Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Hiatus Cast

Black Rock LOST Podcast: of ABC's TV show, LOST. The Black Rock crew took some time to invite some new and old friends for one last heads up, big picture look at LOST. Joining us is one of our oldest and dearest friends (Ok, so we sent him dynamite!) Big-O of Cranky Fanatic. Member and Presidente' of our Facebook group, Alisa, joins us as well. Then late, Matt of KeysToLost manage to peel himself away from the Bunny Awards to share some insights with us as well.

MP3

What's it all about? Mysteries... Theories... How do you want it to end? and other topics are kicked around.

43 comments:

Nancy Drew said...

First Comment!! I beat Dan!! WHOO HOO!

T minus two days to internet black out for Nancy Drew :(

warningtrax said...

Nice podcast, guys. Great way to plug an otherwise empty week.

As for how this all plays out, I’m with Dan. Still, I came up with a few questions and thoughts while I stewed on it.

- Charles’ statement about island events happening a couple of days ahead of schedule indicates that he has knowledge of things to come. How? Hasn’t this guy been on the outside looking in for quite some time? This knowledge suggests that someone has at least some direct knowledge of MTL island events from this point forward. Who? Again, I’m guessing a time-traveling version of (ATL or MTL) Desmond. Hopefully, this storyline will contain the events behind the “I was here just moments before” bumper sticker on Charlie’s guitar in Flashes Before Your Eyes.

- Speaking of Desmond... Let’s assume Desmond is able to get the gang back together and aware of the MTL. Now what? Are we talking about hopping another flight to Sidney or Guam? Hawking, who doesn’t think Desmond is “ready”, may have a change of heart and lend a hand here.

- The more I listened to the show, the more I began to think that the MTL struggle is not between our Losties and MIB. I’m starting to feel it’s between the Losties and BOTH Jacob and MIB.

- I wonder if the MTL mythical struggle and the ATL pseudoscientific struggle will resolve simultaneously, or if one will necessitate the other.

Nancy Drew said...

Ok, it's a thought it progress, so attack at will because in 5 minutes I may not believe in it myself, BUT what if the payload test Daniel Faraday did explains the appearance of people like Eloise and Widmore having knowledge of the future and the "some of can" comment from Tom about leaving the island? Bear with me......

When it landed on the island, the payload clock showed time being 31 minutes and 18 seconds ahead of the island clock on the island. The location of the freighter isn't exactly known, but Lostpedia estimates it as being as far as 80 nautical miles off the shore of the island. To best describe where my (most of the time) confusing line of thinking is going, I'll ask this question: If the freighter was 160 nautical miles away from the island, twice the distance of the test, would there have been a 1 hr. difference in the clocks? If it were a person shot out of a cannon wearing a clock, instead of it being a payload, would that mean, then, that they had arrived on the island from a future time that hasn't happened yet on the island?

Another aspect of this is the technology and the mythological connections it could hold. MIB/Jacob hate technology, but if the above explanation applies, it would make sense because the technology is coming to a place that literally--in the form of time--has not caught up with the outside world. Stories of this nature, where a group of people try to use devices that are ahead of their time, usually do not have that fairy tale ending of "happily ever after".

Ok, attack away!

Nancy Drew said...

Sorry, the first paragraph should read:

Ok, it's a thought in progress, so attack at will because in 5 minutes I may not believe in it myself, BUT what if the payload test Daniel Faraday did explains the appearance of people like Eloise and Widmore having knowledge of the future and the "some of us can" comment from Tom about leaving the island? Bear with me......

warningtrax said...

@ Nancy

To hopefully clarify your thought experiment, use the dead doctor analogy. Assume someone on the freighter slices the throat of a creepy doctor and throws him overboard. At some unspecified time later, the bloated body washes ashore. Now, place a call to the freighter and ask to speak to the doc. Yep, he’s not dead yet.

Now, the fun part. Instead of slitting the poor guy’s throat, just give the doc a pair of water wings and send him overboard again. When he dog paddles to shore (very much alive, mind you), hand him the sat phone and tell him to ask to speak to the doc.

(insert Twilight Zone music here)

Freighter Doc can now learn of future events from Island Doc's phone call. Of course, Island Doc can call anyone, not just himself.

Nancy Drew said...

I've gone through that thought process already and came to the conclusion that maybe this is where the difference between arriving on the island by submarine and arriving on the island by on or above water methods is the key.

warningtrax said...

Wow, you could really have fun with this.

Was the Flame ever used to relay information to someone off-island and further back in time? How about the Swan computer, which was apparently networked to the Flame? Is the potential ability to communicate across time via radio/satellite yet another reason why MIB destroyed Dirty Fey’s walkie? Could any of this explain the Golden Oldie on the radio?

It sucks not having a new episode to digest.

Nancy Drew said...

Ok, reading that again (my comment) even confused me.....LOL

To clarify, and simply state it:

Maybe the different means of transportation (meaning underwater, on water, or by air) are also factors and have different outcomes.

warningtrax said...

If this dilation could stretch from 31 minutes and 18 seconds to months and possibly years, someone better come up with an explanation for Desmond's arrival. From what we've seen with the doc and the payload, Desmond very well could have left on his fated boat race at a later time than we all think. Even though Desmond spent three years in the hatch, it does not necessarily mean the boat race was three years prior to the crash of 815....right?

warningtrax said...

....Desmond very well could have left on his fated boat race at a later time than we all think.

Relatively speaking, of course.

Trollonymous said...

There was no delay when Ben spoke from the Island to Richard in Florida? following Calamity Jane and child to prove to Juliette that he wasn't lying to her about curing her sister's cancer.

Magic phone?

warningtrax said...

Magic phone or a way to fine tune the dilation at the Flame....maybe?

Trollonymous said...

warningtrax,

So Patchy's girlfriend isn't Bea, she's Uhuru.

Miguel said...

Nancy,
Does that also explain the Dahrma food falling from the sky? It was dropped of in the 70's but just landed in the 90's? Yummm, Dharma peanut butter

F Ron Miller said...

Long time listener, first time comment. Great show! I have a handful of pet questions I would love to have answered among my top three:

1. Why did the Others of season 2 dress up as barefoot hillbillies? Or as we now understand it, why did the DHARMAtown dwelling Others dress up as the other Others? What purpose did that serve. In season 5 the Others accuse time flashing Julliet as being 'out of uniform'. Was that a clue.

2. What was the final scene of Season 2 all about? Penny didn't have a boat but she had a listening station in a frozen land? What was she listening for anyway?

3. Why was Desmond naked in the jungle after the Swan --thousands of feet under the jungle implode on top of him? How did he survive that as he did. --and for that matter how did Locke and Ecko.

Lastly, I'm totally down with a third timeline! In fact, I believe that's the one where 815 lands at the bottom of the Sunda trench.

warningtrax said...

@ Trollonymous

I think Patchy really only had eyes, well eye, for Nadia Comăneci.

warningtrax said...

@ Miguel...

Thanks to relativity, I think the Dharma Ranch will be just fine.

Trollonymous said...

@warningtrax,

bon pointe.

Nancy Drew said...

@Troll-
I'm not sure about the whole phone thing with Ben and Richard--or with the satellite phone used by the freighter people, although it is a little more believable with them because the ship isn't too far from the island. Every time that issue was brought up on the podcast in Season 4 I could only think of one thing.......the radio broadcast from the 1940's (?) and how Sayid said that the radio waves were bouncing off the atmosphere.

But along the same line of thinking with sub and it not being affected by the time dilation upon entering the island bubble, is the thought that the Looking Glass underwater station was what relayed the transmissions and communications so the same principles could apply.

@Miguel-
I was convinced of that happening with the food drop even before my thoughts today, but you're right that it could fit in nicely with this way of thinking. Mmmmm......ranch.....

@warningtrax-
As much as I hate going without a new episode, it's actually a blessing in disguise for me this week :)

Trollonymoy said...

The Looking Glass provided a beacon to Dharma subs to help them find the Island. It's possible that the beacon is also received by the lamp-post in order to calculate where and when the Island can be located.

Some arrivals may be purely serendipitous, some may occur due to fate, an issue of some import in the series.


Desmond seems like a bit of a chicken or the egg kind of thing. Was he special before he left for his race or did he become special due to his steady absorption of EM energy over his three years on the Island.

It may even be a chicken or the egg or the chicken again kind of thing. His steady absoption of EM energy made him special before the fact as well as after it since the laws of space and time don't apply to him forwards or backwards, at least as we perceive time anyways.
Events beyond his control but perhaps not beyond the control of Widmore, Hawking, Jacob or ?, led him to the Island and his fate.

This speaks to the podcast discussion on why the MiB didn't just kill Desmond. It may have had nothing to do with "the rules", it's possible the MiB isn't physically capable of killing Desmond the way he dealt with other threats because Des has become inured to the effects of EM radiation, the possible source of the MiB's power.

Widmore's foreknowledge, if he does have it may have been provided by a time travelling Minkowski who he employs in the AT.
And Kelvin Inman must have been subjected to the same EM treatment as Des if not moreso. Was Kelvin special in that sense? He did tell Sayid that the interrogation skills he had learned would come in handy some day. A prediction he knew would come true?

I feel like Leonard Nimoy.

Chris Sheridan said...

it was great to take a moment and ponder the bigger picture.

so much of the energy this season is trying to glean out what's coming and the 'things' we still need to see.

i wonder on the comments relating to desmond as a 'man without fear'. he was mentioned in relation to charlie, and charlie's peace with knowing his own future and that his fate was sealed.

but i wonder if desmond's 'peace' comes from that same knowledge. not that he will survive, but that he will perish in this timeline. and so he is a 'man without fear' not because he knows he'll live, but because he's accepted he'll die.

i hope thats not the case, as of all the characters i most want desmond to make it off the island.

4 episodes to go!

we shall see.

Trollkegaard said...

jwb, you are discribing Desmond as a "Knight of Infinity", one who believes he will be reunited with his love in another world.

The "Knight of Faith" believes he will be reunited with his love in the present world.

Both could be correct depending how they are viewed, for me, alt timeline Des is the former while main timeline Des is the latter.

After rewatching some of the first season, I'll predict the following,
the MiB will help Jack locate Christian's body so he can finally bury his father. However I don't know how this will fit with the oft repeated phrase concerning things not staying buried on the Island for long.

BTW, the Lost writers will do well to pay the compound interest on the narrative debt. Maybe Stephen King could bail them out.

warningtrax said...

@ Trollonymoy : My question concerning Desmond is this: Would Desmond have ended up in that boat race and on the island had future Desmond not flashed back to a time and place prior to the island events where Ms. Hawking expressly tells Desmond that it is inevitable that he will spend three years pushing a button on the island? Also, did 1996 boot camp Desmond’s consciousness flashes to 2004 help solidify the course of events that lead to him to turning the fail-safe key? In this regard, Desmond could be exactly like Richard’s compass. Wow, does that even make sense?


@ Nancy Drew: Enjoy your technological blackout.

Nancy Drew said...

@Warningtrax

God forbid I should be a librarian AND read books, but that just be what I end up doing, LOL!! I guess I shouldn't complain, though. I do have all 5 seasons of Lost on DVD and I could just do a Lost marathon. Comcast better NOT be late on Tuesday when installing service! I would hate to miss Tuesday night :)

Trollonymous said...

warningtrax,

I know what you're getting at.
The compass is a paradox and Desmond's form of time travel can create similar paradoxes.

I don't think he understood the extent of his abilities or his responsibility to use that power correctly. It took Eloise Hawking's warnings and instructions to put him on the right path, time's path so to speak. If he had gone back in time and changed something, in this case, fixed his relationship with Penny, how would he ever have lived the life which would eventually endow him with the ability to go back and correct his decisions. Well according to EH it wouldn't matter what he did to try to change things, time would eventually correct itself and he would do well to accept that fact and go meet his destiny now before his objections ended up harming someone he cared about.

It's actually like that Knight of Faith (KoF)thing I keep harping on about. As a KoF Desmond accepts life gracefully. He doesn't know quite why he can't be with his love right now but he accepts the hardship knowing that some day, in the same world they will be reunited. He uses his power in order to takes steps to try to ensure this happens when he gets Penny's phone number and tells her not to change it. He couldn't have done this without visiting the Island. Fate vs Free Will and a bit of romance in the story-telling.

Miguel said...

I know this topic was a couple of episodes ago but the whole purgatory thing still bugs me.
I understand that the whispers are dead people that cant move on, but why does Richards wife appear to Hugo? She didn't die on the island so her soul shouldn't be there unless it really is some type of purgatory for all souls, not just the ones that die on the island. I could see how people might be seeing people from their past because its an image they have in their subconscious. Hugo has no subconscious image of Isabella but yet he sees her and talks to her. The Ab Eterno enhanced episode confirmed that MIB visited Richard in the form of Isabella when he was chained up in the black rock. If Isabella talking to Hugo isn't MIB could it be Jacob?

I still think its funny that Vincent has been time traveling with the losties. If Vincent could only talk, he would tell us what the island is all about.

The Man In Gray said...

Great show as always.

I wanted to comment about the notion of Jacob being 'pure', or having never really done anything wrong directly but I think I can dispel that notion. On one hand I think it's certainly plausible to reason that with Nadia's death, maybe she was destined to die right then anyway and Jacob just had impeccable timing. I could live with that.

However, when we go back to the opening minutes of the show there was a plane crash where lots of people died, some survived for a while and then died later (the pilot, the fed). By his own admission Jacob brought these people to the island. Clearly he's directly responsible for their deaths. If he doesn't bring them to the island, they live, but he does bring them and they die, can't get more black and white than that. An act for the greater good maybe, but not an act of purity.

One counter would be that maybe all those people were destined to die in a plane crash right then anyway but the 815 timeline shows that to be a false assertion. In the 815 timeline the the plane doesn't crash, presumably with no Jacob influence (the island is sunk afterall). This is precisely why I believe that it's not a good vs. evil thing, it's more of a balance thing.

My crackpot theory is that this is exactly the reason everything will cease to exist if MIB leaves the island.

I believe MIB when he said he wants to go home. Where that is, who knows, but I'm reasonably certain he's not going to Tahiti. I think when he leaves the island he's not just gone from this timeline he's gone from this existence (universe, multi-verse, ...). This has consequences...

Without evil or darkness or whatever you want to call it, good would be undefined, or put another way the universe / existence requires balance in order to exist. With nothing to balance it against good wouldn't be good or bad, it would just be. With pure good or pure evil there is no balance. Keeping MIB on the island keeps things in balance (the cork in the bottle). So if MIB leaves the island, balance becomes impossible and therefore this existence ceases to exist just as Widmore said.

But even if all this is true, I still have no idea how the other timeline fits into the equation, but hey, I did say it was my crackpot theory :)

Mairuzu said...

The BAD TWIN is real!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8644411.stm

K.C. Nieman said...

This podcast made me realize that in order to understand the whole timeline split, alternate universe, flash-sideways, time flashing stuff, we will need a slow-talking Faraday stammering over a chalkboard explaining why we are seeing what we are seeing.

Either that, or we need Stephen Hawking telling us to go back to school and learn more about quantum mechanics.

Finally, just for fun, I think the blond boy on the island is Jacob. No other person would make MiB react the way he does. I put my money on the notion that the "candidates" idea is a scheme created by Jacob to prove to MiB that humans are not all sinful. What if the real kicker is that Jacob is actually his own replacement and that the so-called "candidates" are simply there to show MiB that his corruptable notion is hogwash.

Just a thought.

~Dante

Curt said...

Dude, I think you've nailed it! Of course there are lots of mechanics along the way, looping compasses, hydrogen bombs, you now, stuff..

Unknown said...

Hey Curt good little hiatus podcast. i like the fact that it all makes sense... if there is another timeline/universe haha. kinda like quantum string theory. it all makes sense... but you have to have 11 dimensions :)

Unknown said...

steve miller's song fly like an eagle has some interesting lost related lyrics. (yes i know that if we look hard enough, everything is lost related haha)

Nancy Drew said...

OMG, I feel like I've been holding my breath for three days...........*gasp, gasp*........Thank goodness for internet at work!

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping.....into the future....

I love that song, and you're right! It does seem to fit. But like you said, almost anything can fit into Lost.

Shoe the children........

Do you think that, in the grander scheme of things, Jacob will end up holding it against Zach and Emma that they went with Locke? I mean, if Cindy is in charge of them, and she tells them to go with her, then aren't they still "innocent"? Maybe this is the type of "innocense" that Ben loses when being taken to the temple as a child. Even though a choice is being made for him, he clearly made that choice for himself by trying to bust Sayid out of jail, so even though he's a child, he stepped up and used free will.

House the people.......

I rewatched the Season 4 opener last night. After watching, I was even more confused about the Christian/MIB thing. I guess it's possible that the ash circle was broken a long time ago allowing MIB to travel in and out of the cabin, but something about it still just doesn't sit right. From what we've seen, it's not that the circle of ash has kept MIB in anything, it's that it has been a circle of protection with someone else inside it. At this stage of the game, it may not be important, but with Hurley finding Ilana's bag of ash (or what most think is the bag of ash), it may be something to ponder.

Something else I started to question when rewatching is Abaddon and Widmore. It would be interesting to see a time line of events between 2005 (presumably when the O6 left the island) and 2007. When watching Hurley's events play out, it's almost as if we have another "Sun and Locke at the ER" time line error again. And what motivated Abaddon to approach Hurley at the mental ward instead of trying to see him (or any of them) right after arriving back home? I think we're almost missing a part of the story somewhere between the O6's arrival back home and John Locke's arrival in Tunisia.

Whew........I've miss the internet!

Mairuzu said...

"But like you said, almost anything can fit into Lost."

http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Reality_Distortion_Engine

Loop said...

Hi guys
Ross form the creeping with armstrong podcast

love your show and really going to miss it when its all over. in answer to 'what's it all about' my answer would be....

You cant be a good person or a bad person, we all have elements of both within us and it is our choices that contribute to the good or bad actions of others.

I feel that something happened to Jacob that made him want to expel the dark side of his personality (possibly killing his father at some point in the past re; the daddy issue theme)
the dark side of his personality then had no corporal form and existed as black smoke, taking on the bodies of the dead where is could. The side effect of this was that Jacob and black smoke are immortal as an incomplete soul can not 'move on'

Black smoke wants to go 'home' and be reunited with the light side of his personality. The only way he could do so is by proving to Jacob that it is the natural order of things for people to have this duality, Jacob driven mad by his unnatural state tries to prove the opposite.

It is the Lostees role to prove Jacob wrong and join the two halves together so they confront the event that drove them apart and move on....

or something like that...

a couple of movies that have plots that contain similar ideas and themes.

Silent Hill - Tormented soul split, one good, one bad in half by traumatic event.

Forbidden Planet - Misunderstood ancient technology causing a character to be elevated beyond natural human evolution but having the side effect of letting loose a 'Id monster' that is held back by kinda sonic fence


i would love to hear what you think

Miguel said...

I can't wait for my LOST fix tonight. I have been re-watching some lost episodes during the break and here are some interesting observations.

This is for the mirror fans. When Desmond confronts Kelvin about leaving the island, Kelvin tells him that he needed a sucker to stay pushing the button. This is similar to MIB saying John was a sucker.

I had forgotten about the black and white stones that were found on Adam and Eve. It seems that black and white rocks only have meaning to Jacob and MIB. What if Adam and Eve is MIB and his lover. He said Jacob took his body and that he was a man before that loved. They might have both been in love with the same woman and things got ugly. MIB wants to get of the island to his love.

When Kate meets Charlie she asks him if she knows him. Charlie thinks that she recognizes him from his band but Kate has a look like if its more than that. It seems like Kate was having memories from another time line coming through. I guess with the knowledge that we now have, a lot of past scenes will have the feel that our losties already had memories when they first met.

Mairuzu said...

Jacob and MiB are two sides of the Island itself. The Island is a place but they represent its soul, perhaps. One is good. One is bad.

Therefore, when MiB says he wants to go back home.. he just means the Island wants to get re-attached to the mainland continent. Yeah. That's the ticket. :)

Trollonymous said...

Loop,

with respect to your duality of human nature movie references, I watched the film version of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and some of the narration speaks to what you're hinting at. To paraphrase, when describing the personalities of the two murderers, he states that forensic experts believed that individually each of them was not capable of the crime in question but that together they created a third person who could commit murder. I know there are other issues involved in this statement but being a bit LOST obsessed (like most fans) at the moment I couldn't help but think of Jacob and MiB in this fashion especially when so many similar theories are being expressed lately.

chinadoll said...

So here’s my cockeyed theory about the smoke monster;

It’s a tulpa. It is fueled by the collective subconscious of people who are on the island where it lives. Here are some descriptions and references to tulpas, that Darlton may know of;

Sanskrit: "to build" or "to construct") is a Vajrayana, Bonpo and Tibetan Buddhist upaya concept, discipline and teaching tool; in Tibetan mysticism, a being or object which is created through willpower, visualisation, attention and focus, concerted intentionality and ritual. In other words, it is a materialized thought that has taken physical form."
. “here are... apparitions that make public appearances. Some of these are said to be the perceptible double—the etheric counterpart—of a living person who is undergoing an out-of-body experience.
A tulpa is usually produced by a skilled magician or yogi, although in some cases it is said to arise from the collective imagination of superstitious villagers, say, or of travelers passing through some sinister tract of country."

“Could the worship or occult use of an area over hundreds of years create a sort of artificial life form? Something that fed on the worship. When the worship is taken away the "thing" still needs to feed. It now feeds by creating fear with paranormal manifestations. Another idea is that they are a massive, collective, sub-conscious, thought form. The thought form or tulpa is said to be a 3-D semi solid image created by the power of the mind.....If individuals can create tulpas imagine what the collective, gestalt mind of humanity as a species could do….”
• Stephen King, marvel comics, X-files, the Teachings of Don Juan Matus by Carlos Castaneda, and many others have used this idea; In the movie "Forbidden Planet" a malevolent entity exists which is created by the violent subconscious thoughts of otherwise civilized beings.
Could MIN/Jacob/Smoke monster be a tulpa? Or more than one?

chinadoll said...

I of course meant MIB, not MIN!

chinadoll said...

ok, remember when Alex was killed, and Ben unplugged/let the smoke monster loose? He was extremely upset, and I recall the smoke monster being larger and more powerful than anytime before that on the show....so perhaps Ben's emotions fueled smokie, like the Id manifestation in "the Forbidden Planet" acted up when the characters got upset? I think that's how it happened in that movie...it's been quite a while since I've seen it...bear with me, I'm a newbie to posting, though have been hooked on Lost since the first episode aired.

chinadoll said...

Another one of my theories; (isn’t Wikipedia great?) “In the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreaming or, in one version (there are many Aboriginal cultures), Altjira was the god of the Dreamtime; he created the Earth and then retired as the Dreamtime vanished….” Ajira airlines…?
Also, here’s an interesting quote from The Last Wave (1977) (one of my favorite movies), an Australian film directed by Peter Weir:
"Aboriginals believe in two forms of time; two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity, the other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the 'dreamtime', more real than reality itself. It was believed that some people of unusual spiritual powers had contact with the dreamtime."'
They believe that every person essentially exists eternally in the Dreaming. This eternal part existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother. The spirit of the child is culturally understood to enter the developing foetus during the fifth month of pregnancy.[2]. When the mother felt the child move in the womb for the first time, it was thought that this was the work of the spirit of the land in which the mother then stood.

mmm…parallel streams of time; isn’t around the fifth month of pregnancy that women on the island begin to be in danger? I know I’m reaching, but something about this seems familiar…..

Also; “The Minka Bird is a creature featured in Aboriginal dreamtime stories. According to the Aboriginals, the sighting of the Minka Bird foretells certain death.”. …I need to go back and find screen caps of the “Hurley Bird”, I totally missed it…haven’t been able yet to find out what this bird looks like; did someone die when the Hurley Bird was seen? I need to do a rewatch…..

Miguel said...

Great stuff Chinadoll!!!