Lost: Season 5 (1 Viewer)

[Greg_S_H]

It could be that the outcomes will always be the same, regardless of the inputs. So, Ben was not originally shot by Sayid. He finally had enough and met up with Richard on his own. Thus, he originally "forgot who he was" and "lost his innocence" without suffering from a life-threatening wound. I think this may be supported to some extent by that original Ben flashback episode, but Travis will have to answer that. My swiss cheesed brain doesn't remember that much detail.

In this view, time doesn't care if new players enter from the future. She'll allow them to play a role, but only to the extent that they are able to be the new catalyst for events that are already set in stone.

Also in this view, if Jack had helped Ben, Ben still would have become an Other. The reason just would have changed.

 

[todd s]

Someone brought up how will Sayid will react to living between two camps for years. That may not happen. A few episodes ago. We say the pilot and Sun meet Christian. I wonder if (now that the survivors have played their part in the past (ie-shooting Ben and bringing him to the others). It may be there "time" to come home (to 2007). And Sun & the pilot are the ones who bring them back.

 

[Arild]

Oh?

 

[TravisR]

Based on that episode, we only saw Ben meet Richard in the jungle in 1973 (I'm pretty sure that Ben told Sayid that he met Richard 4 years ago last episode) and then in the next flashback, Ben was an adult and participating in the purge in the early 1990's. There's a big blank between those two that's just starting to get filled in.

 

[Ken Chan]

How about this: there has been and always will be, only one 1977, and "what happened, happened." There is no "first time". Remember, it's the Losties that are the time "travelers" -- time is moving at a steady pace, but they're the ones jumping around. To them, it's all crazy. To the audience, these are "revelations".

Knowing what we now know -- although we should probably wait until the show is over -- we can take the individual scenes and splice them all together in absolute time order. If the writers were careful, there will be no overlaps or alternates. Things will happen in sequence. The only weird thing will be people popping out of and into times and locations.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I suspect this is the case. What we're looking at here is the "closed loop" version of time travel. There is no "original" timeline. At a certain date one or more characters go back in time. They do what they do. They either remain in the past and live out their lives, or they return to their own time which is exactly the same as they left it, with its history entirely intact. Their actions in the past are part of that history - and always have been. (In contrast to Back to the Future's rather more muddled - but entertaining - approach.)

More typically closed loop stories involve time periods outside the lifespans of the people involved. Lost gets around the potential problems with this by only having people who weren't on the island in 1974-77 return to that time. (Kinda makes you wonder where Sun was in the 70s.

)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Mikah Cerucco]

Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated. I read it a few times. I tried to be clear that my lack of understanding of time travel doesn't keep me from enjoying the show. Saying, "It's just a show," is neither here nor there. To say that is to implicitly agree with what I said in the first place... that I don't really get it any more after the explanation than I did before.

Joe brought up Back To The Future, which is something I was going to get into as well, but decided not to. My comment was going to be that although the ripple effect is in some ways a more complex view of time travel, it's one I actually intuitively understand better. In that one, time is a single line... if you go back and change something, the effects ripple through subsequent points on the time line, up to and including the present. And people in the future can change our present.

That's separate from how I think Star Trek handled it, which says that every time you jump back in time and affect something that didn't happen before, you create an alternate time line. So now there's a timeline when it didn't happen and one where it did. I actually saw a picture of that at some point (I think dealing with Tasha Yar). That had it's own issues, but I could still understand it.

Then there's the school of thought that says there are infinite time lines out there and every decision every being ever has made and ever will make creates a new time line. Again, I can picture this, so I get it.

I think this closed loop theory is a new one for me. I'm not going to hijack the thread and ask for an in depth explanation beyond what Josh already provided. Wiki - Time Travel should keep me busy for awhile. Suffice it to say, that Time Travel is one of those things that I just accept without any pretext at understanding. Along with the examples previously provided (what created God, what existed before the Big Bang) I've always had my other favorite, what exists past the edge of space? I don't begin to pretend that I can understand the answers to such questions. But my jealousy lies in the fact that there are people who have answers to such questions (perception is their reality) and don't get why I'm perplexed.

OK, that's my deep Lost post for the season. We can get back to talking about who's hotter, Kate or Juliet.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Why does it have to be a choice? I've always been smitten by Kate, but I've really come around on Juliet this season. It's not just because I found out she's a Dallas girl (born in LA, here from before her first birthday for those who are sticklers).

I just finally noticed how smashing she looks.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

The only thing I require from any use of time travel is that it be internally self-consistent. Establish rules, show how it works in your universe, then play by those rules, whatever they are. It is shows or movies that arbitrarily change the rules for dramatic effect (or to get out of a corner the writers have painted themselves into) that tick me off.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Josh Dial]

Closed-loop systems are simply another name for an infinite loop system - there is either always an original timeline which births all subsequent, or the past and future stretch out infinitely in either direction, with no beginning point. Any sort of closed system naturally regresses into the predestination paradox of time-travel.

Edit: Just wanted to add that, at least according to Stephen Hawking, causal loops are not possible, even in the most theoretical models of time travel. However, there are many philosophers who, stating that modern physics can't tell us everything about the nature of time and the universe, no matter how confident we may be, claim that closed loop systems can occur, as there are some notions that would not have start points (such as the two I mentioned above: God and the Big Bang).

 

[Matt^Brown]

Question: Where did the numbers go? Almost like the time travel issue now I remember everyone being caught up in what do the numbers mean. Heck I even remember there being numbers web sites devoted to finding the numbers. Has this just faded away like the hatches or are people still finding the numbers.

(I realize that the hatches did not fade away but for a while people thought the hatches were the key to the island. That does not appear to be the case anymore)

 

[TonyD]

the hatches arent there in 1977, so they will be a key after they are built.

If you mean what was down inside the hatches then I'm sure we'll eventually see them being built and why this is important.

 

[Josh Dial]

When the Ajira flight was "landing" on the airstrip, the first officer (could have been a navigator -- I didn't catch his rank) was shuffling through the radio frequencies. For a brief moment, you could hear the numbers being said over the airwaves, along with the creepy "iteration..." voice.

Two things:

- is the airspace around the island in the same time as the island they landed on? In otherwords, is it 2007 in the air?

- if it was 2007, were the numbers being broadcast over the frequency that they were originally on (that is, the one in the tower, and the same one that Rousseau changed to be her distress call)? If it is the same frequency, why are the numbers still there (it's 2007 remember), and not Rousseau's distress call.

These two issues can be explained away by having the airspace around the island be from a different time (1977?) than the landmass they land on. However, if it's not, there is a new mystery afoot!

 

[TravisR]

Actually, neither should be playing on that frequency. They turned off Rousseau's recording to contact the freighter at the end of S3.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Given the general goofyness of time in the vicinity of the island (which predates Ben's manipulations and Locke's fix), it is entirely possible that they are simply receiving a broadcasts sent years earlier. Way back in S1 they were receiving radio broadcasts from the 1940s on the island, IIRC correctly, which was one of the first hints that the island wasn't "running on standard time."

Then there are the Dharma supply drops, which are almost certainly from the '70s.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Steve Y]

Regarding my theory about Claire and the black smoke, I should state that right now it's just that... a theory. Members of Rousseau's team were willing to shoot their pregnant colleague (/partner!) for the temple. Claire was willing to give up Aaron for it. Neither case makes sense unless their personalities were fundamentally altered. Maybe I just played the "black smoke" card because it's the only entity with which they came into contact, but the "island's security system" may have nothing to do with it. Thankfully next week appears to have more of these questions answered, or it will at least open up more temple mythology.

I'll try not to say too much more about the time travel paradoxes, but I will agree with those saying it has NOT been established that there was some kind of "original timeline" that is somehow being "altered" now. This is the way it always happened: Ben was shot by a time-traveling Sayid and repressed the memory, Faraday scared young Charlotte and she repressed the memory; older versions popped onto the island in the 70s, and younger versions crashed on a plane in 2004, less the wiser. It's the "same as it ever was" theory of time travel. Infine / closed loop theories from philosophy or physics are fascinating, but we do not need to know about them, or even understand them, to follow the past couple seasons of "Lost".

Desmond may change this equation, but not necessarily in ways we expect. It may be less about "changing a pre-existing timeline" through some kind of ripple effect, and more about receiving sudden revelations at specific points in the timeline, which can tell him what he's supposed to do. What he was always going to do?

Lately I was watching "Raised by Another" (from Season 1), and it reminded me with what vehemence Claire was told by the psychic NOT to let someone else raise her child. This suggests to me that it is not a GOOD thing that Aaron is separated from her, and that the forces of Jacob (Christian in particular) are either sinister, or terribly misunderstood. (The psychic did tell Claire to bring her baby to LA for adoption, but it was established as a ruse to get her on the plane that would crash.)

 

[Charlie Campisi]

I feel stupid reading how you are all discussing time travel. For me, until someone actually finds a way to do it, I'll just watch the show and accept however they define time travel as being the way it is.

By a long shot, Kate in LA > Kate on the island > Juliet. IMO.

I'm sure that this was answered, but I must have missed it. Why did the island disappear when Ben turned the wheel? Is it because as it is moving through time it does not exist? So once it stops, when Locke fixes the wheel, it's now in the same geographic location and visible? Or is it moving geographically too as part of its protecting itself?

 

[Mike Williams]

I think the difference in the Star Trek universe is that when a new timeline is created by changing the past, the timeline we knew doesn't exist anymore. The NEW timeline becomes THE timeline, so there aren't alternate things happening at the same time on parallel sequences.

Like downloading something to your computer a second time. The computer asks you if you want to replace the original file name with the new one. You answer yes. You now have a new existence of something that was already there and the old one no longer exists.

Aside from that, yes, I believe time is infinite and that nothing created God and that God has always been and will always be. So if that's what "time is infinite" or "reality is infinite" means, then yes, it's certainly plausible on a TV show, since I find it to be quite plausible in real life.

 

[Arild]

Sorry, but I think you must have dreamed that part.
The Dharma food drops are a good point, though...

 

[TravisR]

They haven't said yet. I get the feeling that when Faraday pops up again, he may be able to provide an answer.