results in the total annihilation of the person, and there is no hope of further existence._
from AVS Forum

Goold ol Smokey.


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## DUDE_NJX (Feb 12, 2003)

Fool Me Twice said:


> Oh, and Locke is alive, that's no ghost or island manifestation. He is *always* present. He doesn't just appear and disappear like the other manifestations. He has private moments where he appears to be in thought. Just the whole way he's presented by the camera has a different feel than the way Christian, Walt, et al are presented.


Really? Don't you find it interesting that he "Went away" right before the smoke appeared and came back right after the smoke/Alex disappeared?

Also, his balls (knowledge+confidence) are huge now, all of a sudden. Something he wanted to be all his life just mysteriously happened. Something that would have to come from an island source...


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## GDG76 (Oct 2, 2000)

I found it odd that they went out of their way to show fingerpaints in Ben's old house. It made it look like a kid had been living there sometime from when the island moved.

I still can't really wrap my head around what's happened on island for the last 3 years. All the people were warped out with the time shift so it should be the same state, yet there are differences. Hopefully they deal with this.. maybe not everyone jumped around in time...


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## Fool Me Twice (Jul 6, 2004)

DUDE_NJX said:


> Really? Don't you find it interesting that he "Went away" right before the smoke appeared and came back right after the smoke/Alex disappeared?


Well, not literally always present. But, ghosts have never stuck around camp. I think that instance you cite was just a set up for gag, nothing more. Also, if the island could simply create it's own people, what use would it have for corporeal types? And why would Smokey give Ben the business about not killing Locke again? What harm could Ben do to a ghost? Or to Smokey?


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

Fool Me Twice said:


> Michael Emerson playing young Ben was a bit of a tough sell (I never noticed before that he resembles Paul Reubens). I liked the guy they chose for young Widmore.


I thought they did a pretty good job with hair and makeup on Emerson. But I was thinking younger Ben looked a lot like Matthew on The Stagers on HGTV. 



NoThru22 said:


> There is no alternate timeline. They never intended for us to think that the village was altered. The producers even named an episode "What Happened, Happened" to possibly clear up this confusion.


True, but they also called this episode "Dead is Dead," and clearly there is an exception to that. So it might be a hint that there is an exception to "What Happened, Happened."


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## Scubee (Mar 2, 2005)

I loved how Ben said "I can't control what's about to come out of that jungle" or something similar and out pops Locke. He may have been speaking of Smokie, but the statement still rings true. 

...maybe it was Smokie popping out as Locke. It's an interesting theory. Makes you think back through the episode to see how Locke interacted with others (as some have already pointed out). He caught the gun that Ben tossed to him so he's been physically involved, but then we know Smokie can drag, grab, uproot trees AND people as well.


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## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I'm just not sure what the writers are up to at this point. In the last village episode, they pointed very clearly to the village having been abandoned after the Purge. It seemed strange to me that this time they didn't deal with what's up with the village at all. I guess we'll just have to wait and see where they're heading.
> 
> As for the universe being broken, though, I don't see any room for doubt on that point. I think the only question is what the symptoms are and are not.





pcguru83 said:


> Yes, this exactly. I thought for sure this would clear up whether or not the village had changed. Apparently still not completely for some.
> 
> Seems in that scene or series of scenes they went out of their way to show that we were seeing that room exactly as it had been before.





brermike said:


> Well, so far we never saw young Ben see Hurley, Jack and Kate. They had only been there a day before he got shot. He was unconscious the entire time Kate was near him. Plus, we know he doesn't remember the shooting so he probably doesn't remember Sayid either.
> 
> I bet he remembers Juliet though since she had been there for 3 years.


I guess I'm in the minority as I'm with Rob H. on this one. In fact, I think even last night they had one long shot of the processing sign, which increased my belief that something had changed. Also, whether young Ben ever saw them or not in the 70's, it makes no sense to me, as someone else posted, that none of the Others would have at least noticed Jack and company from the picture on the wall. Not saying that everyone takes the time to look at a picture that's been hanging for so long, but you'd expect at least someone to catch the fact that their prisoners appear in a picture from 1977 and, if anything, look younger now. Also, why would the Others even keep a picutre like that hanging around? So why would Ben act surprised when Sun showed him the picture? I propose that only two answers can reasonably answer this. 1) Ben was only pretending to be surprised or 2) The world around Ben and the rest of the Ajira folks has changed, but their memoires and experiences have not (I guess you could say they jumped timelines). I'm hoping the answer is number one, because the second possibility would lead Lost down a path that I don't want to see it take.



hapdrastic said:


> Again, I don't think they ever meant to imply that the village was abandoned way-back-when. I always took it as three years having passed since we last saw it and it was now in disrepair. I think any misdirection was unintentional.


It sure does seem that way, and I wish I could agree, but I just can't get past that Processing sign. On a show that actually has someone who's sole responsibility is continuity of props, why focus, in two episodes, on a sign that would cause unneccessary confusion. I just can't imagine that the writer's goal was to show that sign and hope that the audience would conclude, "oh well, I guess we just never saw that before when the village was run by the Others, but I'm sure it was always there."


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

dianebrat said:


> They really have picked up the pace, they're giving us regular pay offs answering significant questions, the more I adore this season, the more I'm convinced that giving them an end date really let them get back to where they needed to be from a writing and storytelling perspective.


On the other hand, even if they knew the end date since the beginning, I'm not sure they wouldn't have still waited until this season to begin tying up all the threads they set up. Even the story of the second island, which some thought was merely them padding the season, has turned out to be relevant to the overall arc.


----------



## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

DUDE_NJX said:


> Also, his balls (knowledge+confidence) are huge now, all of a sudden. Something he wanted to be all his life just mysteriously happened. Something that would have to come from an island source...


Having an entity bring you back to life, particularly when it hasn't done so for anyone else you know of, would do a lot for your ego.


----------



## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

mqpickles said:


> I thought they did a pretty good job with hair and makeup on Emerson. But I was thinking younger Ben looked a lot like Matthew on The Stagers on HGTV.
> 
> True, but they also called this episode "Dead is Dead," and clearly there is an exception to that. So it might be a hint that there is an exception to "What Happened, Happened."


Maybe the titles are just ways to delineate one episode from another and not where we should be getting deep meaning of the show. I know in this episode Ben said, "Dead is dead." But then he said that Locke was an exception. Which I take as maybe dead isn't dead. And didn't Miles say, "What happened, happened" in the episode with that title?

And as far as the timeline changing well to me this is obvious. Whether or not Ben is lying, that photo with the the 815ers + Miles is a change in the timeline, period.

Plus," what happened, happened" refers to the past. Everything that is happening for the 815ers +M in 1977... hasn't happened.

I need to start taking the Tylenol before starting these threads...


----------



## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

3D said:


> So why would Ben act surprised when Sun showed him the picture?


I think Ben was genuinely surprised for one of two reasons:

1. He was surprised that the picture existed.
2. He was surprised that Sun found the picture.

Either way, I think that indicates that the room Christian showed Sun and Frank was not how it was when the Others or the Losties left the village.

Having seen apparition Alex grab Ben, we now know that the apparitions can interact with the environment. So the room being different could have been something as simple as Christian going to where Ben had hidden the pictures, getting them, and hanging them up as they originally were. Or, the picture itself could be some sort of manifestation.

Also, I agree that something is up with the Processing Center signs. While I have disagreed with other reasons why the writers might be cheating, I agree that if the signs were always there, and they just didn't show them to us earlier, that would be cheating. With how much the writers have focused on all of the details, I don't think the signs would be there unless they meant something more important than an artificial misdirection for the audience.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

BitbyBlit said:


> On the other hand, even if they knew the end date since the beginning, I'm not sure they wouldn't have still waited until this season to begin tying up all the threads they set up. Even the story of the second island, which some thought was merely them padding the season, has turned out to be relevant to the overall arc.


Exactly. Having an end date has allowed them to stick to their plan, rather than having to pad things out to extend it. It's allowed them to NOT change things.


----------



## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

teknikel said:


> Plus," what happened, happened" refers to the past. Everything that is happening for the 815ers +M in 1977... hasn't happened.


What "has happened" is relative to one's own timeline. This is why in a world where time travel is possible and "what happened, happened", all events must be fixed. Because it is possible in this universe for Person A to enounter Person B who's past is Person A's future, the only way for "what happened, happened" to hold is for Person A's future to also be fixed.

So a more precise description for what is happening to the 815ers is not that the events haven't happened yet, but rather that the 815ers haven't experienced them yet.


----------



## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

gchance said:


> Whoever said it was Alex's ghost?
> 
> Smokey surrounded Ben, read his thoughts, descended, then took the form of who he loved the most in order to communicate the message that needed to be communicated.
> 
> ...


Ok, "Alex's Ghost".

The point is Ben has been ordered to follow Locke.
Do you think he's happy about it and just going to be a "good soldier"?


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## DUDE_NJX (Feb 12, 2003)

BitbyBlit said:


> Having an entity bring you back to life, particularly when it hasn't done so for anyone else you know of, would do a lot for your ego.


But it's more than an ego. It's detailed knowledge of things. Maybe he learned all that during his trip to the afterworld? (meeting with Osiris, etc.)


----------



## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

DUDE_NJX said:


> But it's more than an ego. It's detailed knowledge of things. Maybe he learned all that during his trip to the afterworld? (meeting with Osiris, etc.)


I don't think we know for certain that Locke has any inside knowledge of the island. Jin saw the smoke monster pull Danielle's people under the Temple, so he could have told Locke about it.

As a side note, now that we have seen young Alex living in the Dharma village, that means the Others must have moved in shortly after, if not immediately after the Purge. So that puts to rest my theory that the village was abandoned for a while before the Others moved in, and thus the abandoned Processing Center was not a vision from the past, as least not the past that we know of.


----------



## crowfan (Dec 27, 2003)

Wasn't Locke himself pulled by the smoke monster towards the temple? Or did they never make it that far?


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

Desmond didn't die from the bullet because it hit a jug of milk (you can see it splash when he's shot at). Now, whether or not that would actually stop a bullet is a job for the Mythbusters!


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## DavidTigerFan (Aug 18, 2001)

So have we figured out what the whispers are yet? Ben told young frech chick to run when she hears them.


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

BitbyBlit said:


> What "has happened" is relative to one's own timeline. This is why in a world where time travel is possible and "what happened, happened", all events must be fixed. Because it is possible in this universe for Person A to enounter Person B who's past is Person A's future, the only way for "what happened, happened" to hold is for Person A's future to also be fixed.
> 
> So a more precise description for what is happening to the 815ers is not that the events haven't happened yet, but rather that the 815ers haven't experienced them yet.


This is part of my problem with "what happened, happened" with no exceptions. It ultimately means no free will, past present or future.

YMMV (many people believe in predestination/fate anyway).


----------



## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

I think

1) Whatever happened happened.
2) The Universe is not broken.
3) Sawyer, Jack, et. al, always traveled back in time, and Sayid always shot Ben.

As to why Ben didn't recognize them later on? It probably didn't occur to him, becuase you know, that would be impossible. It never occured to him that these same people travelled back in time, because it would never occur to anyone.


----------



## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

mqpickles said:


> This is part of my problem with "what happened, happened" with no exceptions. It ultimately means no free will, past present or future.
> 
> YMMV (many people believe in predestination/fate anyway).


Why does having a fixed universe mean no free will? We all have the choices that we can make. A fixed universe means whether you go into the past or the future all the choices made out of free will (and the consequences thereof) are known ahead of time.


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

Turtleboy said:


> As to why Ben didn't recognize them later on? It probably didn't occur to him, becuase you know, that would be impossible. It never occured to him that these same people travelled back in time, because it would never occur to anyone.


Kate and Jack, I can see that because they are good looking but bland. But Hurley is an unusual enough person that it's hard to believe you wouldn't at least notice a resemblance later on. And he lived for some time with Sawyer/James and Juliet/Juliet. And how many Jins do you suppose he encountered on the island? So they still have some 'splainin to do as to why it didn't occur to Ben that he knew them before.


----------



## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

DavidTigerFan said:


> So have we figured out what the whispers are yet? Ben told young frech chick to run when she hears them.


This was another thing that intrigued me. Why did Ben tell Danielle to run the other way if she heard the voices?


----------



## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

mqpickles said:


> Kate and Jack, I can see that because they are good looking but bland. But Hurley is an unusual enough person that it's hard to believe you wouldn't at least notice a resemblance later on. And he lived for some time with Sawyer/James and Juliet/Juliet. And how many Jins do you suppose he encountered on the island? So they still have some 'splainin to do as to why it didn't occur to Ben that he knew them before.


Simple. He never met them. They disappeared before the Purge. And I don't know about you, but I never really look closely into group photos that I'm not a part of, especially something from decades ago.


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

When Ben falls into the lower chamber, they make a point of showing us hieroglyphics. They focus on one in particular for about half a second. It clearly shows a smoky-like creature in front of some Egyptian god. It even has the angled surface under the creature, like the one Smoky came out of.

Here's a link...(the image is large, don't want to embed)
http://i.iimmgg.com/images/gr/c2895f8253605a60a50abd603290bba0.jpg



DavidTigerFan said:


> So have we figured out what the whispers are yet? Ben told young frech chick to run when she hears them.


I caught that too. I believe this is the first clear & specific reference to "the whispers" by Ben (or any of the Others).


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

hapdrastic said:


> Desmond didn't die from the bullet because it hit a jug of milk (you can see it splash when he's shot at). Now, whether or not that would actually stop a bullet is a job for the Mythbusters!


It wouldn't, but it could deflect the bullet off course, causing it to miss.


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

DavidTigerFan said:


> So have we figured out what the whispers are yet? Ben told young frech chick to run when she hears them.


Reminds me of a TNG Star Trek episode where the ship is caught in a time loop. In that case, the "whispers" were the voices of the crew from a previous time. Given the amount of time hopping the island seems to do, I wonder if it's something like that here.


----------



## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

So the whole, what lies under that statue thing...it reminded me of Desmond's question he asked Jack et al. Something about the snowmen and smelling like carrots. So the question seems like a Dharma thing. So maybe Widmore has been working with Dharma to try to find the island again.

And obviously one of the others decided to steal baby Ethan before the purge. Whose idea would that have been and how did they pull it off?


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> So Rob, Ben's house was Ben's house, complete with that painting of a blond that looks suspiciously like Juliete. Do we agree there's less evidence now that the universe is broken?


I used to be in Rob's camp on this, but I think if it had actually changed, Ben would have said something in this episode. Therefore, I think it's just the way it was when it was New Otherton and we simply don't have an explanation for the Dharma group photos still being on the wall.


philw1776 said:


> I saw it coming knowing that LOST is great at misdirection. Also, Ben's flashback where he refused to kill Alex as a baby defying Widmore also left room for the possibility that although set on revenge to make Widmore suffer as he had from losing his 'adopted' daughter Alex, Ben would see her child and at least hesitate. Remember we all knew that he looked as if someone had beaten the crap out of him. Before or after he killed Penny was the question.


I thought this was telegraphed (foreshadowed) pretty clearly. Ben couldn't kill Danielle or Alex, and he wasn't going to be able to kill Penny because he'd see Charlie. I even said so to my wife before it happened.


crowfan said:


> Wasn't Locke himself pulled by the smoke monster towards the temple? Or did they never make it that far?


Was Locke pulled by Smokie, or was it Arzt, and Locke threw the dynamite down the hole to get Arzt free?


astrohip said:


> When Ben falls into the lower chamber, they make a point of showing us hieroglyphics. They focus on one in particular for about half a second. It clearly shows a smoky-like creature in front of some Egyptian god. It even has the angled surface under the creature, like the one Smoky came out of.
> 
> Here's a link...(the image is large, don't want to embed)
> http://i.iimmgg.com/images/gr/c2895f8253605a60a50abd603290bba0.jpg


Your link goes to a picture that says "Hotlinking is not allowed."


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## crowfan (Dec 27, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> Was Locke pulled by Smokie, or was it Arzt, and Locke threw the dynamite down the hole to get Arzt free?


In my mind, I'm picturing Locke being dragged along the ground by the smoke monster. Some time after season 1, I think. But I can't swear to it. My memory isn't that good, to be honest. 

ETA: We're both right. From Lostpedia:



> After looking up in horror, Locke stood and started running frantically. He was then "grabbed" by the Monster and dragged across the ground by his left foot. Jack was able to grab Locke by the arms as the Monster attempted to pull Locke into a hole in the ground. The black smoke was visible around Locke's ankle in two shots as he was being pulled into the hole. Locke told Jack that everything would be all right and told him to let him go. But Jack refused, ordering Kate to get the dynamite from his backpack and throw it down the hole. When she did so, there was a large explosion and Locke was released. The cloud of smoke was then seen dissipating as it retreated from the group.


I don't remember whether the hole in the ground was the temple entryway or some other hole, and the entry doesn't specify.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

crowfan said:


> In my mind, I'm picturing Locke being dragged along the ground by the smoke monster. Some time after season 1, I think. But I can't swear to it. My memory isn't that good, to be honest.


Yeah, I have a memory of that too. I also have a memory of something to do with Arzt. I think I'm getting two different situations mixed up.


----------



## crowfan (Dec 27, 2003)

I edited my response above yours. We both got parts right.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

If Alex was about 16 when she died in late 2004, that would mean she was babynapped by Ben in 1988. That's significantly before the purge - which was what, 1991 or 1992? 

So what are Ben and Ethan doing hangin' the Others in 1988? Are we supposed to believe that they 'moved' back and forth between the two camps? The Dharma folks seems awfully concerned about security and people movement, so it seems like a stretch that Ben and Ethan would simply hop the fence every night. (Not really expecting an answer right now, but I'm intrigued by the question.)

Enjoyed the episode, but I thought it was a bit of a letdown from the past 2 weeks. Cheered when Ben got taken down by Desmond, of course.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> I used to be in Rob's camp on this, but I think if it had actually changed, Ben would have said something in this episode. Therefore, I think it's just the way it was when it was New Otherton and we simply don't have an explanation for the Dharma group photos still being on the wall.


I still insist that something weird is going on with the Village because of the Dharma Initiative furnishings that weren't there when the Others lived there before. But clearly I was wrong as to exactly WHAT weird is going on!

And I still believe that the ultimate answer is that the universe is broken, the weirdness is a symptom, it needs to be fixed, and Ben is the man for the job (or at least he thinks he is).


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

hanumang said:


> If Alex was about 16 when she died in late 2004, that would mean she was babynapped by Ben in 1988. That's significantly before the purge - which was what, 1991 or 1992?
> 
> So what are Ben and Ethan doing hangin' the Others in 1988? Are we supposed to believe that they 'moved' back and forth between the two camps? The Dharma folks seems awfully concerned about security and people movement, so it seems like a stretch that Ben and Ethan would simply hop the fence every night. (Not really expecting an answer right now, but I'm intrigued by the question.)
> 
> Enjoyed the episode, but I thought it was a bit of a letdown from the past 2 weeks. Cheered when Ben got taken down by Desmond, of course.


I think we can safely assume that Ben didn't simply kill off all of Dharma and take over leadership of the Others without first having significant contact with them. The fact that Ethan and Alex were not killed in the Purge simply shows that Ethan had defected prior to the Purge, and that Alex was protected by Ben because by that point he was raising her as his daughter and had come to love her.


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> Yeah, I have a memory of that too. I also have a memory of something to do with Arzt. I think I'm getting two different situations mixed up.


I thought it was Kate that was dragged along the ground way back when. Season 2, I think.

Yet another rewarding episode. For the person who stuck through the less enjoyable episodes (which IMO were still very good), this show has become probably the most consistently good show on TV right now (shows that are over or ended not counted).


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

tewcewl said:


> Simple. He never met them. They disappeared before the Purge. And I don't know about you, but I never really look closely into group photos that I'm not a part of, especially something from decades ago.


I thought the hostiles sent Ben back to live with Dharma after he was healed from the gunshot wound? Are you saying he didn't go back (at least right away), or that even though he went back and lived with Dharma again, he never met Hurley, Jack or Kate? Both possible.

I'm trying to remember if last night's episodes had any scenes of tween Ben after he was healed. I remember him being in the sickbed and meeting Charles in 1977. And I remember Peewee Herman Ben in 1988, but nothing in between.*

Maybe I need to get a good night's sleep and re-watch the last 2-3 episodes. I'm not keeping up very well lately.

ETA: *Of course, Ben was among Dharma at the time of the Purge.


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## twincaminferno (Mar 6, 2006)

Seems like Smokey is like the game, "This is your life"


----------



## Alfer (Aug 7, 2003)

twincaminferno said:


> Seems like Smokey is like the game, "This is your life"


Felt very *Wizard of Oz*'ish when Smokey played back Ben's life....


----------



## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

Turtleboy said:


> I think
> 
> 1) Whatever happened happened.
> 2) The Universe is not broken.
> ...


It would never occur to anyone who didn't know of the possibility of time travel, but I'm not sure that Ben fits into that category. In "The Shape of Things to Come", from last season, Ben, after turning the wheel and winding up in the desert, had to ask a local person what the date was when he first reached a town. Why ask unless he knows that time does not always flow normally on the island?


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

mqpickles said:


> I thought the hostiles sent Ben back to live with Dharma after he was healed from the gunshot wound? Are you saying he didn't go back (at least right away), or that even though he went back and lived with Dharma again, he never met Hurley, Jack or Kate? Both possible.


We don't know when Ben went back to Dharma after being healed by the Others. All we know is that he acted surprised about Jack, Kate and Hurley being in that picture. As has been stated previously, either he was feigning his surprise (likely, considering who it is) or Jack, Kate and Hurley were no longer part of Dharma by the time he went back. Since we've yet to see what happens at Dharma in 1977 following the events of "What Happened, Happened," we can only speculate on the second possibility.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

3D said:


> It would never occur to anyone who didn't know of the possibility of time travel, but I'm not sure that Ben fits into that category. In "The Shape of Things to Come", from last season, Ben, after turning the wheel and winding up in the desert, had to ask a local person what the date was when he first reached a town. Why ask unless he knows that time does not always flow normally on the island?


And given that he's known Richard for 25-30 years and Richard has never aged during that time, he must know that the Island has some kind of control over time.


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

DevdogAZ said:


> I think we can safely assume that Ben didn't simply kill off all of Dharma and take over leadership of the Others without first having significant contact with them.


Right, I suppose I am a little shocked by the level of contact though.

I could see him alone meeting with Richard Alpert in the jungle on occasion. But Ben and Ethan being there - to the point it seems like they're living with the Others - had to be noticed (two 'kids' missing) by the Dharma folks. Looking forward to what they (Dharma) made of all that.

(And I'm expecting we'll see that if only to answer the questions by about the 815ers in Dharma. And how/why Ethan is recruited.)

And what is the consensus on when Widmore was escorted off the island? Was that supposed to be 1991? Or earlier? Widmore mentioned via phone call to Ben that he's been attempting to get back for nearly twenty years. Unless it was an ad-lib by the actor, the Lost team is pretty diligent about time.


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

hanumang said:


> And what is the consensus on when Widmore was escorted off the island? Was that supposed to be 1991? Or earlier? Widmore mentioned via phone call to Ben that he's been attempting to get back for nearly twenty years. Unless it was an ad-lib by the actor, the Lost team is pretty diligent about time.


It was post purge, because the Other's were living in Dharmaville, so at least '92.


----------



## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

Turtleboy said:


> I think
> 
> 1) Whatever happened happened.
> 2) The Universe is not broken.
> ...


I just have trouble with this concept. So you are saying that if I was to go back in time and stop John Wilkes Booth from shooting Lincoln, it will have always happened? That can't be be, because before I time travel, Lincoln surviving has not happened for me. My history says Lincoln was shot.

Or is it that, if I were to go back to stop Booth, there is no way for me to do that because what happened, happened?

Its been 4 hours since my last 500mg...


----------



## rgr (Feb 21, 2003)

Jeeters said:


> It was found in the Processing Center building. Sun just showed it to him in his house.


I guess it's _plausible_ that Ben never visited the Processing Center after 1977, but somehow not likely.


----------



## Bryanmc (Sep 5, 2000)

This stupid show. I get home from work last night at 1:30 and I can't go to sleep knowing there's new Lost on my TiVo. So I stayed up to watch it and got 4 hours of sleep.


----------



## Bryanmc (Sep 5, 2000)

teknikel said:


> Or is it that, if I were to go back to stop Booth, there is no way for me to do that because what happened, happened?


Right. If you go back to stop Lincoln's assassination (in the Lost world) you'd probably inadvertently cause it.


----------



## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

Bryanmc said:


> Right. If you go back to stop Lincoln's assassination (in the Lost world) you'd probably inadvertently cause it.


Which would be the way it always happened to begin with. It wouldn't be a change, but history didn't record how it really happened.


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## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

Turtleboy said:


> Which would be the way it always happened to begin with. It wouldn't be a change, but history didn't record how it really happened.


Hmmm.

I still don't buy that, when I started watching this show in 2004, the timeline had already been that Sayid had already time traveled to 1977 and shot Ben.

Can they come back from the future before the future happens?


----------



## robbhimself (Sep 13, 2006)

Turtleboy said:


> 1) Whatever happened happened.
> 2) The Universe is not broken.
> 3) Sawyer, Jack, et. al, always traveled back in time, and Sayid always shot Ben.


well put.

but it looked like something clicked for ben when he saw the picture of them in 1977 and asked about jack, hurley, kate, etc being in the di, maybe he remembered that being the year that something bad happened to him and is slowly putting 2 and 2 together.

he wouldn't have knowledge of them being there because richard clearly said that ben would not remember recent events, the only ones he would remember are sawyer and juliette, and he didn't know sawyers name, only knew him by lafleur (sp?). and maybe remembering juliette saving his life cause his crush on her later.

as for changing the past, they had to be very careful while "the record was skipping" because they weren't supposed to be at those random times. when the donkey wheel was fixed time corrected itself and 1974-77 is always where they were supposed to end up


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Gunnyman said:


> Yeah after that "Tell Desmond I'm sorry" I was ready to throw something at my TV.


Me, too. I mumbled to myself "If Penny is dead, I'm through with this show..." or something similar....


----------



## lpamelaa (May 3, 2004)

I think Ben has a soft spot for children/mothers. Couldn't kill Alex or Danielle. Couldn't kill Penny or her son. Seems to have take Ethan under his wing.

Maybe he saved all the Dharma children before the purge?

And maybe it somehow relates back to the problems with women dying during pregnancy on the island.

And maybe it all stems from Ben not having a mother.


----------



## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

teknikel said:


> Hmmm.
> 
> I still don't buy that, when I started watching this show in 2004, the timeline had already been that Sayid had already time traveled to 1977 and shot Ben.
> 
> Can they come back from the future before the future happens?


Yes, that's exactly what happened. They can come back, to a later past, if that's what happened, or they can come back to the "present" where there are no doubles of them.


----------



## Shakhari (Jan 2, 2005)

With all the hieroglyphics, I'm beginning to think the island is supposed to be Atlantis.


----------



## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

Sad. I don't believe time travel is possible anymore. I hope I still can enjoy the show.


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## Alfer (Aug 7, 2003)

Shakhari said:


> With all the hieroglyphics, I'm beginning to think the island is supposed to be Atlantis.


That's what I told my wife when they went in the Raiders mode last night.


----------



## GDG76 (Oct 2, 2000)

Turtleboy said:


> Yes, that's exactly what happened. They can come back, to a later past, if that's what happened, or they can come back to the "present" where there are no doubles of them.


Well, if they can manage to stay long enough on the island, there can be doubles of them. Hence my theory at one point that Jacob is actually one of the Oceanic 815.

That kind of got tossed out though, cause Richard Alpert talked about Jacob when they took Ben in...


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

astrohip said:


> When Ben falls into the lower chamber, they make a point of showing us hieroglyphics. They focus on one in particular for about half a second. It clearly shows a smoky-like creature in front of some Egyptian god. It even has the angled surface under the creature, like the one Smoky came out of.
> 
> Here's a link...(the image is large, don't want to embed)
> http://i.iimmgg.com/images/gr/c2895f8253605a60a50abd603290bba0.jpg





DevdogAZ said:


> Your link goes to a picture that says "Hotlinking is not allowed."


Hmm, it works every time I click it. Oh well, here is a lo-res version...








And go here to see the originals
http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/2009/04/5x12-smokeys-hieroglyphics.html

Oh, and I think the god is that anybus guy.


----------



## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

Shakhari said:


> With all the hieroglyphics, I'm beginning to think the island is supposed to be Atlantis.


I've considered that a possibility for a while, since "Jughead".
With Richard being one of the original inhabitants but I've been told elsewhere that the producers deny it.

(On the other hand the frozen donkey wheel could be a primitive DHD....)


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

teknikel said:


> Hmmm.
> 
> I still don't buy that, when I started watching this show in 2004, the timeline had already been that Sayid had already time traveled to 1977 and shot Ben.


What happened, happened.

It had happened already. You the viewer in 2004 and Sayid 2004 did not know that his FUTURE 2007 self would go back to 77 and shoot Ben. In 2004 the 77 incident had already happened but of course the 2004 earlier personal timeline did not know what HAD happened.


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

teknikel said:


> Sad. I don't believe time travel is possible anymore. I hope I still can enjoy the show.


I never believed time travel is possible either, but I enjoy the show. I don't believe FTL is possible but I enjoyed Battlestar Galactica. I don't believe 90% of the stuff they do on most ANY cop or adventure TV series is really possible, but I still enjoy some of them. I guess that TV is not about 'real' stuff. Whoa!


----------



## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

hanumang said:


> And what is the consensus on when Widmore was escorted off the island? Was that supposed to be 1991? Or earlier? Widmore mentioned via phone call to Ben that he's been attempting to get back for nearly twenty years. Unless it was an ad-lib by the actor, the Lost team is pretty diligent about time.


Widmore was exiled post-Purge (since they had already taken over Dharmaville), so sometime in 1992. He was talking to Ben in early 2008 and said he had been trying to get back for nearly 20 years. So in reality it had been around 16 years, but he rounded up to 20.


----------



## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

Fool Me Twice said:


> Oh, and Locke is alive, that's no ghost or island manifestation. He is always present. He doesn't just appear and disappear like the other manifestations. He has private moments where he appears to be in thought. Just the whole way he's presented by the camera has a different feel than the way Christian, Walt, et al are presented.


Agreed. He even seems unsure sometimes, which Christian never does. He goes and gets something to get Ben out of the hole, and was definitely surprised when he fell in.



GDG76 said:


> I found it odd that they went out of their way to show fingerpaints in Ben's old house. It made it look like a kid had been living there sometime from when the island moved.
> 
> I still can't really wrap my head around what's happened on island for the last 3 years. All the people were warped out with the time shift so it should be the same state, yet there are differences. Hopefully they deal with this.. maybe not everyone jumped around in time...


We have no idea what's happened on the island for the last 3 years--except for the few days they were time jumping, and then they weren't in those years.



BitbyBlit said:


> I think Ben was genuinely surprised for one of two reasons:
> 
> 1. He was surprised that the picture existed.
> 2. He was surprised that Sun found the picture.
> ...


The picture was in the building where Christian saw them first, right? So that might have just been his way of showing them where the rest of the 6 went. (and making it clear to casual viewers who are confused.) But while he might have produced the picture as a visual aid, the sign is a mystery. Something we don't know yet. By the way, if the picture was around since 1977, did it always have Jack and Kate and Hurley in it? If you dug it out in say, 1988, were they on there?

We seem to be thinking that Ben didn't remember the O6 from his childhood. I think he knew timetravelers were there and expected them to come to the island at some point. He either knew when the plane crashed, or as soon as he read the manifest. Remember how excited he was when he said, "there may be survivors!"

I'm also confused by the timing of kidnapping Alex. Ben had to be with Dharma then, and it seems unlikely that Ethan, who was Horace's son could have been kidnapped. That would bring all out war, and Dharma would have been wiped out sooner. So how were they able to come and go that freely? Also, pretty risky converting the boss's son. And where did Alex live until the purge? The Others must have taken care of her as a baby.

I wonder if Widmore talked to Jacob? It seemed like Ben knew what Jacob wanted done with the baby, and Widmore didn't.

I haven't heard anyone ask Locke the big question--"where did you go when you died?"


----------



## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

stellie93 said:


> I haven't heard anyone ask Locke the big question--"where did you go when you died?"


"Well first, we need at establish a common frame of reference.."


----------



## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

stellie93 said:


> ...The picture was in the building where Christian saw them first, right? So that might have just been his way of showing them where the rest of the 6 went. (and making it clear to casual viewers who are confused.) But while he might have produced the picture as a visual aid, the sign is a mystery. Something we don't know yet...


Many are talking about the implications of the sign,and I think it's not something that we should be looking into the past episodes for, but waiting for a future revelation. They have made it a point of showing, even dwelling for a second or two on the sign, at least twice. I think it will have a significance, but not for us to figure out from what has been shown.


----------



## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

GDG76 said:


> Well, if they can manage to stay long enough on the island, there can be doubles of them. Hence my theory at one point that Jacob is actually one of the Oceanic 815.
> 
> That kind of got tossed out though, cause Richard Alpert talked about Jacob when they took Ben in...





Church AV Guy said:


> Many are talking about the implications of the sign,and I think it's not something that we should be looking into the past episodes for, but waiting for a future revelation. They have made it a point of showing, even dwelling for a second or two on the sign, at least twice. I think it will have a significance, but not for us to figure out from what has been shown.


No, not for us to figure out yet, but certainly it is for us to surmise/speculate about.


----------



## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

So Ben told Locke that he knew that Locke would come back to life. Ben told Sun that he is shocked that Locke is standing there, and that dead is dead, no matter what.

Which one is closer to the truth of what Ben knew and believed?


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

Turtleboy said:


> So Ben told Locke that he knew that Locke would come back to life. Ben told Sun that he is shocked that Locke is standing there, and that dead is dead, no matter what.
> 
> Which one is closer to the truth of what Ben knew and believed?


Well, if I was face to face with someone I had murdered, I would certainly want him to think I planned it that way all along.


----------



## PKurmas (Apr 24, 2001)

bacevedo said:


> My guess....
> 
> The temple lies in the shadow.
> 
> ...


My further guess... these folks have something to do with the "war" that Widmore warned Locke was coming. I doubt there's anything crazy about them.

And I'd really like to know how they knew that Ajira 316 would take them to the island, 'cause that's no mistake... not with a container of supplies and several collaborators. Did they also use the Lamp Post? Or is there a second similar "station"? And who's behind them? Hanso et al?

Guess I gotta wait.


----------



## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

At first I thought the island just made the new peeps crazy. Now after reading this thread, I'm thinking that they are all Widemore's people.

However, none of them knew of each other. But they were all given a secret quetion and password to identify each other. "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" is that quesiton. They were trying to see if Lapidus was one of them. When he couldn't answer the question, they realized he wasn't.


----------



## Bryanmc (Sep 5, 2000)

JYoung said:


> "Well first, we need at establish a common frame of reference.."


:up:


----------



## Dad (Oct 27, 2001)

Peter000 said:


> Speculation, but I'm fairly sure they're Widmore's people. Ben told Widmore he and the 06 were going back to the island, so Widmore probably had the 06 shadowed and figured out what was going on. He probably even facilitated Sayid's "arrest" by the woman who was one of the leaders.


I figure the container is a device to allow Widmore to find the island again.

Great how they showed both sides of a Ben conversation. I now will never, ever believe anything Ben says, he's always working the room so to speak.


----------



## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

I think we finally know who was shooting at the time travelers.


----------



## atrac (Feb 27, 2002)

ElJay said:


> Emmy for Michael Giacchino


I couldn't agree more. His score has always been exceptional, but his work for tonight's episode really nailed it.

I look forward to his score for the new "Star Trek" film as well.


----------



## Magister (Oct 17, 2004)

From this point forward, Ben will be helping Locke. Until the encounter with Alex, he was still schemeing. Alex made it clear that it has to stop and Ben has to help out Locke.

I am starting to feel sad that I will miss this show greatly after next season. It is cranking hard right now. Nothing else on TV can match it.


----------



## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

When Ben and Locke showed up in Dharmaville, was it the same night that Sun and Lapidas talked to Christian? Or were they waiting more than a day? If people keep arriving there at night, it does make me think there are some visual details that they are trying to keep from showing the audience.


----------



## loubob57 (Mar 19, 2001)

Dad said:


> Great how they showed both sides of a Ben conversation. I now will never, ever believe anything Ben says, he's always working the room so to speak.


However, it now turns out that he was telling the truth when he said Alex wasn't his daughter, that he took her from a crazy woman. But I think he did lie when he said she meant nothing to him.


----------



## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

This may be the first series on TV that when it ends, I will rush to watch it again from the very beginning.

Ok, stupid "I can't keep everything straight" question.......

IIRC, Penny and Desomnd's baby was named _after_ Charlie, right? However, could he not turn out to be our Charlie? Could he not somehow go back in time and end up being our Charlie?

And, I would so love to see Michael Emerson win an Emmy for his acting. When he woke up and saw Locke, from that point forward, he seemed to nail the facial expressions and body language of someone who is very stressed about no longer "being in control".


----------



## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

Church AV Guy said:


> Many are talking about the implications of the sign,and I think it's not something that we should be looking into the past episodes for, but waiting for a future revelation. They have made it a point of showing, even dwelling for a second or two on the sign, at least twice. I think it will have a significance, but not for us to figure out from what has been shown.


Agreed, but many are saying that based on this episode, it can be definitively concluded that the only explanation for the Dharma village being in the state it's in is from the mercenary attack that resulted in Alex's death and three years of being abandoned. Some of us are just pointing out the sign as evidence that there *might* be another explanation that we haven't been given yet (and one such explanation would be that something changed).



Turtleboy said:


> So Ben told Locke that he knew that Locke would come back to life. Ben told Sun that he is shocked that Locke is standing there, and that dead is dead, no matter what.
> 
> Which one is closer to the truth of what Ben knew and believed?


My guess is that everything Ben told Sun is a lie, including that he didn't have any knowledge of the photo. I can picture the following conversation later in the season:

Sun: But you told me you didn't know anything about Jin being in 1977?

Ben: Sorry, but the last time I had seen you, you wacked me in the head with a boat oar, so you'll excuse me if I wasn't exactly comfortable confiding in you just then.



Turtleboy said:


> At first I thought the island just made the new peeps crazy. Now after reading this thread, I'm thinking that they are all Widemore's people.
> 
> However, none of them knew of each other. But they were all given a secret quetion and password to identify each other. "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" is that quesiton. They were trying to see if Lapidus was one of them. When he couldn't answer the question, they realized he wasn't.


I like this idea alot.


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

jlb said:


> IIRC, Penny and Desomnd's baby was named _after_ Charlie, right? However, could he not turn out to be our Charlie? Could he not somehow go back in time and end up being our Charlie?


Gawd I hope not. Frightening to think that the gorgeous Penny could spawn a Hobbit.


----------



## Philosofy (Feb 21, 2000)

Everyone is saying Danielle was crazy, but I thought Ben taking Alex was the thing that put her over the edge. Did I miss something?


----------



## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

Philosofy said:


> Everyone is saying Danielle was crazy, but I thought Ben taking Alex was the thing that put her over the edge. Did I miss something?


Well, she was going on an on about Ben being a carrier or the source of the sickness (don't remember the exact dialog), so she did sound a big crazy. I would imagine, the shipwreck, losing/killing her team, seeing an asian man disappear, and giving birth alone would make one a little crazy


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

loubob57 said:


> However, it now turns out that he was telling the truth when he said Alex wasn't his daughter, that he took her from a crazy woman. But I think he did lie when he said she meant nothing to him.


What do you mean "it now turns out?" We've known for a couple of seasons that Alex was Danielle's daughter that was was stolen from her shortly after she was born and was raised by Ben.


jlb said:


> Ok, stupid "I can't keep everything straight" question.......
> 
> IIRC, Penny and Desomnd's baby was named _after_ Charlie, right? However, could he not turn out to be our Charlie? Could he not somehow go back in time and end up being our Charlie?


Didn't Charlie Pace have an older brother that was in his band? I suppose it's possible that something happened to Desmond and Penny, and Charlie somehow went back in time and was adopted by the Pace family, but I highly doubt that will end up being the case. If anything like that does happen, I think it's more likely that little Charlie goes back in time and becomes Charles Widmore. I don't really think that's going to happen, but I think it's more likely than little Charlie becoming Charlie Pace.


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## bacevedo (Oct 31, 2003)

jlb said:


> IIRC, Penny and Desomnd's baby was named _after_ Charlie, right? However, could he not turn out to be our Charlie? Could he not somehow go back in time and end up being our Charlie?


That would be an interesting plot point, but I remember a few seasons ago seeing Charlie backstories with his family (and brother) and it wasn't Penny and Desmond as his parents. If I remember correctly he had some crazy dreams about his dad taking him to a butcher and his brother playing the piano in his underwear (or something like that). Those were some crazy scenes.

Bryan

Edit: DevDogAz's post wasn't there when I posted! I swear!  And Go Devils!


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> If anything like that does happen, I think it's more likely that little Charlie goes back in time and becomes Charles Widmore.


So little Charlie goes back in time to sire his own mother? I like it.


----------



## Bananfish (May 16, 2002)

I always hesitate when being tempted into posting in a Lost thread, since I have spent nowhere near the mental energy "solving" this show that many of you have.

BUT, with that preface ....

I have always been struck by Ben's reaction in the scene from long ago, shown several times during the series, when he and the Others see the Oceanic plane break apart as it flies over the island. Ben's demeanor in that scene has always said to me that he was expecting something exactly like that to happen, and his barking out orders has always said to me that he had prepared for exactly what he and the Others needed to do when it did.

So I would be surprised if Ben didn't know about time travel and that a plane crash would deliver to him the Losties. He also asks for the passenger list, suggesting to me that he expected certain passengers to be on board ... like time travelers Hurley, Jack and Kate.

OK, go ahead and tear me a new one as you provide alternate explanations.


----------



## Supfreak26 (Dec 12, 2003)

I think the sign is a simple device to show what time frame the show is currently in. 

There you go. Mystery solved.


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

Bananfish said:


> So I would be surprised if Ben didn't know about time travel and that a plane crash would deliver to him the Losties. He also asks for the passenger list, suggesting to me that he expected certain passengers to be on board ... like time travelers Hurley, Jack and Kate.


I had the exact same thought.


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

aintnosin said:


> It was post purge, because the Other's were living in Dharmaville, so at least '92.





brermike said:


> Widmore was exiled post-Purge (since they had already taken over Dharmaville), so sometime in 1992. He was talking to Ben in early 2008 and said he had been trying to get back for nearly 20 years. So in reality it had been around 16 years, but he rounded up to 20.


Thanks guys, I totally blanked on the Dharmaville setup (all this jumping around is hurting my brain).

I suppose that bring up another question that we can speculate on: how did the Others - or Widmore, in particular - get on/off the Island? Donkey Wheel?

And since it never occurred to me, what exactly is the deal with the sub? Did the Others simply take over the logistics of that? I mean, if that was the Dharma folks' thing - understanding that the Island folks were purged - wouldn't Ann Arbor have something to say/do after everything went down?

I'm curious to see if we get an answer.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

hanumang said:


> I suppose that bring up another question that we can speculate on: how did the Others - or Widmore, in particular - get on/off the Island? Donkey Wheel?


Widmore was taken off the island in handcuffs, on the sub (in this very episode).


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Widmore was taken off the island in handcuffs, on the sub (in this very episode).


Right, but he was banished - due to Linus' trickery, according to his conversation with Locke earlier this season - because he (apparently illegally) routinely left the island, even fathering a daughter.

If that is true - and we have no reason to believe that Penny isn't his daughter, do we? - how did he routinely get on/off island?

And what is the (possible) story with the sub? Fine, the Island was purged of Dharma people, but considering their homebase was elsewhere (Ann Arbor, Michigan) what is the explanation for the continued use of the sub? I mean, private planes, fine. But a private sub isn't a usual thing. Gotta believe that somebody keeps an eye out for that. Does Ann Arbor not realize/know what happened? This isn't the first inkling that Dharma is possibly unaware (there is the food drop, too) but still, lots of questions to be answered. Well, I hope they get answered.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

hanumang said:


> Right, but he was banished - due to Linus' trickery, according to his conversation with Locke earlier this season - because he (apparently illegally) routinely left the island, even fathering a daughter.
> 
> If that is true - and we have no reason to believe that Penny isn't his daughter, do we? - how did he routinely get on/off island?


I don't think he ever illegally left the island. It was what he did while off the island that was illegal.

We've known for a long time that the Others have (had) ready access to the real world. Ben obviously came and went frequently, Richard (dating back to the 50s), Mr. Friendly...


----------



## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I don't think he ever illegally left the island. It was what he did while off the island that was illegal.
> 
> We've known for a long time that the Others have (had) ready access to the real world. Ben obviously came and went frequently, Richard (dating back to the 50s), Mr. Friendly...


I've been wondering about this myself. We know the Other have a way of getting off the island, aside from the sub. We just don't know what it is. For example, in Jughead, in 1954, long before the Dharma sub arrives, Richard says that getting off the island "is very privileged information" when speaking with John. We've also seen Richard visiting Locke in 1956, again before the Dharma sub is around. I bet we will find out soon!


----------



## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Alfer said:


> Felt very *Wizard of Oz*'ish when Smokey played back Ben's life....


 Now I want to play Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky" as the sound with the visual of the smoke monster swirling around Ben.


----------



## edrego (Jan 25, 2008)

I'm a fan of the show and think there has been some good writing over the life of the show. However, this whole business of time travel is going to be a make or break thing for them. 

Since time travel is such a popular sci/fi plot device, its gets kinda old in how you present it and resolve all the "time loop" questions. Unless they have a groundbreaking way to explain time travel and resolve all the "time loop" questions in way that has never been told before, this show will have a disastrous crash and burn finale when it ends. 

I know this is a TV show and its fiction but your story should be "plausible" within the universe you create. Once you start "breaking the rules" of your story universe, then your story starts to fall apart and then you start "making things up as you go."

The creators of the show have always promised us that they wouldn't "cheat" on certain things. Whatever they presented to us would be fully explainable and they wouldn't leave any stone unturned. I have been trusting them to stay true to this promise but I'm getting concerned with all this time travel stuff that they will have to rely on "cheating" to get themselves out of the plot holes that they created. The first sign of this is when Richard said that Ben would "forget what happened" (or something to that effect) when they took him back to the Others camp to get healed. Memory loss is such a cheap way to get yourself out a plot hole. And then, there are problems of what he forgot and what he remembers. When he wakes up, he doesn't remember the shooting but he remembers that he has a father and the others back at the Dharma camp and he also remembers why he wanted to leave the camp and come to them. (which is part of the reason he got shot because he was escaping with Sayid) 

I'm holding on but I just have this feeling in my stomach that the writing is going to get sloppy with the cheap tricks to get them out of all these questions they have created, specifically with this time travel arc. I wish they didn't go down that path of time travel because there are so many problems with trying to explain it.


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I don't think he ever illegally left the island. It was what he did while off the island that was illegal.


Well, Ben's dialogue made it out to be that regular trips off the island weren't OK - at least at that point - though yes, that wasn't Widmore's only violation. ("You left the island regularly. You had a daughter with an outsider. You broke the rules, Charles.")

Now, is he telling the whole truth. _Probably not._ But he usually waters the seed of truth to suit his needs.

And I'm not sure Richard is a good litmus test for anyone else, as Richard's exact place/postion with the Others isn't clear. We do know he can do things outside of the normal (Widmore/Hawking) chain of command since he reports directly to the head man (Jacob!).

Ben and Mr. Friendly, well, considering those are well into the post-purge era, not sure if I'd present that as solid evidence.

But all this brings up another point: I hope we learn what Ben's trick was in getting Widmore booted. I guess the most serous transgression was fathering Penny.


----------



## DUDE_NJX (Feb 12, 2003)

Personally, I'm sick and tired of all the "rules" and what "the island wants" and "because it's supposed to be this way" crap. Would the show really be done if someone gave a straight answer as to WHY other than "Because."?
I don't think it would spoil everything, but surely the show would be much less annoying.


----------



## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

hanumang said:


> Well, Ben's dialogue made it out to be that regular trips off the island weren't OK - at least at that point - though yes, that wasn't Widmore's only violation. ("You left the island regularly. You had a daughter with an outsider. You broke the rules, Charles.")
> 
> Now, is he telling the whole truth. _Probably not._ But he usually waters the seed of truth to suit his needs.


I thought that part of the issue was that they were _unauthorized_ trips.


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

JYoung said:


> I thought that part of the issue was that they were _unauthorized_ trips.


I suspect that's how it'll play out.

But I have to wonder how he could have gotten away with even one unauthorized trip without being ratted out. Granted, he probably had folks cover for him while he 'searched the forest' or something, but after a short while - and he was on the island from 1955 to 1992 - somebody had to pick up on it. Hard to imagine Ben was the _only_ one.

I'm excited about how much we're learning - even if it only is in little bit - about the Others. Fascinating stuff.


----------



## vertigo235 (Oct 27, 2000)

hanumang said:


> I suspect that's how it'll play out.
> 
> But I have to wonder how he could have gotten away with even one unauthorized trip without being ratted out. Granted, he probably had folks cover for him while he 'searched the forest' or something, but after a short while - and he was on the island from 1955 to 1992 - somebody had to pick up on it. Hard to imagine Ben was the _only_ one.
> 
> I'm excited about how much we're learning - even if it only is in little bit - about the Others. Fascinating stuff.


Maybe he only started doing it after the purge.


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

vertigo235 said:


> Maybe he only started doing it after the purge.


The thought had crossed my mind, but considering that Penny is about 35 years old in 2008, the trips probably started earlier than 1992. With some exceptions (Charlotte and Richard come to mind, for different reasons), the producers tend to make characters the age of the actor playing them in the 'present;' Sonya Walger will be 34.

Also, Widmore is very wealthy. Unless it was inherited - a possibility, though unlikely - it takes time to build that level of wealth.

Fun to speculate on. Hopefully we'll get an answer soon.

So did Ben really think dead is dead? And has he ever cross paths with Christian? I wasn't sure by the look on his face if he had (when Sun mentioned the name).


----------



## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

Bananfish said:


> So I would be surprised if Ben didn't know about time travel and that a plane crash would deliver to him the Losties. He also asks for the passenger list, suggesting to me that he expected certain passengers to be on board ... like time travelers Hurley, Jack and Kate.





aintnosin said:


> I had the exact same thought.


So did I--about 2 pages ago in this thread. 



stellie93 said:


> We seem to be thinking that Ben didn't remember the O6 from his childhood. I think he knew timetravelers were there and expected them to come to the island at some point. He either knew when the plane crashed, or as soon as he read the manifest. Remember how excited he was when he said, "there may be survivors!"





Supfreak26 said:


> I think the sign is a simple device to show what time frame the show is currently in.
> 
> There you go. Mystery solved.


Which is? I thought the opposite--that the sign doesn't seem to be from the same timeframe that the show is currently in. Or do you think that Sun and Ben are in 1977? 

I keep confusing Dharma with the Others once they were living in the village. Who does Smokey belong to? Since Ben's house has an entrance to it, you have to assume Dharma knew it was there, but I also thought that the Others must have had it before that. Did they let Dharma play with it? Or was that entrace put in after the Purge? Or am I totally confused? (yeah, that's it)


----------



## TiVotion (Dec 6, 2002)

"What lies in the shadow of the Temple"?

Benjamin Linus.

Benjamin Linus LIES in the shadow of The Temple. He lies everywhere.


----------



## DUDE_NJX (Feb 12, 2003)

TiVotion said:


> "What lies in the shadow of the Temple"?
> 
> Benjamin Linus.
> 
> Benjamin Linus LIES in the shadow of The Temple. He lies everywhere.


LOL :up:


----------



## TiVotion (Dec 6, 2002)

Whoops. I said "Temple", though. I think it might have been "statue".

Either way, I stand by the answer!


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

For the less spoiler-phobic:


Spoiler



The last episode of the season is entitled: "The Incident."


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

The quote in this source bothers me...

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/handheld/30246.html

"_*Lindelof [January 2005] said * it won't venture too far into science fiction as its mysteries unfold. "We're still trying to be ... firmly ensconced in the world of science fact," he said in an interview. "I don't think we've shown anything on the show yet ... that has no rational explanation in the real world that we all function within. We certainly hint at psychic phenomena, happenstance and ... things being in a place where they probably shouldn't be. But nothing is flat-out impossible. There are no spaceships. *There isn't any time travel*." _"

Assuming he wasn't mis-quoted isn't this a major mis-direction (i.e. lie) or an indication, contrary to my view before reading this, that they did NOT have a plan? Opinions?

And what precisely is impossible about spaceships (vs say psychic phenomena?)


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

philw1776 said:


> Assuming he wasn't mis-quoted isn't this a major mis-direction (i.e. lie) or an indication, contrary to my view before reading this, that they did NOT have a plan? Opinions?


I vote for misdirection.


----------



## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

philw1776 said:


> The quote in this source bothers me...
> 
> http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/handheld/30246.html
> 
> ...


I think they changed their minds. Despite what anyone says, when they started, they didn't know where they were going or how it was going to end.


----------



## wprager (Feb 19, 2006)

edrego said:


> I'm a fan of the show and think there has been some good writing over the life of the show. However, this whole business of time travel is going to be a make or break thing for them.
> 
> Since time travel is such a popular sci/fi plot device, its gets kinda old in how you present it and resolve all the "time loop" questions. Unless they have a groundbreaking way to explain time travel and resolve all the "time loop" questions in way that has never been told before, this show will have a disastrous crash and burn finale when it ends.
> 
> ...


It's very common for someone who was in a serious incident to not remember the events leading up to it. It's not implausible that Ben would not remember much about the last day or few after being shot and nearly dying.

There is also something about how he was made well in the temple. Maybe the Island could fix his body, but his "spirit" had to be "rewound" to a time before he was shot.

Or something completely different. I'm not sure exactly what Richard meant -- how much would he not remember? A day? A week? And even if he didn't get a mind wipe, how likely is it for him to remember specific people (other than Hurley)? Think back, were you at some summer camp when you were 12? Do you remember everyone on the camp staff? How much time would he have spent with Jack, Kate and so on? Even Sawyer -- he was the Chief of Security, would he really have that much interaction with a snot-nosed 12 year old? This isn't TNG and Ben is not Wesley. From our point of view, sure, we're seeing these characters in avery other scene, but in reality they are just a handful of people out of 100 (or more?) adults. With the exception of Sayid, Ben probably wants to spend more time with the (few) kids that they have there.

And as for Sayid, it is quite understandable (from natural causes) that he would not remember much leading up to being shot.

Plus we don't yet know how much longer the Losties will be with Dharma. Maybe they're gone in the next episode.


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## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

edrego said:


> The creators of the show have always promised us that they wouldn't "cheat" on certain things. Whatever they presented to us would be fully explainable and they wouldn't leave any stone unturned. I have been trusting them to stay true to this promise but I'm getting concerned with all this time travel stuff that they will have to rely on "cheating" to get themselves out of the plot holes that they created. The first sign of this is when Richard said that Ben would "forget what happened" (or something to that effect) when they took him back to the Others camp to get healed. Memory loss is such a cheap way to get yourself out a plot hole. And then, there are problems of what he forgot and what he remembers. When he wakes up, he doesn't remember the shooting but he remembers that he has a father and the others back at the Dharma camp and he also remembers why he wanted to leave the camp and come to them. (which is part of the reason he got shot because he was escaping with Sayid)


In fairness, it's not as if Ben getting shot by Sayid was setup a long time ago and they simply created the memory loss as a way of avoiding explaining Ben not showing any signs that he remembered. They had Ben shoot Sayid in one episode, and we were told in the very next episode that he wouldn't remember. I don't know that it's fair to call this cheating before seeing how it plays out. They could have avoided the appearance of cheating by not even having Sayid shoot Ben and having him escape in a completely different way. I'll give the writers the benefit of the doubt on this one for now.



Turtleboy said:


> I think they changed their minds. Despite what anyone says, when they started, they didn't know where they were going or how it was going to end.


I agree that they probably didn't have everything planned from the very begining, as I think I've read that they weren't even sure that they'd make it past the initial 13 episode order. I do think, however, that by the middle of the first season, they realized that they had a good shot of being on for awhile and came up with a general direction of where things were headed and kept this direction in mind with any far out ideas they decided to throw in so as to ensure that they could explain them away later on.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

3D said:


> I agree that they probably didn't have everything planned from the very begining, as I think I've read that they weren't even sure that they'd make it past the initial 13 episode order. I do think, however, that by the middle of the first season, they realized that they had a good shot of being on for awhile and came up with a general direction of where things were headed and kept this direction in mind with any far out ideas they decided to throw in so as to ensure that they could explain them away later on.


Well, they've said they had the ending before they started, and I don't think they're lying...


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Well, they've said they had the ending before they started, and I don't think they're lying...


How do you reconcile that position with the creator's statement that "there's no time travel" in LOST?


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## Fool Me Twice (Jul 6, 2004)

He said they hadn't shown anything yet ("yet" being the middle of season one") that couldn't have a rational explanation. Not that we wouldn't see something with no rational explanation. And not that we wouldn't see spaceships or time travel in future seasons.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

philw1776 said:


> How do you reconcile that position with the creator's statement that "there's no time travel" in LOST?


I wait until they show something in the series that makes that statement take on a different meaning.

I'm sure there will be a moment when we'll look back at that and say, "Oh, so THAT'S what they meant by that!"


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## edrego (Jan 25, 2008)

3D said:


> In fairness, it's not as if Ben getting shot by Sayid was setup a long time ago and they simply created the memory loss as a way of avoiding explaining Ben not showing any signs that he remembered. They had Ben shoot Sayid in one episode, and we were told in the very next episode that he wouldn't remember. I don't know that it's fair to call this cheating before seeing how it plays out. They could have avoided the appearance of cheating by not even having Sayid shoot Ben and having him escape in a completely different way. I'll give the writers the benefit of the doubt on this one for now.
> 
> I agree that they probably didn't have everything planned from the very begining, as I think I've read that they weren't even sure that they'd make it past the initial 13 episode order. I do think, however, that by the middle of the first season, they realized that they had a good shot of being on for awhile and came up with a general direction of where things were headed and kept this direction in mind with any far out ideas they decided to throw in so as to ensure that they could explain them away later on.


Guys, they had this stuff figured out pretty early on and since the time travel arc is a major part of the show now and given that we are on the next to the last seaosn, I'm pretty sure this was the "big target" they were aimming for from the beginning. If my assumption is correct, they had to think about how they were going to present time travel and answer the "age old" questions that go with it like "time looping" and "son before mother" questions that always plague time travel stories. They knew people were going to start up these discussions and I believe they have no good answers to make it different from any other time travel story so we start seeing the cheats like memory loss to get themselves out the corner they painted themselves in.

Until I see a solid explaintion of this time travel stuff, I will hold on to the belief that they started the "jumping the shark" portion of the show once they introduced time travel and the moving of the island. I just don't see how they are going to get themselves out of the time travel pit without cheating. I know they are creative but once they went down the time travel path (something that is not original or creative in any stretch of the imagination) they put a potentially fatal plot hole in their story.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

edrego said:


> Until I see a solid explaintion of this time travel stuff, I will hold on to the belief that they started the "jumping the shark" portion of the show once they introduced time travel and the moving of the island. I just don't see how they are going to get themselves out of the time travel pit without cheating. I know they are creative but once they went down the time travel path (something that is not original or creative in any stretch of the imagination) they put a potentially fatal plot hole in their story.


That's a perfectly valid personal belief for you to have, but I hope you don't expect writers to never write time travel stories just because you can't handle them!


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

I"m still firmly of the belief that they didn't know where they were going in Season 1 or Season 2. They didn't know what the numbers meant or what the monster was going to be. They didn't know about the Others. 

But like any story, at some point they sat down and said, "Ok, this is successful, where are we going." Probably towards the middle of Season 3 where the worst aimlessness is.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Turtleboy said:


> But like any story, at some point they sat down and said, "Ok, this is successful, where are we going." Probably towards the middle of Season 3 where the worst aimlessness is.


But there was no aimlessness in the middle of Season 3. It only seemed like that at the time, but now we can see how those pieces fall into place.

I know that a writer who joined the show between Seasons 2 and 3 told a friend of his what the Big Plan for the show was, and that the friend believed the writer when he says that the Plan was in place from the beginning and that it will be obvious when the show was over that it was in place from the beginning. I also know that the show's creators said back during the first season that they knew the ending. It would be stupid for them to have lied about it. I believe them, and I think all the people who are accusing them of lying are going to feel silly when the show is over.


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## Philosofy (Feb 21, 2000)

When the producers said there wasn't any time travel, did they mean "at this point in the story"? IIRC, in season 1 there was a lot of speculation that the island was prehistoric.


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## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

philw1776 said:


> The quote in this source bothers me...
> 
> http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/handheld/30246.html
> 
> ...


This was obviously a mis-direction. What they ingeniously did was take a show that wasn't overtly sci-fi (just a few unexplained mysteries) and hooked into those people who don't normally watch sci-fi from the beginning and gradually dropped them into sci-fi territory. I think it's great. I know people who don't normally watch these shows watching LOST because they got hooked in the beginning.



Turtleboy said:


> I"m still firmly of the belief that they didn't know where they were going in Season 1 or Season 2. They didn't know what the numbers meant or what the monster was going to be. They didn't know about the Others.
> 
> But like any story, at some point they sat down and said, "Ok, this is successful, where are we going." Probably towards the middle of Season 3 where the worst aimlessness is.


Damon Lindelof has been on record saying that Adam and Eve (in Season 1) is going to be their proof that they planned this whole arc way back.


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

I think that they have known many things about the story and character arcs, including the overall ending, from the start and I think we're going to find that the ending isn't dependant on time-travel and that the time travel storyline was incorporated as the show went along. 

I don't know why Damon Lindelhoff said there would be no time-travel when clearly there is; but I would speculate that at the time of that interview there wasnt. Maybe they were even having that argument internally at the time; who knows  but I bet we will get an answer when its all said and done. I do think that they have known there was time-travel in the show from the start of season 2 and the introduction of Desmond.


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

Razzle Dazzle!


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

Turtleboy said:


> I"m still firmly of the belief that they didn't know where they were going in Season 1 or Season 2. They didn't know what the numbers meant or what the monster was going to be. They didn't know about the Others.
> 
> But like any story, at some point they sat down and said, "Ok, this is successful, where are we going." Probably towards the middle of Season 3 where the worst aimlessness is.


I think that they have known where they ultimately wanted to go all along, but they couldn't start their endgame story while the series had an indefinite ending - if they where expected to keep the show going they couldn't do the endgame story because once that plays out the show is over. So they had to introduce other plot lines to fill in.

I think they knew the role the numbers would play in the story, but what the numbers are, or how they have influence isn't supposed to make sense.*

I don't think they knew much about the Others. I think the writers knew that there were native inhabitants on the island, but that's about it. There's a lot that doesn't make sense to me about the Others and I do feel that if they're not well explained by the end, that will be a big weakness in the show for me.

I would be willing to bet money that they have known what the monster is from the start; and if they didn't, I think that would be a deal-breaker for me...

*Before anyone quotes Lostpedia, I know about the Valenzetti Equation, thanks


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

latrobe7 said:


> I think that they have known where they ultimately wanted to go all along, but they couldn't start their endgame story while the series had an indefinite ending - if they where expected to keep the show going they couldn't do the endgame story because once that plays out the show is over. So they had to introduce other plot lines to fill in.


Except the original plan for the series was five seasons, and that's how long it's going to be (with the final two seasons' worth of episodes divided among three seasons). So there was never any padding needed to keep the story going.

Which is not to say they haven't added anything along the way. Only that the show isn't lasting an episode longer than they planned it to when they started.


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

Are we allowed to talk about The Stand without upsetting the spoiler people? There is a nuclear bomb buried on the island. Which of the characters is Trashcan Man?


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## wprager (Feb 19, 2006)

Turtleboy said:


> I"m still firmly of the belief that they didn't know where they were going in Season 1 or Season 2. They didn't know what the numbers meant or what the monster was going to be. They didn't know about the Others.
> 
> But like any story, at some point they sat down and said, "Ok, this is successful, where are we going." Probably towards the middle of Season 3 where the worst aimlessness is.


In Season 1 they had Adam and Eve. Right at that point I (and many others) expected that we will find out who these people were at the end of the series, and that these people will be either Jack and Kate, or Sawyer and Kate or -- as more characters started being introduced -- Desmond and Penny, Jack and Juliet, Sawyer and Juliet, etc, etc.

Now, if that doesn't pretty much guarantee some kind of time travel, then I don't know what else it could be. So I would say that, back in S1, many people here were already expecting some kind of time-travel plotline. And, of course, if we end up being correct about "Adam and Eve" being someone we already know, then the producers had already planned it this way.


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## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

For the current conversation regarding what Team Darlton said about time travel and how far in advance they've planned the show:

This blog, I thought, explains very well the context of the scifiwire quote that's been quoted here.
http://blog.timelypersuasion.com/blog/?p=422

And then here's a snippet from their very first podcast on November 8, 2005 (during season 2) that I think is hilarious in hindsight.


> Carlton Cuse: You're not going to tell them about the time travel, are you?
> 
> Damon Lindelof: No, no, I'm not going to. In fact, I'm going to go back in time and prevent you from having said that. [Laughs]
> 
> ...


A full transcript of the podcast can be found here:
http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Official_Lost_Podcast_transcript/November_08%2C_2005


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## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Well, they've said they had the ending before they started, and I don't think they're lying...


Well, don't count me as one of those sayiing that they're lying, but I could have sworn that I read an interview towards the end of season 1 where one of TPTB said that it wasn't until part way through the season when they sat down and mapped out in detail the overall story arc. I guess that doesn't preculde that they had an ending in mind from the get go, but not necessarily the general road map that they would take. Or, I could just be remembering wrong. I will say this, however: the french woman's voice from the first episode was not the same actress who played her starting in the middle of the season. If *everything* were planned out from the start, I'd have thought they would have used the same voice for consistency sake.


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

It's a silly argument, anyway. I'm enjoying the story. Whether they knew it from the beginning, or made it up later, it doesn't really matter to me.


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## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

Rob is clearly a Man of Faith. I'm sticking with the writers till I can't any more, and then I doubt if I'll care.

A couple things...I'm not sure I get why Ben letting Alex be killed is such a big deal compared to some other things he's done. Is this the only time he did something that wasn't what the island wanted him to do? (killing Locke, blowing up the freighter, shooting Caesar and all of Widmore's men) Plus, what were the chances that Keamy would let her live if he surendered?

Sayid doesn't seem to be with the Others, so where has he spent the last 3 years? Also still waiting to hear about Faraday.

Ben said there was a wall around the temple to keep people from seeing it. Wonder what it looks like? It must not be too huge, and surely there would be some vantage point from which it is visible. If it's an actual building...

I noticed that young Widmore rode into the Others camp on a horse. Have we seen them riding before? Maybe Kate's horse was just a horse.


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

stellie93 said:


> Sayid doesn't seem to be with the Others, so where has he spent the last 3 years? Also still waiting to hear about Faraday.
> .


Sayid? He left the island, got married, and his wife killed, became Ben's assassin, and went to build houses in Latin America.


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## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

Turtleboy said:


> Sayid? He left the island, got married, and his wife killed, became Ben's assassin, and went to build houses in Latin America.


Duh!! Right, he's only been wandering in the jungle for 3 days, not 3 years.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

stellie93 said:


> A couple things...I'm not sure I get why Ben letting Alex be killed is such a big deal compared to some other things he's done. Is this the only time he did something that wasn't what the island wanted him to do? (killing Locke, blowing up the freighter, shooting Caesar and all of Widmore's men) Plus, what were the chances that Keamy would let her live if he surendered?


Because Ben didn't give a rat's ass about those other people but he clearly loves Alex as his own child (in his twisted way).
Alex is just about the only emotional level you can use on Ben.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I wait until they show something in the series that makes that statement take on a different meaning.
> 
> I'm sure there will be a moment when we'll look back at that and say, "Oh, so THAT'S what they meant by that!"


Truly, you're a Man of Faith  EDIT: A smeek, I was rushed & distracted and behind in my reading

I hope you're right. And I do cut them Season One slack as they had no idea if the show would have a 2nd season. An opportunity for revision and improvement. LOST rarely if ever disappoints.


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## edrego (Jan 25, 2008)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> That's a perfectly valid personal belief for you to have, but I hope you don't expect writers to never write time travel stories just because you can't handle them!


Its not that I can't handle or dont like time travel stories, its just that the genre is not original and one of the big things about the show a lot of people liked is that is was so different from anything else on TV. Once they started the time travel sequences, it started to get suspect. I will give them a plus on the way they introduced it with Desmond and it seemed like the time travel was more on a mental level where he was visiting past experiences he already had and having a different perspective on it. That was somewhat a different spin on the time travel storyline. However, once they started to introduce people going back in time and interacting with events they were never part of ("changing the past"), then it started to get cheap to me.

To me, its like another movie that decides to talk about vampires. Like how many times are we going to get the story retold and what makes this vampire movie different from the 200 ones I've seen before. What makes this Lost time travel story different from any of the ones we have seen before? They already started the cheating with the memory thing wit Ben.(I'm sorry, i just wanted to throw up when they started down that path with the memory thing. Its cheap, plan and simple and I believe they could have avoided it if they had put some more thought into it.)

Don't get me wrong, I love the show and can't wait to view it each week, however, I will not hold the writers/creators on a pedistal like they are some sort of godhead that can't make any mistakes. I believe when its all said in done that the time travel plot will be the weak point in the show.


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## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

Turtleboy said:


> It's a silly argument, anyway. I'm enjoying the story. Whether they knew it from the beginning, or made it up later, it doesn't really matter to me.


Pretty much my sentiments exactly. Although I don't know if the details were planned from before episode one or some point near the middle or end of season 1 makes little difference to me as I enjoy the heck out of this show. Either way, it's clear to me that they were planting things early on that are paying off bigtime right now, and I expect the payoffs will only get greater as we head down the home stretch.


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

The whole "you had a child off the island" was for the viewer anyway. It cleared up questions about Widemore, the timeline, and Penny. If Widemore left _after_ Dharmaville, then Penny would have had to been born on the island. And how did he get so rich? So they let us know that he's been going back and forth, so that clears things up.


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## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

edrego said:


> They already started the cheating with the memory thing wit Ben.(I'm sorry, i just wanted to throw up when they started down that path with the memory thing. Its cheap, plan and simple and I believe they could have avoided it if they had put some more thought into it.)


Ah, but we don't know what's going on with that. All we know is that Ben doesn't remember being shot by Sayid, which is normal in trauma situations, but remembers Dharma and his dad. We don't know if Ben has retained the memories of Sayid, Sawyer, Jack, Kate, and Juliet. We don't know how the Temple changes him when Alpert takes him there. That's a crucial scene that we're missing right now.

With a normal show, I'd agree with you, but with Lost, there are gaps galore and they explain those gaps the closer they get to putting the puzzle pieces together. So until we have ALL the pieces together, we don't know where they wrote something cheaply or mistakenly.


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Except the original plan for the series was five seasons, and that's how long it's going to be (with the final two seasons' worth of episodes divided among three seasons). So there was never any padding needed to keep the story going.
> 
> Which is not to say they haven't added anything along the way. Only that the show isn't lasting an episode longer than they planned it to when they started.


I don't believe they had five seasons worth of stuff planned out, nor do I think the story has played out exactly as they originally planned it.

But, yeah, it will run for five seasons worth of episodes.


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## MirclMax (Jul 12, 2000)

wprager said:


> Now, if that doesn't pretty much guarantee some kind of time travel, then I don't know what else it could be. So I would say that, back in S1, many people here were already expecting some kind of time-travel plotline. And, of course, if we end up being correct about "Adam and Eve" being someone we already know, then the producers had already planned it this way.


Unless of course they changed their minds mid-stream and through in the Time-Travel stuff and decided to rewrite who Adam and Eve are/were given the new possibilities that this now offers to them.

In other words, Adam/Eve being people we know doesn't necessarily prove that is what they were planning all along. We know next to nothing regarding those characters other than that they are dead.

That being said, I'm more inclined to believe that they knew where they were going all along (particularly in terms of Adam and Eve and time travel) .. but I allow for alternate possibilities.


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## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

I can't wait for the book that they'll *have* to write, when this is all over. I'm ready to read about all the behind-the-scenes stuff.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

edrego said:


> Its not that I can't handle or dont like time travel stories, its just that the genre is not original and one of the big things about the show a lot of people liked is that is was so different from anything else on TV. Once they started the time travel sequences, it started to get suspect. I will give them a plus on the way they introduced it with Desmond and it seemed like the time travel was more on a mental level where he was visiting past experiences he already had and having a different perspective on it. That was somewhat a different spin on the time travel storyline. However, *once they started to introduce people going back in time and interacting with events they were never part of ("changing the past"), *then it started to get cheap to me.
> ...
> I believe when its all said in done that the time travel plot will be the weak point in the show.


Tastes obviously differ. I too love the Vonnegut way they introduced time travel and furthermore I credit them for being consistent within their LOST universe.

In my view, and I believe in the perspective of the writers, the LOSTies were always part of those 1977 events and nothing, _so far_, has been "changing the past".


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## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

Fool Me Twice said:


> "What's about to come out of this jungle, I can't control."
> 
> Enter John Locke.
> 
> Hilarious.


Best line of the night, maybe of the season.



stellie93 said:


> Ben said there was a wall around the temple to keep people from seeing it. Wonder what it looks like? It must not be too huge, and surely there would be some vantage point from which it is visible. If it's an actual building...


Maybe it looks like a statue, but only from a distance. When you're up close, you can see it's not really a statue, and that's why it only has four toes.


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## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

Turtleboy said:


> Are we allowed to talk about The Stand without upsetting the spoiler people? There is a nuclear bomb buried on the island. Which of the characters is Trashcan Man?


John Locke of course. "My life for you!"


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## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

stellie93 said:


> Ben said there was a wall around the temple to keep people from seeing it. Wonder what it looks like? It must not be too huge, and surely there would be some vantage point from which it is visible. If it's an actual building...


Just MHO, but I think the wall is what we were seeing right there. Remember when Richard went in there was no real visible entryway, he just pushed a section of the wall. Also why Locke said to go "under" meaning under the wall.


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## tiams (Apr 19, 2004)

hanumang said:


> And since it never occurred to me, what exactly is the deal with the sub? Did the Others simply take over the logistics of that? I mean, if that was the Dharma folks' thing - understanding that the Island folks were purged - wouldn't Ann Arbor have something to say/do after everything went down?
> 
> I have the same question regarding the supply drops for the Swan. Why would a plane still be dropping supplies with Dharma logos after the purge? And were they still being dropped after the hatch imploded?


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## wprager (Feb 19, 2006)

MirclMax said:


> Unless of course they changed their minds mid-stream and through in the Time-Travel stuff and decided to rewrite who Adam and Eve are/were given the new possibilities that this now offers to them.
> 
> In other words, Adam/Eve being people we know doesn't necessarily prove that is what they were planning all along. We know next to nothing regarding those characters other than that they are dead.
> 
> That being said, I'm more inclined to believe that they knew where they were going all along (particularly in terms of Adam and Eve and time travel) .. but I allow for alternate possibilities.


My point was really about the members of this forum (and others). Way back in S1 quite a few people *expected* a resolution to the Adam&Eve question that would necessarily require (is that redundant?), at the very least, a temporal loop, if not straightforward time travel.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

3D said:


> Well, don't count me as one of those sayiing that they're lying, but I could have sworn that I read an interview towards the end of season 1 where one of TPTB said that it wasn't until part way through the season when they sat down and mapped out in detail the overall story arc. I guess that doesn't preculde that they had an ending in mind from the get go, but not necessarily the general road map that they would take. Or, I could just be remembering wrong. I will say this, however: the french woman's voice from the first episode was not the same actress who played her starting in the middle of the season. If *everything* were planned out from the start, I'd have thought they would have used the same voice for consistency sake.


OK, that's just silly. Nobody is claiming that "everything" was planned from the beginning. I don't think anyone is even saying that the the full outline of the story arc was planned. I have in my mind that the producers went into their pitch meeting and it went something like this:

"We have this idea for a show where a plane crashes on a island in the South Pacific. There are a bunch of survivors and as they being to get comfortable on the island, they begin to realize that the island is very mysterious. Strange things are happening to the survivors that can't be easily explained.
As time passes, and the survivors begin to unravel some of the mysteries, more mysterious and unexplained phenomena become apparent. We'll learn that these survivors were not on that plane by chance, and we'll explore the background of each of the characters through flashbacks to their life before the crash, and tie in those flashback stories with the theme of the current episode." Then I imagine they laid out the "big reveal" at the end of the show, and it blew the ABC execs away, which is why they agreed to fund the most expensive pilot in TV history.

Did they know all the details? Of course not. Did they know the ending and have a loose idea of how they would get there? I think so.


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

I wonder why no one got the answer to Ilana's question yet. "What lies in the shadow of the statue?"

The toes, of course! All 8 of them.


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

mqpickles said:


> This is part of my problem with "what happened, happened" with no exceptions. It ultimately means no free will, past present or future.
> 
> YMMV (many people believe in predestination/fate anyway).


This argument keeps getting brought up, but it's age-old and unresolvable. But, ABC and Lost have beat us over the head with the answer as they see it. All of the promos for this season before it started had one word in common: destiny. It has been harped on throughout the series. From "I was supposed to come back" to "You're not supposed to do this" to "Do not mistake coincidence for fate", it's been clear where the storytelling stands.



Rob Helmerichs said:


> I still insist that something weird is going on with the Village because of the Dharma Initiative furnishings that weren't there when the Others lived there before. But clearly I was wrong as to exactly WHAT weird is going on!
> 
> And I still believe that the ultimate answer is that the universe is broken, the weirdness is a symptom, it needs to be fixed, and Ben is the man for the job (or at least he thinks he is).


You know Rob, saying that something weird is going on in the village and on the island isn't really uhh, going out on a limb there.


----------



## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

Delta13 said:


> This argument keeps getting brought up, but it's age-old and unresolvable. But, ABC and Lost have beat us over the head with the answer as they see it. All of the promos for this season before it started had one word in common: destiny. It has been harped on throughout the series. From "I was supposed to come back" to "You're not supposed to do this" to "Do not mistake coincidence for fate", it's been clear where the storytelling stands.


I think that's as clear as mud. If destiny is unchangeable then there is no reason to advise someone of what they're "supposed" to do - there is no "supposed to do" there is just what they do. There is no cause for urgency, no reason for Hawking to try to influence Desmond, no purpose for anyone to do anything, really; beyond Jack's plans of making some sandwiches and maybe playing some Risk.

I think them beating us over the head is a setup.

But more than that, I just hope they turn-the-page on the time-travel stuff soon, I am over it.


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## Sromkie (Aug 15, 2002)

latrobe7 said:


> I think that's as clear as mud. If destiny is unchangeable then there is no reason to advise someone of what they're "supposed" to do - there is no "supposed to do" there is just what they do. There is no cause for urgency, no reason for Hawking to try to influence Desmond, no purpose for anyone to do anything, really...


Except there is a reason. The reason is because it's their fate to "advise someone of what they're 'supposed' to do"; it's their fate to feel like it's urgent; it's Hawking's fate to try to influence Desmond. It may not change anything, but it has to happen that way because it always has. Jack showed us that even a lack of urgency (when he refused to help Bensaying that if he couldn't change anything, then he didn't need to act) showed us that it's all just what has and will always happen.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

And here we are geting comfortable with the LOST universe's aspect of time travel, beginning to figure things out, geting complacent. My bet is that late this season the writers will use some happening, q.v. the Purge or the Incident, to upset the apple cart, overthrowing what we think was going on and have us in a flurry until next season.


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

Sromkie said:


> Except there is a reason. The reason is because it's their fate to "advise someone of what they're 'supposed' to do"; it's their fate to feel like it's urgent; it's Hawking's fate to try to influence Desmond. It may not change anything, but it has to happen that way because it always has. Jack showed us that even a lack of urgency (when he refused to help Bensaying that if he couldn't change anything, then he didn't need to act) showed us that it's all just what has and will always happen.


Yes, I get that - everyone does what they do; everything that happened, happened; it is what it is; etc. - but that does not lead to a satisfying resolution to the story, for me anyway. The motivation for certain characters to behave in a certain way doesn't make any sense. The reason for anyone to do anything distills down to "just because". Not very compelling, IMO.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

philw1776 said:


> And here we are geting comfortable with the LOST universe's aspect of time travel, beginning to figure things out, geting complacent. My bet is that late this season the writers will use some happening, q.v. the Purge or the Incident, to upset the apple cart, overthrowing what we think was going on and have us in a flurry until next season.


So you're saying we'll find out the universe is broken?


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## Magister (Oct 17, 2004)

tiams said:


> hanumang said:
> 
> 
> > I have the same question regarding the supply drops for the Swan. Why would a plane still be dropping supplies with Dharma logos after the purge? And were they still being dropped after the hatch imploded?
> ...


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## Philosofy (Feb 21, 2000)

My prediction is that the processing center was just abandoned for three years, and no mention of it will ever occur in the series again. And Rob will still be holding out.


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## Peter000 (Apr 15, 2002)

latrobe7 said:


> Yes, I get that - everyone does what they do; everything that happened, happened; it is what it is; etc. - but that does not lead to a satisfying resolution to the story, for me anyway. The motivation for certain characters to behave in a certain way doesn't make any sense. The reason for anyone to do anything distills down to "just because". Not very compelling, IMO.


And yet here you are, still watching and discussing the show. Not compelling my ass.

The resolution of the story hasn't even been revealed yet! The flip side of "What happened, happened" is "What will happen, hasn't happened yet." Lots of things can happen that haven't been ordained.

And we don't yet know all of "what happened." Not by a long shot. Some of what's to come may change the total perception of what we've seen.


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

Peter000 said:


> And yet here you are, still watching and discussing the show. Not compelling my ass.


 It's like the old joke; "How do you keep an idiot in suspense?"

If it turns out we've all been waiting for "just because"; I will have been an idiot again - even after swearing "Never again!" after the X-Files fizzled.



> And we don't yet know all of "what happened." Not by a long shot. Some of what's to come may change the total perception of what we've seen.


I'm counting on it.


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## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

Delta13 said:


> I wonder why no one got the answer to Ilana's question yet. "What lies in the shadow of the statue?"
> 
> The toes, of course! All 8 of them.


Depends on the source of light. And if the sun is that source, it depends on what time of day, the season and so forth.


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

Turtleboy said:


> Are we allowed to talk about The Stand without upsetting the spoiler people? There is a nuclear bomb buried on the island. Which of the characters is Trashcan Man?





Rosincrans said:


> John Locke of course. "My life for you!"


While he didn't specify the character involved, Damon Lindelof addressed this specifically in a recent podcast. Something like, "You know we're big fans of The Stand, I mean, look at Jughead. Trashcan Man, duh."

Greg


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

latrobe7 said:


> If it turns out we've all been waiting for "just because"; I will have been an idiot again - even after swearing "Never again!" after the X-Files fizzled.


But if it's not clear by now that this is the anti-X-Files (X-Files: Over time, everything becomes more and more confusing; Lost: Over time, everything makes more and more sense), then you will probably never be happy. With anything.


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> But if it's not clear by now that this is the anti-X-Files (X-Files: Over time, everything becomes more and more confusing; Lost: Over time, everything makes more and more sense), then you will probably never be happy. With anything.


Gee; OK, if you say so.


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

philw1776 said:


> And here we are geting comfortable with the LOST universe's aspect of time travel, beginning to figure things out, geting complacent. My bet is that late this season the writers will use some happening, q.v. the Purge or the Incident, to upset the apple cart, overthrowing what we think was going on and have us in a flurry until next season.





Rob Helmerichs said:


> So you're saying we'll find out the universe is broken?


Quit encouraging Rob! You'll just give him a reason to have faith!


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

teknikel said:


> Depends on the source of light. And if the sun is that source, it depends on what time of day, the season and so forth.


But wouldn't that be true of any answer to the question?


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

latrobe7 said:


> Yes, I get that - everyone does what they do; everything that happened, happened; it is what it is; etc. - but that does not lead to a satisfying resolution to the story, for me anyway. The motivation for certain characters to behave in a certain way doesn't make any sense. The reason for anyone to do anything distills down to "just because". Not very compelling, IMO.


As was pointed out earlier in this thread, your inability to handle time travel stories does not change how compelling the story can be to others. I'm sorry that you are hung up on what may actually be a fact of life - destiny and free will. Without seeing how deftly they have tried to mix both into the story. I find it very interesting, both from a storytelling and technical point of view, but I know everyone won't.


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## tiams (Apr 19, 2004)

Magister said:


> tiams said:
> 
> 
> > At the time, the Swan was still under Dharma control.
> ...


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## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

tiams said:


> No, after the purge in the early 90's, Dharma was no longer in control. So why would they still be dropping supplies? I'm referring to the food drops made in 2004 while the Losties were inhabiting the Swan, and the ones made for Desmond. So again I ask, why were supplies with Dharma logos being airdropped post-purge?


The Swan survived the Purge as an intact operational Dharma station, with Desmond and his predecessors (including Radzinsky) pushing the button every 108 minutes. This was either because the Others let it exist (perhaps because they knew how important pushing the button was) or because they didn't know about it.

IIRC, when Ben was taken to the Swan as a prisoner, that was the first time he found out about it. But maybe that was a lie, I don't remember.


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## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> OK, that's just silly. Nobody is claiming that "everything" was planned from the beginning. I don't think anyone is even saying that the the full outline of the story arc was planned.


I have to disagree. It seems to me that there are plenty of people in these threads who think the overall outline of the story was planned out from day one, ala Babylon 5.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

tewcewl said:


> Why does having a fixed universe mean no free will? We all have the choices that we can make. A fixed universe means whether you go into the past or the future all the choices made out of free will (and the consequences thereof) are known ahead of time.


If events are fixed, then what is it that we are deciding? If it is fate that I will murder someone, then can I be blamed for the murder any more than a rock could be blamed for falling off of a cliff and crushing someone? We do not punish the rock because there is nothing that the rock could have done to prevent itself from falling off of the cliff. Similarly, if events are fixed, there is nothing that I can do to prevent myself from doing something. I have no choice but to do what I am destined to do.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

mqpickles said:


> Kate and Jack, I can see that because they are good looking but bland. But Hurley is an unusual enough person that it's hard to believe you wouldn't at least notice a resemblance later on. And he lived for some time with Sawyer/James and Juliet/Juliet. And how many Jins do you suppose he encountered on the island? So they still have some 'splainin to do as to why it didn't occur to Ben that he knew them before.


Adult strangers look different to children than to other adults. So even if Ben did remember vague interactions with the Losties when he was young, he might not have made the connection to the adults he encountered 30 years later.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if he did remember some of them, particularly Juliet. But it also wouldn't be out of the question for Ben not to have remembered all of them, even ones that might have stood out to someone older.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

Turtleboy said:


> So Ben told Locke that he knew that Locke would come back to life. Ben told Sun that he is shocked that Locke is standing there, and that dead is dead, no matter what.
> 
> Which one is closer to the truth of what Ben knew and believed?


I wonder if the truth is somewhere in between. Perhaps Ben wasn't surprised that the island could bring people back to life, but was surprised that the island did so to Locke. Perhaps Ben was hoping that the island would leave Locke dead, and the island knew that, which was why it warned Ben against attempting to return Locke to that state.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

BitbyBlit said:


> If events are fixed, then what is it that we are deciding? If it is fate that I will murder someone, then can I be blamed for the murder any more than a rock could be blamed for falling off of a cliff and crushing someone? We do not punish the rock because there is nothing that the rock could have done to prevent itself from falling off of the cliff. Similarly, if events are fixed, there is nothing that I can do to prevent myself from doing something. I have no choice but to do what I am destined to do.


No, you are destined to do it because that's the choice you made.

In what seems to be the show's philosophy, destiny is the sum total of our choices. Where things get confusing is when we have prior knowledge of the choices we are going to make. What they seem to be getting at is that those choices were/will be in part the result of the prior knowledge, in ways we cannot foresee.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

Philosofy said:


> When the producers said there wasn't any time travel, did they mean "at this point in the story"? IIRC, in season 1 there was a lot of speculation that the island was prehistoric.


I think that's what was meant. People were speculating that time travel had already taken place, and they were answering that question, not saying that it would never take place. But even then we knew that this was a show about a group of people mysteriously surviving a plane crash, and a paralyzed man suddenly being able to walk, so they were already stretching plausibility. I think Lindelof's point was that nothing on the show so far indicated one way or the other, and whatever they introduced wouldn't be completely out of left field.

Keeping things as grounded as they did for the first few seasons not only kept the strange things that were happening more mysterious for us, but also for the characters. Now, in season 5, both we and the characters (at least some of them) have accepted that time travel is possible in this world. That opens up a whole new set of questions, but also answers, or at least provides hints to, some of the other ones.

Contrast this to what the show would have been like had they introduced time travel in the first season. The focus would have been much more on the science fiction aspects than on the character development and mystery. The basic direction of Lost is one of reality continually slipping away. When the Losties first crashed, the strangest thing was the fact that they survived the crash. That's hardly a blip on the strangeness radar at this point. Lost has slowly peeled away each layer of mystery, revealing to us new realities that don't seem too strange given the previous ones, but that do when you consider how far things have come since the beginning.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> No, you are destined to do it because that's the choice you made.


But in order for it to be my choice, I should have had the opportunity to do something different. If events are fixed, there was no point in which I could have chosen differently. So I never had any choice but to do what I did.


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## Magister (Oct 17, 2004)

aindik said:


> The Swan survived the Purge as an intact operational Dharma station, with Desmond and his predecessors (including Radzinsky) pushing the button every 108 minutes. This was either because the Others let it exist (perhaps because they knew how important pushing the button was) or because they didn't know about it.
> 
> IIRC, when Ben was taken to the Swan as a prisoner, that was the first time he found out about it. But maybe that was a lie, I don't remember.


Agree with Aindik, the Swan was still intact as a Dharma base. It was NOT controlled by the 'Hostiles'. Remember, they were incouraged to use gas suits to even go outside. As long as the button kept getting pushed, they would drop supplies. And once the button stopped being pushed, they stopped dropping supplies.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

BitbyBlit said:


> But in order for it to be my choice, I should have had the opportunity to do something different. If events are fixed, there was no point in which I could have chosen differently. So I never had any choice but to do what I did.


Sure there was. At the point you were making the decision, you could have made any decision.

And the decision you made is the decision you made. Events are fixed by the fact that what you did is what you did. But it was your choice to do that.


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## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

BitbyBlit said:


> Contrast this to what the show would have been like had they introduced time travel in the first season. The focus would have been much more on the science fiction aspects than on the character development and mystery. The basic direction of Lost is one of reality continually slipping away. When the Losties first crashed, the strangest thing was the fact that they survived the crash. That's hardly a blip on the strangeness radar at this point. Lost has slowly peeled away each layer of mystery, revealing to us new realities that don't seem too strange given the previous ones, but that do when you consider how far things have come since the beginning.


Somehow Rolling Stone knew what this forum was talking about because they just published a story about LOST that touches on what this forum has been talking about lately. 

It discusses Cuse and Lindelof's ideas of freewill vs. destiny, whether or not the story was planned from the beginning, and how they purposefully buried the overt sci-fi aspects in the beginning, and what the story is ultimately about.

Check it out here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/27380810/unraveling_the_mysteries_of_lost/print


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## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Sure there was. At the point you were making the decision, you could have made any decision.
> 
> And the decision you made is the decision you made. Events are fixed by the fact that what you did is what you did. But it was your choice to do that.


+1

I think this is the point that confuses people. Free will comes out of the choices we're all capable of making at any point in time, but fixed events (destiny) comes from where and when the choice was ultimately made.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

tewcewl said:


> +1
> 
> I think this is the point that confuses people. Free will comes out of the choices we're all capable of making at any point in time, but fixed events (destiny) comes from where and when the choice was ultimately made.


So where do events where someone made a choice but was physically incapable of following through come in - e.g. when Michael tried to kill himself?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

TAsunder said:


> So where do events where someone made a choice but was physically incapable of following through come in - e.g. when Michael tried to kill himself?


He didn't fail because he was destined to go to the island. He failed because things went wrong; as a result, he ended up going to the island. And Mr. Friendly apparently knew that this was going to happen, so from his perspective Michael was destined to fail (because he seemed to already know that Michael had failed and gone to the island). (Unanswered Question #394: How did he know?)

Free will isn't a matter of deciding something is going to go your way. Otherwise, I would have won the lottery. You can choose to try something (win the lottery, kill yourself) and fail; that doesn't take anything away from your free choice.

I think what's confusing some people is the (false, I believe) notion that some mystical force is making all this happen. I think it's all just the sum total result of all the choices that people in the show make.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> He didn't fail because he was destined to go to the island. He failed because things went wrong; as a result, he ended up going to the island...
> 
> Free will isn't a matter of deciding something is going to go your way. Otherwise, I would have won the lottery. You can choose to try something (win the lottery, kill yourself) and fail; that doesn't take anything away from your free choice.
> 
> *I think what's confusing some people is the (false, I believe) notion that some mystical force is making all this happen. I think it's all just the sum total result of all the choices that people in the show make*.


Precisely. The LOST writers have shown us both from the activist viewpoint (Sayid's free will decision to shoot young Ben) and from the passive inaction point (Jack's free will decision to let young Ben die) that what happened, happened. Just not the way that the participants exercising their own free will expected. Robert Burns, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go wrong." You may intend something but it doesn't happen that way sometimes or much of the time.

Confusion lies in that our language does not incorporate the myriad correctly descriptive tenses required to describe (most likely fictitious) time travel.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

philw1776 said:


> Confusion lies in that our language does not incorporate the myriad correctly descriptive tenses required to describe (most likely fictitious) time travel.


And more basically, in that our minds do not naturally deal with events occurring out of a natural order. Time travel is counter-intuitive. Thinking about it takes practice (reading a lot of science fiction might help), and it also probably takes a certain weirdness in the thought process (I've known perfectly intelligent, educated people who just can't wrap their minds around the stranger consequences of time travel).


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> He didn't fail because he was destined to go to the island. He failed because things went wrong; as a result, he ended up going to the island. And Mr. Friendly apparently knew that this was going to happen, so from his perspective Michael was destined to fail (because he seemed to already know that Michael had failed and gone to the island). (Unanswered Question #394: How did he know?)
> 
> Free will isn't a matter of deciding something is going to go your way. Otherwise, I would have won the lottery. You can choose to try something (win the lottery, kill yourself) and fail; that doesn't take anything away from your free choice.


So it was just a completely freak occurrence that the gun didn't fire repeatedly immediately after his previous suicide attempt? Sorry, not buying it... that smells like cheap writing if that is their implication.


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## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

TAsunder said:


> So it was just a completely freak occurrence that the gun didn't fire repeatedly immediately after his previous suicide attempt? Sorry, not buying it... that smells like cheap writing if that is their implication.


So it is unrealistic for a gun to jam? 

I think of it like this example. I have no knowledge of my future. I make choices that ultimately decide my fate. I feel like committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. Then beforehand, suddenly Mr Friendly shows up and say the Island won't let me die. I jump anyway, but instead of dying, I break my leg. In reality, Mr Friendly had come from the future and knew I didn't die, but wanted me to think the Island intervened. I had free will to make whatever choice I wanted, but somebody already knew the choices I had made.

Now, I have no idea if this is ultimately what is happening with the show, but this is my interpretation of free-will vs destiny vs whatever happened, happened, etc.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

brermike said:


> So it is unrealistic for a gun to jam?
> 
> I think of it like this example. I have no knowledge of my future. I make choices that ultimately decide my fate. I feel like committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. Then beforehand, suddenly Mr Friendly shows up and say the Island won't let me die. I jump anyway, but instead of dying, I break my leg. In reality, Mr Friendly had come from the future and knew I didn't die, but wanted me to think the Island intervened. I had free will to make whatever choice I wanted, but somebody already knew the choices I had made.
> 
> Now, I have no idea if this is ultimately what is happening with the show, but this is my interpretation of free-will vs destiny vs whatever happened, happened, etc.


It's irrelevant whether it is "realistic" or not in the context of the real world. I'm talking about the writing. I don't buy that the Lost writers want us to believe or even remotely implied that Michael was simply unlucky in his SEVERAL suicide attempts, or that the losties were lucky when keamy's gun jammed. Such things would be completely unnecessary if the ultimate "point" was that someone already knew they wouldn't die, and ultimately that's very, very weak writing.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

TAsunder said:


> It's irrelevant whether it is "realistic" or not in the context of the real world. I'm talking about the writing. I don't buy that the Lost writers want us to believe or even remotely implied that Michael was simply unlucky in his SEVERAL suicide attempts, or that the losties were lucky when keamy's gun jammed. Such things would be completely unnecessary if the ultimate "point" was that someone already knew they wouldn't die, and ultimately that's very, very weak writing.


But you're making the assumption that Michael didn't die because of time travel and fate.

To me, THAT feels more like the island was intervening somehow, trying to change something. Christian shows up at the last second and tells Michael "You can go now", before he finally dies.

These overlapping things are what makes a puzzle like this tough to crack, which is what the writers need at this point (it'd suck for them and us if the fanbase figured out the whole ending now.. WE'D hate that). So there are multiple things going on, which overlap and distract us now, but which we'll understand fully later.

As for the whole time thing, ++ to Rob's comments.. Your choice is in front of you, right then, at the moment of your choice. Now if you deliberately used the Orchid station to jump forward 5 years, look yourself up to see if you're still alive, then someone from your time pulled you back, you'd (unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view) KNOW the consequences of choices you haven't made yet (not that you know what any of those choices are yet). You saw yourself with one arm, yet alive. So now you know you can't die during the next five years, but presumably that's because you're the kind of person who wouldn't deliberately try jumping off of cliffs upon learning of his future.. (otherwise, maybe you'd have seen your own grave in the future instead, and not known how you die.. you go back, get frustrated that you're going to die, then kill yourself out of depression). The future means it's THE FUTURE, AFTER your choices between now and then have been made.. So looking into the future kind of robs you of some of the excitement of that freewill, but you still choose... you just don't get to choose based on what you've observed from the future (or, if you do act based on what you saw from the future, you've always done that and that's why you saw what you saw).

Of course it'd be great writing if a scientist like Faraday someday, in the Orchid station, made a machine that listened for the number of beeps in a 10 second period then printed out that number plus one on a piece of paper, ran the machine in a silent room, took the paper (with a one on it) and fed it into a beeping machine that beeped that number of times (after a 5 second delay), then shifted that machine back in time to the initial 10 second period.

Even there, though, at least according to the Orchid Orientation video outtakes, they've shown us the right thing (at least partially). You'd try doing what I said about the silent room, but the beeping machine would arrive right then and beep some number of times, and print out a larger number.. (probably it'd beep for the amount of times that it could beep in a 10 second period plus one). You'd then take the paper, feed it into the machine, and send it back to see what happens when you do it one more time.. (OR, in an alternate story, the entire experiment never worked - it just beeped once and you decided not to send it back, because the (only) version of you that would have wanted to try not sending it back after the 10-beep run wouldn't have sent it back and it never was sent back. Whatever - the equilibrium needs to be reached before we talk about it - there's no feedback - and apparently whatever could cause such feedback somehow isn't physically possible (or someone tries my experiment and it causes an Incident).


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

..and yes, I left you in a dangling parenthetical thingy there, and no, I didn't use the bit about seeing yourself with one arm.  )


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> But you're making the assumption that Michael didn't die because of time travel and fate.


Yes, because without that assumption the writing of those episodes is exposed as weak and worthy of a 5th grade short story at best. Having characters tell us one thing, showing us something consistent with that, and then throwing in complete contrivances like two different guns jamming at just the right time is complete rubbish. I don't believe the Lost writers intended that. Rob and others apparently do.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

TAsunder said:


> Yes, because without that assumption the writing of those episodes is exposed as weak and worthy of a 5th grade short story at best. Having characters tell us one thing, showing us something consistent with that, and then throwing in complete contrivances like two different guns jamming at just the right time is complete rubbish. I don't believe the Lost writers intended that. Rob and others apparently do.


Back when that episode aired there were questions about whose gun Michael ended up with - whether Mr. Friendly had switched guns with him during the shuffle. Have some faith in the writers.. They've certainly shown they're not "5th-grade-short-story" caliber writers so far. If you're not enjoying the ride so far, I can't imagine you enjoying it more when you find out some of these answers. Part of the fun is not knowing and being excited at the mystery of not knowing! (Yes, that gets killed if you truly believe they had no f%cking idea where they were going like Battlestar Galactica guy there, but they've shown us enough things that seemed pointless before and have paid off now that you should be engaged by now!)


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> Back when that episode aired there were questions about whose gun Michael ended up with - whether Mr. Friendly had switched guns with him during the shuffle. Have some faith in the writers.. They've certainly shown they're not "5th-grade-short-story" caliber writers so far. If you're not enjoying the ride so far, I can't imagine you enjoying it more when you find out some of these answers. Part of the fun is not knowing and being excited at the mystery of not knowing! (Yes, that gets killed if you truly believe they had no f%cking idea where they were going like Battlestar Galactica guy there, but they've shown us enough things that seemed pointless before and have paid off now that you should be engaged by now!)


What about Keamy's gun then? Or the fact that Michael tried to kill himself before he met Friendly both with the gun and with his own car? And if Friendly knew he wouldn't die, why would he bother switching the guns?

Faith only gets you so far. If Rob and others are right and it's just blind luck, and they actually planned it that way in "Meet Kevin Johnson" then the faith is unjustified, because the episode was meaningless.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

TAsunder said:


> Faith only gets you so far. If Rob and others are right and it's just blind luck, and they actually planned it that way in "Meet Kevin Johnson" then the faith is unjustified, because the episode was meaningless.


But it's not blind luck. Mr. Friendly knew (presumably) that for whatever reason, Michael would end up on the island. Because from his perspective, it had already happened. It's like seeing who won the lottery, going back in time to when the guy was buying his ticket, and telling him "You've got a winner there!" You know that against almost impossible odds, he's going to win. He doesn't win because you told him he would, or because some mystical force made him win. There's no luck involved at all; it's just what happened.

And I suspect some day there will be an episode showing those events from Mr. Friendly's perspective that will put them into a very different light.


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## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> And I suspect some day there will be an episode showing those events from Mr. Friendly's perspective that will put them into a very different light.


The events with Michael? Considering the way the actor reacted to the way last season was written, I doubt it very much.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

aindik said:


> The events with Michael? Considering the way the actor reacted to the way last season was written, I doubt it very much.


Wouldn't need him. His scenes are already shot.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Sure there was. At the point you were making the decision, you could have made any decision.
> 
> And the decision you made is the decision you made. Events are fixed by the fact that what you did is what you did. But it was your choice to do that.


In order for us to be able to make any decision, there needs to be at the very least a quantum of time where that decision is ambiguous, allowing our consciousness to make the choice. And if such a quantum of time exists, then the universe at its fundamental level is not fixed even though it might appear to be on the surface. Either that, or our consciousness must exist in a state beyond the fixed universe, causing our decisions to be fixed, but allowing our decision-making to be free.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> But it's not blind luck. Mr. Friendly knew (presumably) that for whatever reason, Michael would end up on the island. Because from his perspective, it had already happened. It's like seeing who won the lottery, going back in time to when the guy was buying his ticket, and telling him "You've got a winner there!" You know that against almost impossible odds, he's going to win. He doesn't win because you told him he would, or because some mystical force made him win. There's no luck involved at all; it's just what happened.
> 
> And I suspect some day there will be an episode showing those events from Mr. Friendly's perspective that will put them into a very different light.


Nonsense. Your usage of the word luck doesn't even agree with the content of your post. Prevailing "against almost impossible odds" is by definition lucky. Unless you have some special dictionary that I don't.

It doesn't matter whether there was a witness after the fact. It is still impossible odds that Michael survived several suicide attempts and that Keamy's gun also happened to jam.

How do you know it isn't some mystical force? Basically what you are saying is that you have no problem with the writing as it stands if for no obvious reason at all they decided to have Michael prevail "against almost impossible odds" in a way that did not add anything to the story?


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## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

TAsunder said:


> Nonsense. Your usage of the word luck doesn't even agree with the content of your post. Prevailing "against almost impossible odds" is by definition lucky. Unless you have some special dictionary that I don't.
> 
> It doesn't matter whether there was a witness after the fact. It is still impossible odds that Michael survived several suicide attempts and that Keamy's gun also happened to jam.
> 
> How do you know it isn't some mystical force? Basically what you are saying is that you have no problem with the writing as it stands if for no obvious reason at all they decided to have Michael prevail "against almost impossible odds" in a way that did not add anything to the story?


Another example, when Alex's father (forget his name) tried to shoot young Danielle and couldn't.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

BitbyBlit said:


> In order for us to be able to make any decision, there needs to be at the very least a quantum of time where that decision is ambiguous, allowing our consciousness to make the choice. And if such a quantum of time exists, then the universe at its fundamental level is not fixed even though it might appear to be on the surface. Either that, or our consciousness must exist in a state beyond the fixed universe, causing our decisions to be fixed, but allowing our decision-making to be free.


We don't need to be "special".. humans can just be slightly complicated machines making simple decisions about which type of chemicals we crave to eat more at any particular time, based on our current chemical levels and how they effect our brain. The "choice" of which sandwich to eat doesn't need to be any more special than a simple logic circuit adding numbers and deciding which light to go on. The difference though is that unlike the logic circuit, we're self aware, and perceive extra states beyond hungry, like "happy" and "sad" (which are just more complicated mixes of how much food we have, etc). Deciding to "enjoy" one's "choice" of which sandwich is the one we'll eat (rather than becoming apathetic and chemically depressed because of the idea that everything is futile) makes it seem more complicated, but it isn't.

We are chemical beings. All of our desires are intertwined and complex, but not necessarily anything more "special" than that.

..but none of that changes that when two sandwiches are presented to the carbon-based calculating machine in the corner, its stomach, chemical sensors, etc all combine to make a "choice" that the terriyaki cheesesteak sub is more "desired" than the tunafish sandwich that day, and that the choice was made right then - based on what was or wasn't in its stomach/bloodstream/etc.

It doesn't matter if we're reading about it in a book, and it really happened to someone else last week, and we happen to know that of course he chose the terriyaki cheesesteak. He chose it because he chose it (then).

And if we went back in time to just before the sandwich was presented, and sat there silently in the back of the room the whole time watching him choose, he'd still be making the choice. WE know how it turns out because we read about it in a book before coming back in time.. but he's making the choice.. based on his stomach, right then. and he can take 10 minutes deciding if he wants - much longer than a quantum. 

His deciding to view that as "free" or "fixed" is a choice in itself.. and if we'd been far enough in the future when we read the book, we might know what he does with that decision (live a happy life enjoying his choices, or mistakingly thinking that he's not responsible for his actions and becoming depressed about the futility of life).

..but he's still a meat machine, as are we all.

Mmmm.. Now I want a terriyaki cheesesteak.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

aindik said:


> Another example, when Alex's father (forget his name) tried to shoot young Danielle and couldn't.


Wrong, that was because she removed the firing pin, and he hadn't noticed. And she told us that way back in season one, which was one of the coolest plans they've done that I remember off of the top of my head, because by the time we finally saw him try to shoot her I'd forgotten that we already knew that she removed his firing pin and that he tried to kill her, right before she killed him.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

BitbyBlit said:


> In order for us to be able to make any decision, there needs to be at the very least a quantum of time where that decision is ambiguous, allowing our consciousness to make the choice. And if such a quantum of time exists, then the universe at its fundamental level is not fixed even though it might appear to be on the surface. Either that, or our consciousness must exist in a state beyond the fixed universe, causing our decisions to be fixed, but allowing our decision-making to be free.


You've almost got it.

The universe is only fixed in that we make the choices we make, and once we make them, it's fixed.

You seem to have no problem understanding that in a linear way, which makes sense because that's how we experience the world.

What's happening here (I believe, and the writers seem to be claiming) is that you make a free choice. Once you have made that choice, then the universe is fixed. Somebody from the future comes back and (re)lives that moment. If he knows what choice you've made, then from his perspective that choice is fixed. He can take whatever action he wants, but it will not affect your choice because what happened, happened. Whatever he does will either have no effect on what you do, or will be and always will have been a part of it.

That's what they (the writer/producers) are claiming. Either A) that's the way it will always play out; B) they're lying; or C) due to certain Incidents and Hatch-Explosions the universe is broken and things can/will be able to change.


jkeegan said:


> Wrong, that was because she removed the firing pin, and he hadn't noticed. And she told us that way back in season one, which was one of the coolest plans they've done that I remember off of the top of my head, because by the time we finally saw him try to shoot her I'd forgotten that we already knew that she removed his firing pin and that he tried to kill her, right before she killed him.


What's doubly cool, and one reason I'm starting to think this is the best show in the history of television, is that when we finally see that scene, it means something completely different than what we thought. She said her companions got sick and she had to kill them; we assumed she was crazy and killed them for crazy reasons. But it turns out it was exactly as she said, and by the time we got there it made perfect sense.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

TAsunder said:


> Nonsense. Your usage of the word luck doesn't even agree with the content of your post. Prevailing "against almost impossible odds" is by definition lucky. Unless you have some special dictionary that I don't.


It is lucky for a given person to win, but not that lucky for someone to win. If I pick a random day of the year, I only have a 1/365.25 chance of correctly guessing your birthday; but I have a 100% chance of picking someone's birthday.

(Technically it's possible that there could be a day nobody was born on, so I suppose it's not exactly 100%.)



TAsunder said:


> It doesn't matter whether there was a witness after the fact. It is still impossible odds that Michael survived several suicide attempts and that Keamy's gun also happened to jam.


Implausible doesn't mean impossible. There have been news stories about people who have been even luckier than that. And knowledge does matter when it comes to odds. Odds are based on what we know. If we know for certain that something will happen, then there is a 100% chance of that event happening.



TAsunder said:


> How do you know it isn't some mystical force? Basically what you are saying is that you have no problem with the writing as it stands if for no obvious reason at all they decided to have Michael prevail "against almost impossible odds" in a way that did not add anything to the story?


A lot of heroic stories involve heroes "fighting against all odds" or "fighting against the impossible". I don't think that's a sign of bad writing. The reason we are hearing their stories is because they succeeded at whatever it was they were supposed to do (which might not always be what they wanted to do).


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## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

aindik said:


> The Swan survived the Purge as an intact operational Dharma station, with Desmond and his predecessors (including Radzinsky) pushing the button every 108 minutes. This was either because the Others let it exist (perhaps because they knew how important pushing the button was) or because they didn't know about it.
> 
> IIRC, when Ben was taken to the Swan as a prisoner, that was the first time he found out about it. But maybe that was a lie, I don't remember.


Probably a lie. It was Ben. 
We saw Ben and Juliet looking at Jack in the Swan from the medical station. I assume that wasn't the first time they'd been there, so they must have checked up on Desmond and the others too.

The question is, did Dharma know they were still there. Why didn't they come and try to rescue Radzinsky if he was trapped there after the purge? Why keep supplying Desmond, who they didn't know? If they thought it was that important to press the button and save the world, you'd think somebody would come and help this poor guy left in there all alone.



BitbyBlit said:


> I think that's what was meant. People were speculating that time travel had already taken place, and they were answering that question, not saying that it would never take place.


Also I thought maybe they were referring to the time when Sayid got a radio working and it played 1930's music. Hurley mentioned time travel then as a joke.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Not that I believe it necessarily applies to anything here, but since it's hinted at here by others, here's one of my favorite scams (not mine, and I haven't done it, but one of the favorite ones I've heard about).

You get a letter in the mail from someone you've never heard of. You probably don't know what it is and throw it away. The next week you get another, so you open it, and it says that this week the Patriots are going to win against the Jets. You dismiss it as a note from a crazy person and throw it away.

That Sunday, the Patriots indeed do trounce the Jets. Later that week you get another letter saying that sadly, the Patriots will lose to the Dolphins this week. The Patriots then lose to the Dolphins that week.

You get 14 more letters like that, each and every one of them right. Then the last week, before the last game of the regular season, you get a letter that reads something like:

-------
Friend,

Hopefully after some initial skepticism you decided to start placing some bets on my picks and have won a lot of money. You're welcome! I'm glad I could help out.

You must be wondering who the hell I am, how I was able to do that, why I sent my picks to you, and how I did it.

Well, I'm excellent at picking games. So good in fact that I can no longer make bets in Vegas or with any of my former bookies.. So, I decided that maybe by reaching out to strangers I could get by.

As you've seen, I'm no scam artist.. I didn't ask for anything up front - I gave you the winning picks ahead of time. And I'll give you the pick for this next week too, of course. All I ask is that you give me a small percentage of what you've already won - or if you think that's unfair, then just a small percentage of what you'll win this week. Maybe 5%?

I hope to keep you on my list for next year. Send the money to (blah blah blah).
--------

Do you know how many people send in money? It's so easy to look at that and go "well damn, he PROVED he knows the results!! For 15 weeks!!! I'll pay him for this 16th week and he'll help me out next season too. I mean, what are the chances he was guessing? He mathematically eliminated that! He KNEW! This guy is the real deal!"

Of course, how he did it, is:


Spoiler



The guy initially sent out 200,000 letters, 100,000 saying that the Pats will win, and 100,000 saying that the Cowboys will win. Once the Pats actually won, he threw out the names of the 100,000 people he sent the Cowboys prediction to. The next week, he sent out 50,000 saying that the Jets will win, and 50,000 saying that the Pats will win. etc.

By the end, he's got around 61 people (with those numbers) left, that happened to receive the right guesses each week (many of which gambled lots of money and won).. There are 199,939 people who received a wrong prediction somewhere along the way that would lose money, but he forgets about them.

To those people, the odds blind them and they assume the guy knew something, and they'll probably happily pay him for that last prediction.



Again, I'm not saying that's what's happening here or that it's even slightly related, but I like telling that scam.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

aindik said:


> The events with Michael? Considering the way the actor reacted to the way last season was written, I doubt it very much.


You're assuming that actors are fairly bright bulbs. Me, I doubt it.


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## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

philw1776 said:


> You're assuming that actors are fairly bright bulbs. Me, I doubt it.


I am?

I'm just assuming that Harold never comes back and films another scene on Lost ever again.


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## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

TAsunder said:


> Yes, because without that assumption the writing of those episodes is exposed as weak and worthy of a 5th grade short story at best. Having characters tell us one thing, showing us something consistent with that, and then throwing in complete contrivances like two different guns jamming at just the right time is complete rubbish. I don't believe the Lost writers intended that. Rob and others apparently do.


I'm going to have to go to an elementary school and get some short stories so I can make a lot of hit TV shows and possible have many people claim it to be the best show ever, even though we will have to wait until it is over to determine this.


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> You've almost got it.
> 
> The universe is only fixed in that we make the choices we make, and once we make them, it's fixed.
> 
> ...


In short, each person has free will, but his actions/choices have no impact on anyone else? Each man is an _island_?

Or can a person's choices affect someone else who's in the same timeline, but not someone from a different time?

Intuitively, either way doesn't seem much more satisfying at this point than denying free will altogether. It could prove to be quite satisfying, but it would require the writers to do a fantastic job (which, of course, so far they have).



Rob Helmerichs said:


> What's doubly cool, and one reason I'm starting to think this is the best show in the history of television, is that when we finally see that scene, it means something completely different than what we thought. She said her companions got sick and she had to kill them; *we assumed she was crazy and killed them for crazy reasons. *But it turns out it was exactly as she said, and by the time we got there it made perfect sense.


Really? I always figured it would turn out they were sick (in some way) and she had to kill them.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

mqpickles said:


> In short, each person has free will, but his actions/choices have no impact on anyone else?


No, his choices and actions may very well have an impact on somebody else.

It may not be the impact he intended or anticipated, and it may well be the action that unexpectedly caused him to do what he did.


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

Okay, first thanks to Jeff I had to look up "teriyaki cheesesteak". Never heard of it before. I guess I'll have to ask around the greater metropolitan Albuquerque area for it now. 

Second, what I absolutely LOVE about the time travel aspect they've used in Lost is that it exposes questions and discussion about destiny versus free will in a different, non linear way. I believe free will and destiny are mixed- kind of like Rob's framework, but not exactly like. For instance, the Losties (mostly) got to see the results of their choices before they knew they made them. Really turns cause and effect upside down, and makes you think. We may not all come to the same conclusion but the discussion is timeless - do we make choices, or are they already made?

Some of us don't think the same as others, and would throw out insults about 5th graders. Personally, I think that's a little harsh on 5th graders but what do I know? I'm just an idiot Lost viewer. 

Ajira 316 is a great example of free will AND destiny. Jack got on because he was supposed to. Ilana and her team apparently planned to go, and chose to. Sayid made choices that put him on the plane, but not exactly by choice. Kate chose to go for her own reasons. Frank had no choice, Locke the same. Hurley ... who knows yet. And over all that was Mrs Hawking, who said all must go - but said what the hell and let the Fates decide when it came right down to it. But we *know* they had to go back. The decisions have already been made. And maybe, just maybe ... they had no choice all along. Who knows? Philosophers don't, religions don't, even the Pope doesn't.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Ben (on the phone with Charles Widmore): ..just as soon as I do one thing
Charles: And what's that, Benjamin?
Ben: Kill your daughter. In fact, I'm looking at our mutual friend right now.
Charles: I don't know what you're talking about.
Ben: It's the name of the boat that Penny's on.
Charles: Don't you dare
Ben: Goodbye Charles

So.. Do we know the name of the boat that Desmond and Penny are on? I only have this season on the TiVo. Is it "Our Mutual Friend"? It isn't The Elizabeth, is it? That should still be on the island..


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Ah, a later scene shows it is indeed "Our Mutual Friend"


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## mqpickles (Nov 11, 2004)

Delta13 said:


> Okay, first thanks to Jeff I had to look up "teriyaki cheesesteak". Never heard of it before. I guess I'll have to ask around the greater metropolitan Albuquerque area for it now.
> 
> Second, what I absolutely LOVE about the time travel aspect they've used in Lost is that it exposes questions and discussion about destiny versus free will in a different, non linear way. I believe free will and destiny are mixed- kind of like Rob's framework, but not exactly like. For instance, the Losties (mostly) got to see the results of their choices before they knew they made them. Really turns cause and effect upside down, and makes you think. We may not all come to the same conclusion but the discussion is timeless - do we make choices, or are they already made?
> 
> ...


Why do you say Frank had no choice? I'd say he had a choice to go to work that day and fly that plane. He just didn't recognize the import of that choice until he was in the air.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

mqpickles said:


> Why do you say Frank had no choice? I'd say he had a choice to go to work that day and fly that plane. He just didn't recognize the import of that choice until he was in the air.


And just because &$^% happens doesn't mean you don't have free will. It's just that, as we all know, sometimes all the free will in the world doesn't do us much good.


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## ct1 (Jun 27, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> Again, I'm not saying that's what's happening here or that it's even slightly related, but I like telling that scam.


Works very nicely with stock picks as well. And you don't even need them to send you money. Just pull a pump/dump.

I kind of think the media does does a similar thing. They pick the winners of many different fields, after the fact, even just old people, and ask silly questions like "What is your secret? How did you among all the people in the world make so much money/live so long/succeed/etc?"

Often they are just the end of millions of people making millions of random choices. Someone has to 'win'.


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## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

jkeegan said:


> Again, I'm not saying that's what's happening here or that it's even slightly related, but I like telling that scam.


Thanks! I never heard of that one, but it's brilliant.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

teknikel said:


> I'm going to have to go to an elementary school and get some short stories so I can make a lot of hit TV shows and possible have many people claim it to be the best show ever, even though we will have to wait until it is over to determine this.


You misunderstand my point, which is that the writers AREN'T elementary school quality writers, and as such I don't believe they would write such a crappy episode with weak plot devices. I am disagreeing with the interpretation being offered here because I think the writers are better than the crap ideas being set forth in regards to free will here.



BitbyBlit said:


> It is lucky for a given person to win, but not that lucky for someone to win. If I pick a random day of the year, I only have a 1/365.25 chance of correctly guessing your birthday; but I have a 100% chance of picking someone's birthday.
> 
> (Technically it's possible that there could be a day nobody was born on, so I suppose it's not exactly 100%.)


What does this have to do with anything? There are a limited number of people who have left the island. Michael is one of them. Are you suggesting that it was almost certain to happen that someone who left the island tried to kill themselves several times and failed? 



> Implausible doesn't mean impossible. There have been news stories about people who have been even luckier than that. And knowledge does matter when it comes to odds. Odds are based on what we know. If we know for certain that something will happen, then there is a 100% chance of that event happening.


It doesn't matter if some people have historically been more lucky. That's a rubbish argument. The writers intentionally showed us something, framed it in a certain way, and now all you people are claiming that what actually happened is unrelated to the way they framed it, and Michael just happened to get lucky, as did whomever Keamy was trying to kill. What we were shown was something extremely lucky. If it was just dumb luck then a large portion of that entire episode served no purpose except to taunt the audience with a red herring. I don't believe that is true, and I suspect that you don't either but for whatever reason you are defending this view.

Knowledge doesn't matter for odds. This is complete rubbish once again. Whether you know something happened or not doesn't change the odds of it having happened at that time. You remind me of my Geology teacher who was attempting to argue against earthquake predictors who stated that there is a 50% chance of an earthquake on a certain day. His argument, very similarly ridiculous, was, "Of course it's 50%. Either it happens or it doesn't." Based on this absurd reasoning every lottery winner had a 100% chance of winning.



> A lot of heroic stories involve heroes "fighting against all odds" or "fighting against the impossible". I don't think that's a sign of bad writing. The reason we are hearing their stories is because they succeeded at whatever it was they were supposed to do (which might not always be what they wanted to do).


You don't think ANYTHING is a sign of bad writing, ever. You will defend every piece of television bilge that you watch to the death. It's not merely the theme you put in quotes there. It's how the story was written. If it is as Rob and others believe, then that episode was incredibly amateurish. The way that episode was written would clearly be exposed as writing of rank amateurs if, when they wrote it, they "knew" that Michael was just really lucky. Of course, the more likely scenario is that they didn't know. Even more likely is that they knew something ELSE was going on and the "whatever happened, happened" is unrelated to that episode.


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## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

Hunter Green said:


> Thanks! I never heard of that one, but it's brilliant.


It is pretty cool, but you'd have to get alot from the few who remained at the end to make up for all the postage .


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

mqpickles said:


> Why do you say Frank had no choice? I'd say he had a choice to go to work that day and fly that plane. He just didn't recognize the import of that choice until he was in the air.





Rob Helmerichs said:


> And just because &$^% happens doesn't mean you don't have free will. It's just that, as we all know, sometimes all the free will in the world doesn't do us much good.


Frank had free will, absolutely. But my point is that when he got up that morning it was not with the thought that "today I shall fly back to the island". I probably didn't say it very clearly - Frank did not choose to go the island, he had no choice. His choices in life led him to that point, yes. Would you say the other unknowing passengers made a choice to go Craphole Island? Like Rob said, $%&@ happens - it doesn't always mean you ASKED for it. 

But speaking of free will, I noticed something watching the episode again. Who does Ilana and her gang belong to? How did they know that the plane would land - they even packed some huge crate of materials. They don't seem to know Ben at all, or Locke, or Sun - but clearly they knew Sayid. They have a codephrase about most likely our favorite 4-toed statue. It suddenly makes sense why she didn't care that Sayid was gone post-crash, and why she was so calm on the flight. I have a crazy Jeff-like theory.

She's part of Dharma, coming back to the island. If Dharma was trying to reestablish control again, it would explain why the numbers were being broadcast again. It's just a wacky idea, and feel free to smack it around.


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## wprager (Feb 19, 2006)

3D said:


> It is pretty cool, but you'd have to get alot from the few who remained at the end to make up for all the postage .


"Postage" is free with e-mail, now. All you need is a list of e-mails to start. That's where chain letters come in.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Delta13 said:


> Frank had free will, absolutely. But my point is that when he got up that morning it was not with the thought that "today I shall fly back to the island". I probably didn't say it very clearly - Frank did not choose to go the island, he had no choice. His choices in life led him to that point, yes. Would you say the other unknowing passengers made a choice to go Craphole Island? Like Rob said, $%&@ happens - it doesn't always mean you ASKED for it.
> 
> But speaking of free will, I noticed something watching the episode again. Who does Ilana and her gang belong to? How did they know that the plane would land - they even packed some huge crate of materials. They don't seem to know Ben at all, or Locke, or Sun - but clearly they knew Sayid. They have a codephrase about most likely our favorite 4-toed statue. It suddenly makes sense why she didn't care that Sayid was gone post-crash, and why she was so calm on the flight. I have a crazy Jeff-like theory.
> 
> She's part of Dharma, coming back to the island. If Dharma was trying to reestablish control again, it would explain why the numbers were being broadcast again. It's just a wacky idea, and feel free to smack it around.


Wow, mid-reading your post I thought "oh man - she's Dharma". 

+++. I like this. Sayid killed a guy working at Oldham pharmacuticals in Russia. That clearly seems Dharma-related, since Oldham was absolutely Dharma. Sayid also killed the guy on the golf course, who she *said* was why she was after Sayid. So maybe Ben had Sayid going after Dharma people, instead of just Widmore people as he said?

(I have trouble believing Widmore would team up with Dharma, because they'd been at war with each other on the island).

Good idea Delta!


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

wprager said:


> "Postage" is free with e-mail, now. All you need is a list of e-mails to start. That's where chain letters come in.


Right. By the way, in case any youngins here didn't know, chain letters existed before email (in the us postal system) and were actually _illegal_, because they jammed up the postal system. At least that's what I remember ascommon knowledge from when I was a kid. I think I remember recieving at least one myself.


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## 3D (Oct 9, 2001)

wprager said:


> "Postage" is free with e-mail, now. All you need is a list of e-mails to start. That's where chain letters come in.


 I was a little bit embarrassed that I didn't think of email, but in fairness, the original description said:



jkeegan said:


> *You get a letter in the mail* from someone you've never heard of. You probably don't know what it is and *throw it away*. The next week you get another, so you open it, and it says that this week the Patriots are going to win against the Jets. You dismiss it as a note from a crazy person and throw it away.


So, if I overlooked e-mail, at least I've got a good excuse


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

Delta13 said:


> As was pointed out earlier in this thread, your inability to handle time travel stories does not change how compelling the story can be to others. I'm sorry that you are hung up on what may actually be a fact of life - destiny and free will. Without seeing how deftly they have tried to mix both into the story. I find it very interesting, both from a storytelling and technical point of view, but I know everyone won't.


What do you mean by "inability to handle"; I'm following along as well as anyone; I just don't don't think the time travel angle is as profound as you do - sorry if you can't "handle" that.

But I don't need your permission or approval to enjoy or not enjoy the show - or to express my point of view.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

TAsunder said:


> What does this have to do with anything? There are a limited number of people who have left the island. Michael is one of them. Are you suggesting that it was almost certain to happen that someone who left the island tried to kill themselves several times and failed?


What were the chances of someone crashing on the island in the first place? How lucky is it that a character on the show Lost was one of the ones who crashed on the island? We don't hear about all the other people who didn't crash on the island against all odds because the purpose of the show is to show us the ones who did.



TAsunder said:


> It doesn't matter if some people have historically been more lucky. That's a rubbish argument. The writers intentionally showed us something, framed it in a certain way, and now all you people are claiming that what actually happened is unrelated to the way they framed it, and Michael just happened to get lucky, as did whomever Keamy was trying to kill. What we were shown was something extremely lucky. If it was just dumb luck then a large portion of that entire episode served no purpose except to taunt the audience with a red herring.


Given the discussion we are having here, I'd say it did serve a purpose. It raised the question of whether events that seemingly have meaning are really just the result of some people getting lucky. If writers of fiction were never allowed to write stories where unlikely events happened, then the characters would lead pretty mundane lives, and the stories would probably not be that interesting.



TAsunder said:


> I don't believe that is true, and I suspect that you don't either but for whatever reason you are defending this view.


I don't think any external force made the gun jam. I think the gun just jammed. Even in a world where events can be changed, if nobody tries to change any events, then the end result is the same. Mr. Friendly somehow had knowledge that Michael would not die, and Michael did not try to change events. He tried to kill himself, yes, but that is not the same thing. Him trying to kill himself was part of the "original" events.

I also happen to believe that in the Lost universe, events either cannot be changed at all, or cannot be changed without serious consequences. My only argument in favor of events being changeable was, ironically, against the idea that it would be bad writing for them to do so. I don't think that's what's happening, but I also don't think the writers have written out the possibility yet.



TAsunder said:


> Knowledge doesn't matter for odds. This is complete rubbish once again. Whether you know something happened or not doesn't change the odds of it having happened at that time. You remind me of my Geology teacher who was attempting to argue against earthquake predictors who stated that there is a 50% chance of an earthquake on a certain day. His argument, very similarly ridiculous, was, "Of course it's 50%. Either it happens or it doesn't." Based on this absurd reasoning every lottery winner had a 100% chance of winning.


Knowledge absolutely does matter. The reason we have odds at all is because we don't know what is going to happen. Instead, we use all the data we have available to made an educated guess. Odds are simply a metric that represents what our knowledge has predicted. If I don't know anything about earthquakes, then from my point of view it has a 50% chance of occurring. As I learn to make predictions based on observing nature, the odds become more accurate. And as I use instruments to measure the Earth's activity, the odds can become even more accurate than that.



TAsunder said:


> You don't think ANYTHING is a sign of bad writing, ever. You will defend every piece of television bilge that you watch to the death.


I don't watch what I consider to be "television bilge". I do enjoy what you might consider to be television bilge, and thus might disagree with you about the quality of the writing, but I'm not defending something I don't like.



TAsunder said:


> It's not merely the theme you put in quotes there. It's how the story was written. If it is as Rob and others believe, then that episode was incredibly amateurish. The way that episode was written would clearly be exposed as writing of rank amateurs if, when they wrote it, they "knew" that Michael was just really lucky.


Maybe it's how the story was written, and maybe it's just how you read it. Not everyone read it the same way, and some even believe it would be bad writing to do anything other than what you think it would be bad writing to do.

And it's not like Michael was lucky throughout his whole life; we were just shown a few scenes in which he was. I sure there were plenty of people in the Lost universe whose guns did not jam, and who did succeed in committing suicide, but they were not relevant to the story, so their stories were not told.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> You've almost got it.
> 
> The universe is only fixed in that we make the choices we make, and once we make them, it's fixed.
> 
> You seem to have no problem understanding that in a linear way, which makes sense because that's how we experience the world.


Suppose that there is a segment of time with three points:

P ---- X ---- F

P is some point in time before choice X, and F is some point in time after choice X.

Now, suppose that at both point P and point F, X is fixed. If for every P and F, X is fixed, then the limit of the segment as P and F both approach X will still view X as being fixed.

This means one of two things:

1. Choice X is fixed at X and the timeline is continuous.
2. Choice X is not fixed at X and the timeline is not continuous.

But if in fact the timeline is not continuous, then while choices and fixed events can live together, choices have no effect on any events. There is no free will because there isn't even any will.

And if Choice X is fixed at X, then that means even at the very point where the decision was made, there was no choice but to make that decision.

Thus, in order for Choice X to not be fixed at X within a continuous timeline, there must be a P and/or F from which X is also not fixed.



Rob Helmerichs said:


> What's happening here (I believe, and the writers seem to be claiming) is that you make a free choice. Once you have made that choice, then the universe is fixed. Somebody from the future comes back and (re)lives that moment. If he knows what choice you've made, then from his perspective that choice is fixed. He can take whatever action he wants, but it will not affect your choice because what happened, happened. Whatever he does will either have no effect on what you do, or will be and always will have been a part of it.


I don't think any of the writers have claimed anyone was making a free choice. They have introduced the idea of events being fixed, but have left the idea of free will up in the air. In fact, I'm not sure they will even address that topic other than perhaps via an inconsequential side discussion here and there between characters.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

jkeegan said:


> We don't need to be "special".. humans can just be slightly complicated machines making simple decisions about which type of chemicals we crave to eat more at any particular time, based on our current chemical levels and how they effect our brain. The "choice" of which sandwich to eat doesn't need to be any more special than a simple logic circuit adding numbers and deciding which light to go on.


But if that is true, then we do not have free will. We can make decisions, yes; but, as you pointed out, so can computers. We don't consider modern computers to have free will because they have no choice but to do what they were programmed to do.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

BitbyBlit said:


> What were the chances of someone crashing on the island in the first place? How lucky is it that a character on the show Lost was one of the ones who crashed on the island? We don't hear about all the other people who didn't crash on the island against all odds because the purpose of the show is to show us the ones who did.


The purpose of the show is to entertain us. Showing us things in a manner that directly implies one thing, only later to go back and tell us that was just a red herring and the guns "just happened to jam at key points", is not entertaining to me. It shouldn't be entertaining to you, either, because it is a cheap plot device.



> Given the discussion we are having here, I'd say it did serve a purpose. It raised the question of whether events that seemingly have meaning are really just the result of some people getting lucky. If writers of fiction were never allowed to write stories where unlikely events happened, then the characters would lead pretty mundane lives, and the stories would probably not be that interesting.


You aren't getting it. It's not that it was an unlikely event, it's that it was not PORTRAYED as being something that was merely the result of chance. It was very clearly portrayed as something else. Backtracking now is amateurish writing at best. It is no different than saying "The Cylons have a plan" and then later saying, "their plan was to eat dinner that night".



> I don't think any external force made the gun jam. I think the gun just jammed. Even in a world where events can be changed, if nobody tries to change any events, then the end result is the same. Mr. Friendly somehow had knowledge that Michael would not die, and Michael did not try to change events. He tried to kill himself, yes, but that is not the same thing. Him trying to kill himself was part of the "original" events.


Him trying to kill himself and failing was part of the "original" events and the odds of this occurring were slim. See below for more details.



> Knowledge absolutely does matter. The reason we have odds at all is because we don't know what is going to happen. Instead, we use all the data we have available to made an educated guess. Odds are simply a metric that represents what our knowledge has predicted. If I don't know anything about earthquakes, then from my point of view it has a 50% chance of occurring. As I learn to make predictions based on observing nature, the odds become more accurate. And as I use instruments to measure the Earth's activity, the odds can become even more accurate than that.


You aren't getting this at all. Let's agree on this, first: If no one had come from the future, the odds of michael surviving would no be 100%. Agreed? Now if someone from the future, who knows AFTER the fact, that he survived, comes back, this does not change the odds of it having happened when it happened, because the odds were still not 100% when the event happened. The witness knows the outcome, but it doesn't change how improbable it was.

Are you agreeing with my Geology professor?  The odds of an Earthquake happening are not 50% on any given day. The odds of what happened yesterday having happened are not 100%.

Knowing the outcome after the fact does not change the odds of it having happened, otherwise the odds of every single thing that ever occurred in the past would be considered 100% "because they happened". Obviously no one in their right mind would claim this to be true. It is a basic failure of logic to claim otherwise.



> I don't watch what I consider to be "television bilge". I do enjoy what you might consider to be television bilge, and thus might disagree with you about the quality of the writing, but I'm not defending something I don't like.


I like Lost too and don't want it to become "television bilge." You apparently wouldn't consider amateur writing of this nature to be bilge. I guess I just have more stringent requirements.



> And it's not like Michael was lucky throughout his whole life; we were just shown a few scenes in which he was. I sure there were plenty of people in the Lost universe whose guns did not jam, and who did succeed in committing suicide, but they were not relevant to the story, so their stories were not told.


So if we had one episode of Lost where every character in Lost had guns and fired at each other for 1 hour, and none of the guns went off, then they later showed us that it was just dumb luck, would you consider this to be good writing just because that's the story that was told? At what point does it become too much plot manipulation for you?


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

TAsunder said:


> You aren't getting it. It's not that it was an unlikely event, it's that it was not PORTRAYED as being something that was merely the result of chance. It was very clearly portrayed as something else.


How was it "clearly" portrayed as something else? I agree that something else is certainly possible, and in fact argued against those who said it was "clearly" not something else. I think the whole point is that it is not supposed to be clear. How would you have liked them to have portrayed Michael simply getting lucky? Have him say, "Wow, I sure was lucky!"? And even then, that's just what Michael thinks, not necessarily what is actually going on.



TAsunder said:


> You aren't getting this at all. Let's agree on this, first: If no one had come from the future, the odds of michael surviving would no be 100%. Agreed? Now if someone from the future, who knows AFTER the fact, that he survived, comes back, this does not change the odds of it having happened when it happened, because the odds were still not 100% when the event happened. The witness knows the outcome, but it doesn't change how improbable it was.


Probability is the chance of a given outcome occurring out of the set of all possible outcomes. If you know what the outcome is going to be, there is only one item in that set, and thus the probability of it occurring is 100%. The key here is that "possible outcomes" are dependent on your knowledge of what could happen (or, more precisely, your knowledge of what can't).



TAsunder said:


> The odds of an Earthquake happening are not 50% on any given day.


There are no intrinsic or absolute odds of an earthquake happening. Odds, by their very nature, are relative to our knowledge of possible outcomes.



TAsunder said:


> Knowing the outcome after the fact does not change the odds of it having happened, otherwise the odds of every single thing that ever occurred in the past would be considered 100% "because they happened".


And they can be, because after events have happened we have limited the set of all possible outcomes for those events to 1.



TAsunder said:


> So if we had one episode of Lost where every character in Lost had guns and fired at each other for 1 hour, and none of the guns went off, then they later showed us that it was just dumb luck, would you consider this to be good writing just because that's the story that was told? At what point does it become too much plot manipulation for you?


Well, I've seen plenty of shows where characters fire at each other, and nobody but the inconsequential characters get hit or seriously injured. If they had an entire hour of people trying to shoot at each other and failing, I would agree it was bad writing, but mostly because that would be a very boring episode of Lost. Even then, unless there was some indication that some mysterious power was affecting the guns, I wouldn't assume they were trying to imply that. I would think something else had happened, like somebody had sabotaged all the guns.

In any case, my enjoyment of the story would be based on how intriguing it was, not on the odds of certain events within occurring.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Your understanding of probability is bizarre. Suppose I just tossed two coins and got Heads, Heads. What was the probability of that occurring? It was not 100&#37;. That you think it was means you do not understand the entire purpose of the field of probability theory. We know the outcome, but the probability of it happening was still 25%, not 100%. Similarly, while we know the outcome of Michael attempting suicide was failure, it doesn't change how improbable this was to happen. Just because Friendly knew the outcome doesn't mean it was more probable. It was still an unlikely event given the possible outcomes. Suppose a gun has a (ridiculously likely) 1 in 10 chance of misfiring. It misfired several times, so we can assume at best a 1 in 10,000 chance of this happening. Now compound it with his chance of surviving a car crash of that magnitude. Suppose it was 1 in 4. So overall we have something like a 1 in 40,000 chance that Michael would survive all of this.

Just because Friendly knew that Micahel would survive doesn't mean that the probability of Michael surviving was 40,000/40,000. It was still an improbable event. We were shown this improbable event. Friendly clearly indicated that he survived because the Island wouldn't let him die. Later in the SAME episode, we see ANOTHER gun jam. Given the context of the episode, the only reasonable interpretations are:

1. The Lost writers intended to show us a situation where characters got lucky and didn't die because guns jammed. This would be similar to B action movies where the protagonist is about to get his head blown off but for whatever reason the bad guy's gun jams. It's weak storytelling.

2. The Lost writers intended to show us a situation where characters either got lucky or there is a mystical force at work, but we don't know which was the case nor are we supposed to know. This clearly is not the case as they want us to believe it was a mystical force and not unbelievable luck based on the dialogue and events seen.

3. The Lost writers intended to show us a situation where we are supposed to believe that some external force prevented the guns from going off. This was clearly the case. I don't know why anyone would dispute this.

Now, assuming 3 is the case above, the question is, how does that fit into time travel? Your supposition is that actually it was #1 the whole time, or it was #3 when we saw the episode but the "real answer" is now revealed to be that Michael got lucky. This is known as a retcon (don't make me get into the definition of retcon again, please. I've already demonstrated this) and a sign of weak writing in this case.

I'm more comfortable with a retcon than the absurd notion that the whole time it was #1 and I and several others just happened to interpret the scene as #3. But I still don't believe this is the case. I think there are things at work that we have not yet seen. Considering how many improbable events we've seen and how they clearly tie into the Island, it seems pretty obvious that time travel doesn't explain everything.

Going back to free will, this means that some thing or event intervened when Keamy and Michael fired their guns. Similar to how some thing or event intervened to make John able to walk, and various ailments and cancers disappear. It was not just dumb luck that all of these things happened. If you believe it is and can still enjoy the show, then more power to you. May I recommend heading to your local grade school to read exciting stories about dreams where someone wakes up at the last second after being in extreme peril?


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Is it time for a new thread yet?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Three hours until a new thread is legal.

Five hours until is is mandatory!


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## jradford (Dec 28, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Three hours until a new thread is legal.
> 
> Five hours until is is mandatory!


There is a 100% chance that a thread will be created.


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## DUDE_NJX (Feb 12, 2003)

It already has been created. It just hasn't happened for YOU yet.


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## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

jkeegan said:


> Wow, mid-reading your post I thought "oh man - she's Dharma".
> 
> +++. I like this. Sayid killed a guy working at Oldham pharmacuticals in Russia. That clearly seems Dharma-related, since Oldham was absolutely Dharma. Sayid also killed the guy on the golf course, who she *said* was why she was after Sayid. So maybe Ben had Sayid going after Dharma people, instead of just Widmore people as he said?
> 
> ...


I love this idea and it actually makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps DHARMA is really the antagonist to the story. Ben and Widmore are both bad, but are ultimately after the same thing: protect the Island. DHARMA has always tried to use the Island for its own purposes. Ben could have told Sayid that he was killing Widmore's men, but in fact they could have been DHARMA. Also, this might explain who the Economist is. We know it wasn't Widmore, because Ben knew exactly where to find him. I'm guessing now that the Economist is a top DHARMA official. Anyway, very interesting indeed!


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

DUDE_NJX said:


> It already has been created. It just hasn't happened for YOU yet.


It was created back in 1977, but there was no internet yet...


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

aintnosin said:


> It was created back in 1977, but there was no internet yet...


Bzzzzt. Sorry, wrong answer. Thanks for playing though! 

ARPANET came online in 1969 (it connected four colleges).

Email went over the Arpanet by 1972.

TCP/IP - 1974.

Now there was no web, let alone forums, so you're right there.. but the internet did exist in 1977.

But you're still wrong, because the thread for this week's episode didn't get created in 1977 - it's muuuuch older than that. It was created a long time ago (and, in fact, in a galaxy far, far away).


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Ok, so I'm torn..

Some people from work finally got a poker game going (I've had a game going at the past 2 companies I've been at, and was happy to sit back until someone else started this one this time). Three weeks ago was the first game (we actually did tournament play, with a blinds clock, etc), which of course I won. That was a Tuesday, and for some reason the guy organizing it wants to go every three weeks, alternating between Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

..so, I either have another poker game to win but I risk watching Lost delayed (and without my wife, who falls asleep at the drop of a hat, and just barely makes it to 10pm each Wednesday night), or I forgo the poker game and go home to watch Lost on time.

Grrrr..


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> Ok, so I'm torn..
> 
> Some people from work finally got a poker game going (I've had a game going at the past 2 companies I've been at, and was happy to sit back until someone else started this one this time). Three weeks ago was the first game (we actually did tournament play, with a blinds clock, etc), which of course I won. That was a Tuesday, and for some reason the guy organizing it wants to go every three weeks, alternating between Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
> 
> ...


Sounds like a no-brainer to me. That's what TiVo is for. Go have fun with your friends and you can put off your re-watching of the episode until later (or forever). Didn't you learn from your crazy work schedule a couple of weeks ago that we'll manage just fine if you don't get around to posting in the thread until a day or two later?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> Sounds like a no-brainer to me. That's what TiVo is for. Go have fun with your friends and you can put off your re-watching of the episode until later (or forever).


Pfah. _Real _friends don't make their friends watch Lost delayed.


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## mooseAndSquirrel (Aug 31, 2001)

jkeegan said:


> Bzzzzt. Sorry, wrong answer. Thanks for playing though!
> 
> ARPANET came online in 1969 (it connected four colleges).
> 
> ...


I was posting on Bitnet forums back in '77


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

How much money is involved in the poker game (entry fee and payouts)?


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## grue (Jul 17, 2003)

Just watched this episode. Anybody notice a figure going through the trees right at 46 minutes? Maybe the smoke monster? Looked like the Predator  Or maybe nothing, but it looked like something.

Right in front of ben's chest, moving right to left against the sky.


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