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posts about #thelittleprince more → On Lost: As the Island Turns
San Francisco, 5:46 PM
Sat Dec 5
18 posts in the last 24 hours
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On Lost: As the Island Turns |
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02/06/09
02/06/09
Well, we can already see a hint of influence. We know that Desmond failing to press the button is the specific cause of the crash of 815. We know that something was buried in the Swan Hatch and sealed in concrete. We know that something in the Swan hatch held a tremendous amount of energy that had to be released periodically by the button, or permanently by turning a key. And we know that Faraday just told Ellie to bury a leaky nuke. That nuke has got to be what all the button-pushing was about.
02/05/09
REINCARNATION.
Discuss.
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/06/09
Actually...I've heard that theory voiced a number of times already.
02/05/09
Now the picture helicopter as a needle.
Now imagine the boat spinning on the top of the needle from the loop of string.
But the image you are seeing is actually a reflection in water.
Now imagine the boat spinning on the top of the needle from the loop of string. In the reflection.
02/05/09
Also, I keep thinking about the each of people on the island and try to figure out who is his or her "constant" that will keep them from dying of the time-travel sickness. We know Faraday's constant is Desmond, and he already met him at the hatch, so he's OK. I think Sawyer's constant is Kate, which is why the island allowed him to see Kate help Claire give birth. I think Locke's constant is Richard Alpert (who he has now seen on multiple occasions). My guess is Juliet's constant is either Jack or Ben, so she'll continue to become sicker and sicker until the Oceanic 6 return.
02/06/09
I don't think this is something that can be solved with Constants. Before, Desmond (and the rat) was experiencing different points in time, but he wasn't physically time-travelling. Present-Desmond was simply usurping Past-Desmond's body for a bit, and then things would sort themselves out again afterwards. In this case, they are physically time-travelling, body and mind. They weren't jumping into their own bodies at different points in time, and they weren't even constrained by how long they'd actually been alive (we already saw Locke confirm that he hadn't been born yet during the Jughead bomb scenes, and the only remaining 815's who might be older than him are Rose and Bernard). Charlotte hinted that she was born on the Island, so she was first. There's a theory floating around that Miles is Dr. Candle's son (from the opening scene this season), so he was second. Juliet has been living on the island for a couple years, so she's third. After that, nearly everyone else arrived at the same time, with Faraday being the only exception I can think of.
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/05/09
i'm not sure i've seen evidence that the time slips are designed to avoid these meetings.
ben is convinced that the bad things happening are because the 06 left (although he is manipulative for his own ends) why didnt he care when they got in the helicopter? he didnt know the boat was rigged.
locke we find out is also convinced, putting his life above all else (although he is easily influenced)
its the fact that richard alpert says it that makes me believe it
and of course elloise
02/06/09
I've actually been thinking about this a bit, and here's what I've come up with:
Ben has _ALWAYS_ obeyed the letter of any agreement his people have made. They said Michael could take Walt and leave, and he let them leave. They said that Jack could use the sub to get his people off the island, and he got Locke to blow the sub up for him (see, he couldn't do it himself, but if Locke did it on his own then Ben wasn't technically at fault for breaking the agreement). And they told Kate that she could use the helicopter to get her people off the island, so he let as many as were there to get on board leave, knowing that there'd be no way for them to come back for a second group (regardless of any issues with the boat, the island simply wouldn't be there by the time they could fly back).
Mostly, however, I think the O6 have been Ben's ace-in-the-hole all along. We know that Widmore has been wanting to get back to the island all along, and we can assume that Ben wants to do exactly the same thing. We also know that Ben isn't allowed to return for having turned the donkey wheel, but that the Island wants the O6 & Co to return. So, what happens if Ben tags along with the O6? Does he get a free pass back to the Island because it can't take the O6 back without catching him in the same net? I'm sure he's betting that's the case, or he wouldn't be working so hard to help them do just that. He'd just be getting revenge on Widmore. And _that_ is something that he could have been planning for even before they got within sight of the Orchid Station.
02/06/09
you know my reply was meant to go in another box but thanks for reponding
I Like that explanation, but we now that Ben seemingly has another boss in elloise, and she gives a distinct impression that the universal consequences would be grave if they didnt get back within the certain time. that doesnt rule out your free pass theory
but what is back there for ben? now that locke is dead does he become leader of the others? my bet is its jacks turn!, you had that hear first (i think)
so is he claiming that he is just gonna take them back without him? all these characters around him look positively shifty (and remember how odd it was when ben defended jack to crazy butcher lady)
its seems locke never told them what the bad stuff was, and ben says we'll never know then!
then they go and make widmore all meek and nice to desmond and confuse it further.
whos the baddy!!
02/06/09
I don't think it has been clearly established that Ben works for Hawking or if it's the other way around. She could very well just be the stern advisor.
02/05/09
02/06/09
Judging by Hawking's calculations, the Island isn't simply skipping around in time. It's also physically moving around the world. Also, the helicopter went down shortly after the Island disappeared. They spent a good deal of time in the area on a liferaft (one has to wonder why they didn't bother to check the wreckage of the boat for survivors, especially after Penny's boat picked them up). They were there at least half a day, given that it was roughly midday when they had to ditch the helicopter, and it was the middle of the night when they got rescured. There's a limit to how long an unconscious person can survive exposure in the open ocean (if he was conscious, he probably would have yelled for help, and sound carries very well on water), and we can safely assume that the Island didn't reappear at any point until after Penny's boat left the area. No, it's safe to assume that the instant the Island disappeared, Jin went with it.
02/05/09
Jin has to be back on the island in order for Sun to return. The island had him survive the explosion.
We already know Rosseau crashed, so why is her return a gimmick? Jin didn't know Rosseau. So it's not one.
Why would Locke confront his past self? He already knows what he needs to know by having Richard give that information to him from himself in other time periods. What would he gain? And wouldn't you worry about the possible repercussions of such a meeting with yourself?
It seems to me that the island is time-slipping to AVOID such meetings, when they get close to occuring. That is possibly the reason for the "whispers" in the past seasons- the "ghosts" of those traveling through time.
Ben is also shown to probably be behind all the stuff happening to the characters, just to get them in the places he wants them.
Doesn't really sound like a slow episode to me.
02/05/09
02/06/09
You're assuming that Jin's outfit isn't 100% polyester. Also, you're ignoring the fact that a 100% inorganic Zodiac could be making the time-jumps with them. Whatever they have with them gets brought along for the ride. That should include the helicopter, if it can include the Zodiac.
02/05/09
The boat exploding was blurry. In HD you can see there is no one on the boat when the boat explodes. Jin jumped within seconds. That was obvious in HD.
Faraday is merely speculating about the radius. Nothing is proven, and all will usually be revealed.
02/06/09
It's a helicopter. You know what a helicopter does to turn around? It just rotates in place. No banked turns required. And we know that it was headed towards the island because we could see that it was flying straight before the bomb went off.
I assumed that Jin jumped, since you damn well better believe that I would have, if I was in his situation. It's not like it'll decrease your odds of survival, after all.
And I'm not taking any cues from Faraday on this. We know that the Island has a range of immediate affect, since there's a measure of distance through which you need to keep to a specific bearing or risk getting temporally effed up. We know that the boat was parked outside of that range. We know that the helicopter was flying straight at the island when it disappeared. We konw that it was flying straight away from the boat (and that it was not flying away from the island at that point, because we couldn't ever see the island and the boat in the same shot) when the boat blew up. It's not that big a leap of logic to say that the helicopter was closer to the island than the boat, and that there is no way that Jin could have swam fast enough to pass the helicopter. Jin should have been left behind like the helicopter was, just like Charlie should have had a giant air-bubble trapped above the level of the porthole in the radio room.
02/05/09
So, we still didn't know what happened with Jin, but we can make an educated guess. He was on the deck of the boat when the helicopter lifted off, but the helicopter got a fairly good distance away before the boat exploded. Jin was the only person on the deck of the boat that knew about the bomb, and it would have been crazy to just stand there. Surely he jumped. But remember that the boat was _behind_ the helicpter. Even Aquaman would be hard-pressed to swim fast enough to pass the helicopter and get within the island's sphere of influence before it vanished.
This feels like the same sort of BS broken-logic cheat that caused Charlie to drown, when physics said there would be a massive air pocket trapped in that room with him.
02/05/09
02/06/09
I don't think that really matters, given that most of the people in the helicopter also belonged on the island, but they got left behind with the first jump.
@b.borrman:
Exactly. Except that I'm saying that the helicopter was so much closer than the boat (and given the timing, Jin as well) that it seems like a major cheat for Jin to get sucked along while the helicopter got skipped. Unless...ooh, I just thought of two possibilities. One is that Ben gave the helicopter passengers permission to leave, but not Jin. The other is that Jin and the Zodiac were both in the water while the helicopter was airborne. Maybe the phenomenon doesn't recognize airspace?
Anyways, I long ago learned to accept the idea of that many people surviving that bad of a plane crash. To start with, we only saw the wreckage, but not the angle of descent or anything related to the actual crash. Then, before we _did_ see any of that, we saw Locke's final scene in Walkabout (that episode still holds a special place in my heart, since that's the moment it ceased to be just Gilligan+drama+budget and started to be something much bigger than what we'd originally been promised. It took a lot longer for that moment to come in Babylon 5.
@Eugenia:
With the distances involved, the helicopter would have to be almost as far away as Jin was for the angle to make that much of a difference. Works better if they're the same distance away, especially at long distances. Now, this is on the assumption that the limits of the island are defined by the coastline, and that the influence-barrier, as it were, is perfectly vertical right at sea-level.
Regardless, we saw a possible example of how big the island's sphere of influence should be when it vanished. Just look at how big the *bloop* was afterwards.
@jahmaicherry:
No. He was _in_ the "bomb room" when Christian told him he could go. The bomb room was not immediately on the other side of that hatch, so he would have had a pretty good obstacle-sprint just to reach the deck. Then, because running is faster than swimming, his best bet would have been to jump off the aft end of the deck. That's probably a good 3-5 minutes before he'd hit water, and I think Jin barely had time to get wet before the explosion. Besides, the Island was done with Michael, and that's generally a sign of impending death.
02/06/09
/P
02/06/09
The Island can stop guns from firing wherever Michael was hanging out. It clearly has greater reach than a few nautical miles. But that's besides the point. I'm talking specifically about the immediate "you are in proximity to the island" area, and if the helicopter was not in that area, they need a really good explanation for why the guy they left on the boat _was_ in it.
02/06/09
Simpletons! It's clear that the time suckage wave (a phenomenon I could barely explain to a quantum physicist, let alone luddites like all y'alls) exists no more than 3 feet above the surface of water. It affected Jin, the Zodiac and that M-F'ing shark with the Dharma logo on it, and not the Helicopter.
02/06/09
Stop. Channeling. Sheldon.
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/05/09
Whether or not we get subtitles seems to depend on whether or not what is being said is important. The characters involved have less bearing on this. I know this is not the first time that we've heard un-subtitled foreign dialogue, but I can't remember when else it might have happened. Usually not when someone is speaking Korean, since that almost always involves Sun and/or Jin, and main characters by default can only speak Important Dialogue. Not Juliet with Latin-boy, either, but I know it has happened before. Oh, and "figure-out-what-language-we-both-speak" dialogue doesn't count, like when we first saw Rousseau way back when.
As for the French crew, I expect we'll stick around just long enough to find out what caused _them_ to be on the island, and then we'll flash again. I very much suspect they're the ones who made the outriggers, but that it came much later in their stay on the island. They pointedly showed them unloading rifles like the one that Juliet used when their liferaft beached.
02/05/09
I think the subtitles depend on who the POV character is. When Jin and Sun converse with each other, we get subtitles because, of course, they can understand each other.
But since Jin can't understand what the French people were saying last night, we're not allowed to either. So that we can share his confusion and disorientation.
02/12/09
So, in "This Place Is Death", who was the POV character that allowed all the French conversations to be subtitled? Certainly Jin didn't suddenly learn French between episodes...
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/05/09
As for "Little Prince" references, didn't the character fall ill after leaving his home? Maybe Aaron's heading in a similar direction -- he was born on the island, so he has to get back. And he's being "raised by another," as a psychic once said would be dangerous. He has to get back to Spooky Central to see Claire again, maybe?
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/05/09
I don't know who is who, but I've long thought that Richard was an Egyptian god due to his Guyliner. HOLY SHIT! Richard Alpert?! R.A. - Ra! wow. I just blew my own mind.
02/05/09
Though it does make you wonder more about things like Cerberus / Smokey...
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/05/09
"We come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun and the hot springs blow!!!"
Sawyer is totally Thor.
02/05/09
02/05/09
02/05/09
Love it. You and Garrison may be onto something.
Or just on something.