Lost: Season Four - Page 43

Re: Lost: Season Four

i didnt but soneone on another board did, or was that you too?

i dont see it even a little it.
was just ecause he came up onto the beach all wet and no shirt and no woman can resist that.

Re: Lost: Season Four

doubtful, she just saw the freighter blow up so that was probably the last thing on her mind

Re: Lost: Season Four

I've been home sick all weekend including today, and have essentially been drifting in and out of sleep round the clock since Friday with the TV on... so I've watched the finale from my DVR quite a few times.

I may have said something to that effect before, but the central sequence of the finale, "moving the Island", is a remarkable bit of direction and editing. From the time when when Ben walks dons the parka, to the crash, that sequence is just one long unbroken (commercial free!) piece of pure cinematic perfection. Every is right -- performances, editing, music, sound etc...

Also, I didn't even realize on Thursday night that the first hour was almost entirely in the present. I did know something was off, but could quite put my finger on it.

--
H

Re: Lost: Season Four

I thought I saw a glimmer of chemistry between them. I think Sawyer really looked at Juliet for the first time, and liked what he saw. (The fact that she was sitting there drinking rum and loosening up some - as it would have appeared to him - probably had something to do with it.) That plus the fact that he survived a jump and a swim he must have known could have killed him probably had Sawyer feeling pretty good.

As for Juliet - she's numbing her shock with the rum, probably mourning Jack and dealing with the reality that she's probably never getting off that damned island. I don't think that at that moment she was thinking much of anything about Sawyer, at least not conciously. But her subconcious must have registered him rising up out of the sea like a male version of Botteccelli's "Venus". Throw in the reality that Jack is gone and nobody's going home anytime soon, and I'd be suprised if Juliet doesn't turn out to be susceptible to Sawyer's considerable charm.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Lost: Season Four

Sorry for the old quote from a few pages back, but geez, Joe, have you never seen Firefly/Serenity??? You need to buy a brown coat!

Did Faraday know that the island could be moved? He was telling his people to "get off the island NOW", and he had the "The Orchid" written in his notebook. He is most certainly coming back at some point in the series...he knows something about the properties of the island.

--John

Re: Lost: Season Four

I don't think he knew the island could be moved. Certainly the Dharma people who built the Orchid didn't. But the Orchid was part of the secondary protocol that Keamy and the mercenaries were putting into effect, which Faraday greatly feared. My theory is that the Orchid equipment can be used to generate a force field or EMP burst that could be used to kill everyone above ground on the island. (Don't forget Keamy didn't directly follow Locke and Ben down to the real Orchid station. He was busy being unconcious after getting the wind knocked out of him by several bullets. Either he got incredibly lucky and just stumbled on the elevator or he knew there was a subterranean station and how to access it. And I don't think he's that lucky.)

It may be that "The Incident" involved a mass casualty event being caused by an Orchid experiment. Maybe the physical area involved was limited, but somebody realized, "OMG, if we had used that setting, we would have killed everybody on the surface." This became part of the Dharma record, and therefore part of the information available to both Widmore and Ben.

I would guess that the real Orchid station itself and "The Temple" are the only two safe spots on the island when the gizmo - whatever it is - is used. Ben sent Alex to the Temple, possibly because he himself planned to use the secondary protocol as his "last ditch" defense against the mercenaries. The secondary protocol itself may have been a Dharma contingency plan to defend the island, which was only adapted by Widmore.

Faraday knows something, and I'm confident we'll be seing more of him, but I don't think he knew about what Ben did. I don't think anyone alive on the island today (with the possible exception of Richard and Jacob - assuming Jacob is actually alive - knew the island could be moved.)

Regards,

Joe

Re: Lost: Season Four

I don't think the island's power over space/time (ie the ability to "move") was the secondary protocol. I still maintain that Dharma has only a slight, tenuous grasp on the inner-workings of the island (read: the powers), and thus the stations don't have full control over them. Ben, as the leaders of the civilization, knows more about the island than Dharma.

The secondary protocol merely told Keamy where Ben would go (The Orchid), and perhaps told him where it was exactly, and how to "extract" him. I don't think Keamy ever had any intention or ability to use the island's power to "move."

However, Faraday was still freaked. Why? Because he's smart enough to put 2 and 2 together. Daniel knows Keamy has gone to the secondary protocol - something that was only to be used if Ben thought the island was in danger. Thus, Ben thinks the island is in danger. Thus, Ben is going to do something VERY dangerous. Perhaps Daniel knew the exact "something," (the power to "move"), perhaps he didn't. Either way, he knew enough to get the hell out of dodge.

Which leads me to my big question of the finale - after Daniel swings by on the Zodiac and picks up Jin (I am guessing we see this next season), what is going to happen to him?

cheers!

Josh

Re: Lost: Season Four

But what about the people who were not at the Temple or the Orchid? Still some people on the beach, most notably Charlotte & Miles, and Sawyer & Juliet.

--John

Re: Lost: Season Four

Neither do I. That's why I said:


Let me try to make this clearer:

My theory is that the secondary protocol involved something other than moving the island. It involved some other side effect of Dharma's clumsy mucking around with the island's "power" that can, in an emergency, be used as a weapon.


Which is pretty much what I was getting at in the post you think you're disagreeing with.


That's possible. It depends on whose protocols we're talking about and who "they" refers to. If the protocols are Widmore's and/or left-over Dharma stuff, then Keamy is the one with the plans. But if the secondary protocol is "move the island" - and Dharma never knew that you could move the island - why would Dharma documents tell them where Ben would head in the event of an emergency? How would Dharma or Widmore or any outside source know of Ben's contingency plans? Do they have spies on the island? I think the "primary protocol" was to do a quick snatch and grab on Ben and quietly kill everybody else on the island. The civilian crew and sciensist weren't to know about any of it. The mercenaries would take the risk and bury the bodies. Then the sicentists could take their readings and the whole group depart.

The secondary protocol comes into play if there is serious resistance. In that case, the Widmore civilians and even the ship become expendable. As long as Ben is captured and somebody is left alive to get him back to the world, the mission is a success. At that point Keamy is prepared to launch something from the Orchid that will indiscriminently everybody above ground, including Faraday and Charlotte.

Again, I'm not saying that Dharma understood the island. I'm suggesting that one of their experiments got out of hand and killed a bunch of people, and that it was obvious from the result that if you repeated that experiment and changed a variable or two you would kill everybody on the island. I think that is what Ben was going to do after the attack on the barracks, until Christian Shephard unexpectedly told Locke to move the island. If moving the island was Ben's plan all along there would have been no need for the trek through the jungle and the metting with Jacob. Ben never intended to exile himself from the island unless it was absolutely necessary, and I don't think Ben was all out of options at that point. But he had already sent Alex and his people to the Temple, so he did have plans to use the Orchid.


Um, Penny was Desmond's constant. Desmond is Faraday's. And there is no way that Faraday's zodiac could have reached the wreck site, picked up Jin, and circled back within range of whatever happens to the island in time. He was still outbound from the island, with no smoke or debris visible anywhere near the raft, when the flash hit. (The light comes from behind Faraday, clearly indicating that he and his party are still moving away from the island.) I think Faraday was still within the circle of surface area that moved with the island.

As for Jin - while I still expect him to be back, I'm not sure how they're going to pull that off. It all depends on how much time actually elapsed between the explosion of the ship and the disappearance of the island, how far the ship was at the time, and where exactly Jin was when it exploded.

In rewatching the explosion sequence, I'd have to say that most of the blast seems to go up, taking the path of least resistance through open hatches and easily-blown doors and the like, rather than down through the solid hull. So that makes it more plausible for someone in the water to have survived. The event should still have produced some kind of shockwave that propagated through the water, however, and this could be a factor in pushing Jin in the direction of the island -or at least an island.

The producers paused to give a name-check to the second island, thus preventing the fans from whining that they had forgotten about it, but this also served to remind those who might have forgotten it themselves that it exists. Maybe the secondary island was actually in a better relative position for Jin to reach. This would not only allow him to survive and stay with the main island, it would also be a nice way of parking him somewhere until the time comes to dramatically reveal that he is still alive.


They'd all die. Why would Ben care about any of them? The survivors had imprisoned him and tried to kill him more than once, Juliet betrayed him and Charlotte and Miles were part of the group sent to slaughter his people and kidnap him. Remembers, in my theory it is not moving the island that kills people, and that isn't what either Ben or Keamy originally intended in going to the Orchid. I'm positing some entirely different use of the station as a weapon. This never happened because Ben killed Keamy and moved the island instead. (BTW, I aslo don't believe that Keamy merely used the C-4 to blackmail Ben into submission. I think the secondary protocol called for sinking the ship anyway flying off the island with Ben and then ditching in the sea - at which point the mercs would also have killed Lapidus and then floated in the raft until another Widmore boat came to fetch them.)


Anyway, that's all I got.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Lost: Season Four

Oops, that was a slip of the (finger?). I also don't think Daniel could have made it back to the island in time, which is why I wonder what is going to happen to him. I don't think he was caught up in the disappearance, either. I do, however, think he'll be make it to the boat wreckage, and pick up Jin - what happens after that, I have no idea.

I guess we'll see in January (or thereabouts)

Re: Lost: Season Four

At the end of season 3, Ben told Richard and The Others to head for The Temple, as the "last safe place on the island." I'm not sure, but I don't think he was planning on moving the island then, but merely "hiding" The Others from whomever Widmore was sending on Naomi's boat.

I think at this point, Ben was considering using The Tempest on the island (again, no proof). I don't think he was going to tweak a variable at The Orchid as part of his plan post-barracks attack, but perhaps he was going to use The Tempest. It's farth north of the 815 crash site - does anyone rememeber if it's close to the cabin? I also don't think Ben knew The Tempest had been disabled, but I'm sure Jacob (and by extension, Christian) knew.

Of course, it could have been true that Ben's plan involved tweaking a variable at The Orchid. Another long wait until S5...

Re: Lost: Season Four

That was my reading as well. Windmore knew for one reason or another that if Ben survived the first attempt to capture him, he would head to the Orchid. He thus directed his men there in case that happened (i.e., secondary protocol.)

--
H

Re: Lost: Season Four

Interesting theory. If you're right, then we've ended up with exactly the situation Widmore, Jack and Ben were all trying to avoid - there's a bunch of witnesses to events on the island and the fate of flight 815 who are not under anybody's control and aren't committed to keeping the secret by either oath or self-interest.

That's assuming they're alive, of course, which they won't be for long unless they're also rescued. The zodiac doesn't have anything like the range needed to get to another island or even to strike the major shipping lanes (assuming anyone aboard knows where those are.) And it wouldn't be carrying much in the way of supplies. Unless they're going to improvise a sail, pull a Men Against the Sea Pacific crossing and possibly eat some of the Red Shirts, they're not going home without help.

On the plus side, with the island gone there's nothing to screw up communications, so maybe there's a powerful walkie-talkie aboard that could hail a passing ship. On the negative side - well, we know the one ship that was in the neighborhood - Penny's Searcher - didn't pick them up. And it had to have been a hell of a lot closer than anything else, and therefore much more likely to pick up a radio broadcast or beacon.

There was still only one safe bearing to approach or depart from the island, so Faraday's zodiac, the chopper and the freighter should have all been within a fairly narrow area. It just seems unlikely to me that nobody in the helo spotted the zodiac or vice versa and that two parties wouldn't have been able to signal one another and try to join forces. (The zodiac, after all, has an engine.)

But if Faraday and co., possibly with Jin, do end up in the middle of the Pacific, they're going to need a separate rescue Then there's the question of where they've all been for the past 3 years, and what lie they tell to explain their survival. There's no way they could have "caught up" with the island. So they must make it back to civilization, too. Have they been in hididing for 3 years? If Jin is with them you'd think he would have found some way to make contact with Sun in all that time.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Lost: Season Four

I think it is entirely plausible that the wreckage, Jin, and Faraday's zodiac could have been moved with the island.

Your qoute above about no smoke visible from the raft doesn't quite make sense, since the smoke was visible to Juliet who was on the beach. The raft would have been much closer to the frieghter, so of course it would have been visible. There are also a few shots of the frieghter visible from the beach, as Faraday comes back for the last group to put on the raft.

We can assume that the island moving effect extends past the shore of the island, since it took the second island with it, and that was a ways off shore from the main island. (Far enough that no one tried to swim that distance, but Saywer was able to swim from his bailing point on the helicopter.)

You could argue that the helicopter was closer to the island than the zodiac and the wreckage and it didn't get moved with the island, but the helicopter was high off the surface so might not have been included in the moving due to that.

Watching the explosion sequence again, I think it's very plausible that Jin made it off the frieghter before it exploded. We see Jin on the deck yelling at the helicopter, then it cuts to Michael in the bomb room freezing the battery, the nitrogen running out, then Christian telling him he can go. Then it cuts to a long shot of the boat exploding. There is a good 60 seconds from the last time we see Jin to when we see the explosion. That's enough time for him to get off the ship. We see some little indiscriminate figures on the boat in the long shot before it explodes, but there's no evidence that any of them are Jin. There were plenty of people on the deck besides Jin before it exploded. I remember thinking to myself why they were all just wandering around aimlessly, when Desmond was screaming at everyone to get off the boat.

I think the most plausible events are that Jin jumped off the boat, the boat exploded, Jin, the wreckage, the zodiac and the island were all moved, and then the zodiac picked up Jin, and went back to the island. Occam's Razor and all.

Re: Lost: Season Four

i've always been under the impression that the Island was moved after Ben's purge and that's why it's taken so long for Widmore & Co. to find it - until it was exposed by Desmond's key-turn. so if that's true, then yes, Widmore knows the Island can be moved. since he knows that the Orchid did teleportation experiments, it's only logical that he assumes that's where the Island's moving is done, so he has the secondary protocal for when events get elevated, to go to the Orchid to prevent the Move and capture Ben trying to do it. although this doesn't explain why there was a Orchid logo on the cover.

another question is, did the Others know about the electromagnetic "cloak" that hid the Island for so many years before Desmond stopped it? they must have known ~something~ was stopping Widmore from finding them. and if they did know, they obviously didn't connect the cloak to the Swan, otherwise they wouldn't have called the button-pushing a 'joke'.

Re: Lost: Season Four

The purge has been confirmed as a gas-attack from The Tempest, in the episode "The Other Women," and since there was no iminent threat after the purge, it's unlikely Ben would have resorted to ALSO moving the island, as it's the "measure of last resort." This brings up the question of HOW Charlotte knew about the purge, and if this knowledge extends beyond her, to Keamy, Widmore, whomever.

That being said, there's always the possibility that Widmore has a spy amongst the civilization/The Others - Mikhail, with his position at The Flame, running communications, is of course a suspect. Or, an exiled Other, perhaps Charlotte, was Widmore's ace in the hole.

Either way I don't think we've seen the last of Charlotte, Miles, and Daniel, and I suspect they will continue to have parts to play in the final 2 seasons.

cheers!

Re: Lost: Season Four

Wouldn't Ben have needed to move the island to avoid being found by the rest of the Dharma initiative, or whomever was bankrolling them? If he didn't move it, what would he have done when reinforcements or respite arrived?

They would have at least known that they'd lost contact with their people on the island, and that they could no longer find it. (Though I realize somebody was still sending supply drops.) How they found out Ben was responsible, and what he did, is another mystery.

Re: Lost: Season Four

Why would Dharma send anyone to the island? Ben and the Others would have had no problem keeping up the appearance that Dharma was still in business on the island. They had access to all of Dharma's records and communications gear, and Ben had spent years quietly spying on them. (Janitors have access to everything and nobody pays any attention to them.) Remember the quarrantine sign on the Hatch? At some point Ben and company probably cooked up a nice convincing story about a disease outbreak that led Dharma to abandon the place - although others continued to seek it.

What's the alternative? Ben had to improvise an explosion to blow a hole in the wall of Dharma's time machine to gain access to the tunnel leading to the island-moving wheelhouse. Do you figure he did the same thing after he wiped out the Dharma people, the rebuilt the time chamber just so he could blow it all up again in case he ever had to come back and move the island again? HUH?

Why rebuild the machine if Ben is the only one who knows what lies beneath the Orchid and the only one who will ever go down there?

Everything about Michael Emerson's (brilliant) peformance told me that Ben had never been in that wheelhouse before, that he was inching his way towards something he had heard about, but never seen. Ben was afraid and uncertain.

That strongly suggests to me that it has been awhile since anybody had to move the island. So does the fact that whoever moves the island has to leave and can never return. That alone should prove that Ben has never moved it. Its "buried with the entrance blocked beneath the real Orchid station, which in turn is buried beneath the decoy Orchid station, caked in ice with a crumbling ladder that obviously hasn't been used in many many years, maybe decades or centuries" condition is another clue.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Lost: Season Four

Those of you who spin theories, don't forget to include the food dropoffs with dharma logos.

Re: Lost: Season Four

i find it hard to believe that the Others could fool Dharma for 20+ years with fake experimental results and no video (especially in this day and age). and if (and that's a very big if) Widmore was not part of Dharma, at least he could tip them off that Ben had taken over. was it just a coincidence that Widmore assembled the freighter crew right after Desmond's Swan explosion?
i hope the writers explain why Dharma and Widmore took so long to come back to the Island if they knew where it was the whole time (presuming the Island wasn't moved after the purge)

Re: Lost: Season Four

So do I, which is one reason I never suggested any such thing.


I have no problem with people criticizing my posts or pointing out errors, but I do ask that they read them first.


Widmore seems to have been on Dharma's board, but that doesn't make him "part of Dharma" or make Dharma and Widmore synonymous. For one thing, Dharma itself wasn't monolithic. Most of the Dharma people on the island had no idea what was really going on there. There was always an insider group, who knew the truth, and the useful idiots group who did the grunt work and provided cover. In addition there were factions within the group who pulled it in different directions. (From what I gather from the little off-show material I've looked at.)

Widmore could have associated himself with Dharma to keep tabs on them, could be working with either faction or could be playing both sides off against one another. None of thei means he is part of the grouop, allied with it or is advancing its agenda. He may be just another useful idiot, not a part of the inner circle. What he knows about the island might come strictly from bribed Dharma employees, and he may be competing with Dharma - wanting to supplant both Ben and Dharma.

Assuming that Widmore is not "part of Dharma", but is competing with them to exploit the island, he'd have no reason to tip them off about Ben, and no idea where the island was. So no, in my view it was not a coincidence that Widmore sent the frieghter right after Desmond temporarily lifted the island's cloak. He no doubt used spies in Penny's search organization to give him the approximate location of the island and mounted his expedition to take secure the place and get Ben Linus.


As noted above, I don't believe Widmore and Dharma constitute a "we" (for one thing, there is very little to suggest that Dharma is still a going concern in the present day. We see next to know evidence of activity from them after the late 70s or early 80s. Certainly they never upgraded much of the equipment on the island.) I've already suggested that the Others fed Dharma a lie to convince them that the island was unsafe and should be abandoned. And I don't think Widmore did know where the island was. (And see my previous post for why it seems unlikely - to put it mildly - that the island has been moved since The Orchid was built.)

BTW, the supply drops could be automated shipments coming from the secondary island. Everything in them is stuff that can be stored long term, so there's nothing that couldn't have been stocked when the place was set up. The whole island feels like a time-capsule, like an experiment that was created decades ago and them simply abandoned. We've already seen that the Dharma staff were simultaneously scientists doing research and lab rats being experimented on. Most of them probably had no idea the other island was there, as that was probably where the folks running things were stationed. It wouldn't have been difficult to put the bulk food and sundries storage on island #2 and put an automated system to air launch them to the main island. This would make a lot of sense if there came a time in between "the incident" and The Other's final assault on Dharma when the main island was quarrantined, but the secondary island was till considered safe.

If Dharma thought it was temporarily withdrawing from the islands such a system would have been very useful. Similarly, it seems that entering the numbers was another temporary stop-gap measure, intended to buy them time until they could figure out what power they had unleashed upon the island. But something prevented Dharma from coming back.

I agree this is something the writers must (and obviously will) address.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Lost: Season Four

Sorry, computer hiccup. Nothing to see here. Move along, please.

Re: Lost: Season Four

Well, whoever heard of one hiccup?

Re: Lost: Season Four

Holy crap, Joseph joined the HTF forum in 1969! Were you on the island the first time it moved???

Re: Lost: Season Four

"He's always been here."

Neil

Re: Lost: Season Four

Oh, crap. It's starting again...

Re: Lost: Season Four

WE HAVE TO GO BACK!!!