I have no idea whence this concept of recreating the circumstances of the first trip
sprang, but I didn't like it upon first viewing, and I like it even less in afterthought ...

If finding/predicting the "event window" is the key to returning, exactly how does street theater get invoked in this equation? Why is there any need to "recreate as best you can the circumstances that brought you there in the first place" ... huh? Uh, why not just enter the event window? And this whole idea of "proxies" ... ugh! As hokey as the "recreate the circumstances" thing is, assigning passengers as proxies for others in the original flight is downright ludicrous. Seems the writers really got lazy and threw in the towel with this ... “Hmm, how do we justify Locke being on the plane? [snap] I got it! He’s taking Christian’s place from the original flight!” ... rolling already glazed-over eyes. Of course, establishing the Locke-as-proxy precedent opened a whole can of worms ... if Locke is a proxy, who else might be (or could/should be)? If the TPTB didn’t anticipate viewers jumping on that bandwagon, they should’ve. Anyway, Hawking said "as many of the same people" needed to be on the flight, not people pretending to be the same people ... with the exception of Locke as proxy for Christian [uh, well duh!]. Likewise, I see no reason why Kate is supposedly pregnant, simply so she can be Claire's "proxy." I will have a very hard time if that's the direction they choose to go with all of this nonsense.

At any rate, I see this epi as somewhat of an acknowledgement by the writing staff that they have painted themselves into a corner, and are trying to weasel out of it by invoking silliness. Hawking begins by saying "I apologize if this is confusing, but ..." and follows up a while later with "Oh, stop thinking how ridiculous it is" ... not to mention her ridiculous demeanor, like some horrid kindergarten teacher. Hmm ... I took this to mean "we said we'd back everything up with 'science,' but now we can't, so here comes the waving of the hands!" Very slowly now, so the audience can follow ... BAM ... Abracadabra!

And what do you know? They even poke fun at themselves (us?) by including the otherwise completely unnecessary magic show at the retirement home ... complete with obligatory "proxy" rabbit. Sheesh ... not even close to amusing D&C ... pathetic? Now we're talking! What did Des say about the O6 being used? Hmm ... I felt like that could just as easily have been directed toward the home viewers!

If they end up having only "selected" passengers FOOM out of a left-intact plane, and/or people popping up in different time frames on the island ... that would simply be too stupid to let pass ... even for a fantasy/sci fi show! The audience needs to be allowed some dignity, IMO.

Really, I do NOT expect everything to be explained rationally... I just wish they had come up with a better way of "wrapping up the science," as I see it, after apparently trying really hard, and failing.

Good science fiction is first and foremost good FICTION in general, and as such, relies heavily on character development/interplay. Frankly, the "science" in sci fi is typically BS, because well, it's not science fact, is it? Nonetheless, any references to "true" science should be accurate, and any sci fi mythology should at the very least be self-consistent, and at best, plausible (or even just semi-plausible).

So here's my beef ... Lost started out VERY character driven, with the whole dedicated epis to backstory and all. What little explicit "science" there was, always at the very least tap-danced around the edges of fact/plausibility. IMO, that was a good recipe for a decent sci fi show; i.e. a good drama aside from the science, with just enough believable fantasy invoked to make it interesting.

What has happened? For quite a while now, it seems the character interplay has taken a back seat to the convoluted attempts at explaining the science (which, of course, were doomed from the start, as it's all make believe in the end!). Now we are left with bad fiction, AND bad science!

If somehow, miraculously, TPTB could've pulled off "explaining" the science in a more consistent fashion (and come on now ... the "science" in Lost abandoned self-consistency a long time ago! What ever happened to the importance of the course to the island? Etc., etc. etc...), then I'd grant them more slack with easing on the typical elements of good fiction (i.e., moving the characters along in meaningful fashion). That's not what happened though ... everything just seems weak across the board lately ... if the show had begun like this, I wouldn't even be writing this right now, cause I wouldn't have kept watching.

I mentioned the (The Prisoner) Rover/Smokey correlation on the blog (This Place Is Death #330) for a reason I never explicitly mentioned there ... I did not mind at ALL that Rover wasn't explained in The Prisoner. It was not necessary to the overall plot, and certainly did not detract from the experience of the show. In fact, trying (and probably failing miserably ... hmm) to explain Rover would've probably lowered my regard for the show at large.

Really, my ONLY hope now is that the 316 epi marks the end of the futile efforts to explain the science, and they get back to writing solid fiction. That is, I hope they get back to what made the show great in the first place ... the characters!

I'm reserving judgment of TPTB until i see the end of the series. I still think they will pull it off.

I don't have tivo so I can't rewatch the show and listen again to what was said and my memory, admittedly, sucks.

So, with that disclaimer: I thought only Ben said anything about a "proxie". And that was specifically regarding Locke as Christian's corpse proxie.

I'm wondering if Hawking/Ben/ etc. think that Flight 815 was brought down because of who was on the plane. That is, whatever mechanism caused the plane to drop out of the sky caused it because these specific people were on the plane and among the specific people was a dead person. The plane was "scanned" and identified as the correct plane.

It might be that Hawking & Ben are as mystified as we are with regard to why 815 was plucked from the sky. So now they are gathering up as many of who they figure to be the key people and are tossing them back in the sky to be scanned and brought down again and for good measure they are throwing in a dead guy.

Smokey srikes me as a sociopath sort of entity. It knows facts but it lacks the ability to deal with human nuances. So Smokey might still be looking for (example)a pregnant woman & a dead guy in a plane. When he finds one flying in the vacinity of the island....down it comes.

Or it could be that Ben lied to Jack in another effort to manipulate him into going back to the island and bringing Locke's body with him.
Why Locke's body? I dunno but Ben thinks it's essential.

Hawking's aloof personality does not bother me at all.

I think Grand Dad Shepard is more than an excuse for shoes. He looks very young to be Christian's father. Maybe it's just good genes.
But the Shepard family is well represented on the island...Christian, Jack, Claire, Aaron. And I wonder if we will learn that Locke is also a Shepard. So Ray Shepard's appearance in this episode was not filler; there is a reason for it.

Science? It is about Science possibility not science fact or even science probability. I can go with that...quantum physics is mind boggling! I subscribe to the statement made by the guy who wrote The Elegant Universe (can't recall his name) who said, "If you don't understand it that means you're on the right track." I try to wrap my brain around it, but it gets to the point where I end up laughing hilariously at the crazy awesomeness of it all!

I do agree with you though, that getting back to the characters is a good thing. The rest is incidental...I don't care what is causing it (the McGuffin) I just want to watch the people dealing with it. And I think the 06's acquiesence to the circumstances is plausible.
Sometimes one just has to go with the flow and see where it takes you.

I am curios to see the explanation of why they continue to use older technology. Couldn't someone have mapped how the pendulum works with a simulator or put satalites etc? At least upgraded the computers? I'm sure it would have been significantly less work.

As to the "science" of the show, you have a solid point. But that is also one of the "MAJOR" themes of the show. Perhaps it is meant to be confusing right now so that we can empathize with Jack.

Jack is a clever as any of us. At what point does one just accept what is happenning to them. For ealgumy you are not ready to accept, like you Jack is still struggling. Dammit, make sense woman! We all want to scream that about Mrs. Hawkwing. Truth is, if all this were possible, are our feeble minds really ready to understand the why/how of it?

What little and, I emphasize little, we understand about time travel, if it were really possible, do you think it would make sense? Would the concept of a microwave oven make any sense to someone from the 1500s? At what point do you just tell the man, the damn thing just works okay!

Theolred:

Exactly! Even if time travel is possible, had Mrs. Hawking sat down and explained how it is done, most of us (them) would not understand the "how" of it anyway. So the short answer is, "Oh, stop complaining about how ridiculous it is."

It's like those incidents of someone knowing what is going to happen before it happens...I have no idea how precognition works but I know for a fact that it does happen.

gluons, muons, flavored quarks up down top bottom strange charm, 3 dimensions 4 dimensions 10 dimensions 26 dimensions, time dilation = ridiculous.

I am of the mind that the more we learn, the more ridiculous it gets.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: undaunted,

Time is not linear, time is a dimension through which we move. The theory of relativity tells us this through different rates of time felt at speeds which are different fractions of the speed of light or through the proximity to massive objects. We see time travel as impossible only because of the utterly inconceivably monstrous amounts of energy required for the process.

quote:

Originally posted by LOST_MY_HEAD:
We see time travel as impossible only because of the utterly inconceivably monstrous amounts of energy required for the process.

Correct and recall that Dr. Chang in Episode 1 of Season 5 warned the workers to take care because of the massive amounts of energy that were behind that wall!

I agree with you all now, no point trying to call the science because it is so mad you may as well go with it.

I watched a program on Quantum physics once and apparently it is not possible to measure in realtime the position of different particles in an atom or even the atom itself. It does not exist at certain points. Also the particles have no mass, but yet a substance such as a lump of iron clearly does. Apparently a yet unfound particle the Higgs Bosom gives the appearance of mass. Now clearly all this makes absolutely no sense to me yet it is accepted as fact by 95% of scientists.

Therefore forget trying to understand the science just marvel at it and enjoy the story.

quote:

Originally posted by Kris_London:
I agree with you all now, no point trying to call the science because it is so mad you may as well go with it.

I watched a program on Quantum physics once and apparently it is not possible to measure in realtime the position of different particles in an atom or even the atom itself. It does not exist at certain points. Also the particles have no mass, but yet a substance such as a lump of iron clearly does. Apparently a yet unfound particle the Higgs Bosom gives the appearance of mass. Now clearly all this makes absolutely no sense to me yet it is accepted as fact by 95% of scientists.

Therefore forget trying to understand the science just marvel at it and enjoy the story.

Actually, the particle does exist at a certain point. It is that the certain point is not physically established, as we envision physical space. It is said that the act of testing for the presence of the particle is what "forces" the particle to establish its location at that moment based on the physical location of the testing apparatus. It could have equally been across the room or across the galaxy at the same moment.

These ideas, however, have not yet been translated beyond particle dynamics so there is only a very shaky connection to out Lost time shift.

Yep right on Pagecarl, my point was if particle physics is beyond current science, (they are still searching for the missing particles which prove the theory with a giant particle coliding machine in Switzerland), then trying to say Lost's time travel stuff is not factual is a pointless exercise.

If someone jumps from a plane in a flash, and if certain objects move or don't move, I for one do not care. I just like the science fiction of it and like undaunted there are so many more simple inaccuracies in the story to get upset about.

Lost for me has always been about the characters and the unpredictability of the story.

The original post here got my back up, i.e. come back when you can understand particle physics. I guess pagecarl is the only one here who comes close to understanding it, let alone Time Travel.

Umm... Kris, ealgumby understands particle physics better than anyone else here.

I think I have failed to make my point, so I'll try to be more concise this time ...

First of all, regardless of the viewer's knowledge level in physics, there should be consistency! True enough, humans as a collective group still have not answered many of the fundamental questions regarding the inner workings of the universe ... However, I do not have to understand *exactly* how gravity interacts with the other major forces (and uh, yeah, that unified field theory is still elusive), in order to recognize that apples fall down from trees, and that in fact apples ALWAYS fall down from trees, rather than falling up sometimes, or sideways other times (and *please* no one start with quantum mechanisms and probability ... yes, I DO understand this stuff a bit, and see no need to get into the macro versus micro and Planck's constant discussions!). In short, I do not have to understand the details of the physics behind why apples fall down to understand that this is what they do.

When writing science fiction, likewise, it is not the author's responsibility to *explain* the physics behind what is happening ... as you point out, we have a hard enough time doing so with "science fact," let alone sci fi mythology. However, that being said, the author *should* be consistent within a story's own mythology ... and that is the nature of my complaint with Lost ...

I think D&C boxed themselves into a corner by promising early on that there were valid scientific explanations for everything that was happening on the show. I rather understand why they said that ... they wanted to shut down the rampant "purgatory, nanotech, etc." discussions so people wouldn't get distracted by these incorrect tangents, but I think they made a mistake in letting people take those comments a bit too literally.

Rather than just coming right out up front and saying something to the extent that "well, maybe we overstepped a bit ... the show is *based* on science fact, if esoteric, but there is certainly a sci fi mythology we are working from as well," they expended (apparently) a lot of effort trying to actually make the show's mythology explainable.

Perhaps an admirable effort, if they had succeeded ... failing to do so, I think it just makes them look like they "pulled a rabbit out of a hat" to extricate themselves from the "scientific" morass they wound up in. My point was that I don't care if the "science" behind the mythology of the show is explained ... I just want it consistent, and I think the Lost production team had failed by that measure.

Meanwhile, they diverged from the characters in their vain effort to wrap up the science, really leaving "both" sides unsatisfied ... viewers who follow the character interactions found those lacking, and those who were trying to unravel the "science" were left sorely disappointed.

I hope you understand the difference between what I have just tried again to explain, and complaining about not understanding the science, which was never my intent ...

I also love the show, and have been more pleased with the direction taken the last couple epis ... that is all.

I was not trying to cause offense with my comments and I hope no one took it that way.

I will aplogise anyway, sorry.

Don't get me wrong I too thought WTF when they pulled the tricks in 316. For me though they lost me with the donkey wheel way back at the end of season 4.

I too love the show. I guess that is the end of this thread we have been round and round the houses on this one.

quote:

Originally posted by ealgumby:

When writing science fiction, likewise, it is not the author's responsibility to *explain* the physics behind what is happening ... as you point out, we have a hard enough time doing so with "science fact," let alone sci fi mythology. However, that being said, the author *should* be consistent within a story's own mythology ... and that is the nature of my complaint with Lost ...

Meanwhile, they diverged from the characters in their vain effort to wrap up the science, really leaving "both" sides unsatisfied ... viewers who follow the character interactions found those lacking, and those who were trying to unravel the "science" were left sorely disappointed.

Ah, and to these two points I absolutely agree.

I have long since left behind any hope of maintaining some form of scientific acceptability. That hasn't in any way changed my enjoyment of the show, any more than it did for reading Heinlein or Herbert many years ago. Are some of the events in Lost honestly any less believable that what happens to Bruce Willis just before he defeats the bad guys in Die Hard? Yet he lives on, fofrever, waiting for another installment. Or is it any less believable than Arnold? (Not Terminator - him becoming the Commander in Chief of California)

More importantly, as you say so well, diverting the character line in a vain attempt to return to a scientific reality long, LONG after the horses have left the barn only results in convoluted story lines in addition to mish-mashed science.

Still, I do believe this show provides an opportunity for "regular" people to become interested in somewhat obscure science and to expand our knowledge, even if just a little. Yin, Dauntless and Alais have all done some fun and interesting research on their own in an effort to support their ideas presented here. That is part of what makes it fun for me to be part of this site.

and once more

quote:

I think D&C boxed themselves into a corner by promising early on that there were valid scientific explanations for everything that was happening on the show. I rather understand why they said that ... they wanted to shut down the rampant "purgatory, nanotech, etc." discussions so people wouldn't get distracted by these incorrect tangents, but I think they made a mistake in letting people take those comments a bit too literally.

Rather than just coming right out up front and saying something to the extent that "well, maybe we overstepped a bit ... the show is *based* on science fact, if esoteric, but there is certainly a sci fi mythology we are working from as well," they expended (apparently) a lot of effort trying to actually make the show's mythology explainable.

You know, I think D & C said what they did just so their show would "survive". Sci-Fi shows generally don't make it on network television. Star Trek, Babylon 5 would never have aired on the "Networks". Shows like Firefly got axed because "people don't watch sci-fi", but the DVD release showed they actually do.

I believe that D&C knew the arc of the show from the beginning. They always knew there was going to be Others, Ben, and Jacob and there always was a smoke monster (It was in the pilot) and time travel. If they marketed their show as "Sci-Fi" and gave in the show wouldn't have survivied past season one. Season one had the least sci-fi and got everyone hooked. They got the gaurantee from ABC and now they can tell their story, the way they want to.

Sci-Fi gets a bad wrap, but like any good story, its all about the characters.