LOST: The Constant

by BTD Greg

Another Desmond episode, another time travel mystery, and a little bit more information about the island and the freighter’s crew. We got lots to chew on tonight.

Spoilers and a discussion of tonight’s episode after the jump.

Links and miscellanea

  • The hot theory from last week’s episode was that Miles is Ben’s man on the boat. (See, e.g., this post at The Lost Blog.) Miles, the theory goes, was speaking in code when he attempted to extort money from Ben. Thus, all the back and forth about $3.2 million, two days, and one week. I’m not partial to this theory, but it’s got legs, so I thought I’d mention it. It’s not implausible, but it doesn’t seem to fit the tone of that scene to me.

  • It looks like CBS’s decision not to renew Cane bodes well for the return of Richard Alpert. Huzzah!

  • Here’s a piece at EW.com with a back-and-forth between Cuse and Lindelof about the end of the writer’s strike.

  • Speaking of the end of the writer’s strike, it seems that the Hawaii LOST crew is back at work. This is good news for us because it means the new episodes are actually in production, not just in writing. And, of course, it’s good news for the Hawaii production crew.

  • This week’s official podcast is of the video variety and features Evangeline Lilly. Cuse and Lindelof are claiming that they’re busy writing those five additional episodes. (Yeah, whatever.) It’s pretty short, but it should put to rest the rough theory that Kate’s Aaron isn’t Claire’s Aaron.

  • Collectors will soon be able to buy their very own LOST-character kubricks. (Via Pop Candy.)

  • USA Today’s Celeb Watch has a feature on Rebecca Mader (Charlotte Lewis).

  • ABC is offering LOST (among other programming) on on-demand for free, with one catch—fast forward has been disabled, so viewers are forced to watch commercials (or go get a snack, or take a bathroom break, or whatever.) It’s supposed purpose is to fight DVR viewing, but I can only see this being attractive to someone who does not already own a DVR.

  • Check out the trailer for the LOST video game. (For the record, the video game is based on LOST, but is not canon. Could be fun, though.)

  • Finally, USA Today had this Q&A with Henry Ian Cusick, the feature player in tonight’s episode.

Observations and speculations

  • So people who travel to and from the island (e.g., Desmond and Minkowski) sometimes become “unstuck” in time. This is very Slaughterhouse Five, a book that I don’t think has ever been directly referenced in the show. In the book, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, experiences various events in his life—including the horrific firebombing of Dresden during World War II—in random sequence. Vonnegut’s hero was also the survivor of a plane crash, and it’s hinted in the book that this might have been the cause of his mental flashbacks and flashforwards. Billy Pilgrim also comes to the realization that, despite the fact that he’s traveling through time, he can’t change the past, the present or the future (just like the young Professor Faraday tells Desmond at Queens College in Oxford).

  • According to the “cheat sheet” directions that Faraday wrote out for Frank, he’s to go “40 miles north at 305 degrees, then 7 kilometers east. (That’s not too far off of the 325 degree bearing that Ben gave to Michael at Pala Ferry.) If you buy into the theory that Miles was talking to Ben in code, then it’s also could have been the position communicated by the number $3.2 million, which is 3 2 and 5 zeros. Hmm.

  • So now we have definitive proof that time acts funny in the LOST universe. At least, when when things or people travel to and from the island it does. However, there does not seem to be a significant difference between the off-island and on-island calendars. It’s still December of 2004 on the freighter, which seems about right in island time, considering that Oceanic 815 crashed on September 22, 2004. Two months and two days have passed. (I’m sure someone more dedicated than myself will do the exact tally of days since the crash.)

  • Lapidus and Faraday seem much more inclined to help the Lostaways than Miles and Charlotte. The intentions of the rest of the freighter crew are still unknown, but they don’t seem to be friendly. Charlotte must have a reason for not wanting Faraday to tell Jack and Juliet about the time issues, but I’m not sure what it could be.

  • The freighter characters we met this episode: Keamy (muscular, crew-cut guy from Vegas), Omar (shorter swarthy guy from Florida), Minkowski (the ship’s communications officer, who died after being “unstuck” in time and unable to find a constant); and Ray (the ship’s doctor). There’s also a captain that we haven’t met yet.

  • Keamy has a tattoo on his right shoulder that looks almost like the DHARMA symbol for the Flame Station. Could be something else though.

  • Omar reveals that the last port the freighter had was Fiji, and that the island is “in the Pacific.” I wonder if the show will ever reconcile the wreck of Oceanic Flight 815 being at the bottom of a trench in the India Ocean with Jack’s courtroom testimony that the plane went down in the Pacific.

  • Faraday asks if Desmond has recently been exposed to radiation or electromagnetism. Of course, he has. When the Swan Station (the hatch) imploded, he was at the epicenter of the electromagnetic surge. Knocked his clothes clean off of him.

  • Minkowski says that “it’s going to happen to all of us, once we start heading to that island again.” From this we can infer that the freighter people intend to go to the island, but not necessarily that they’ve been there already. Remember that Minkowski and one other freighter crew member (Brandon) became disoriented after taking the ship’s tender and trying to pilot it toward the island. Might this be the same “sickness” that doomed Danielle’s crew? If they kept trying to use their research ship to leave the island, but didn’t know the correct bearing to use, it might have resulted in them going mad and having aneurysms.

  • The ship’s emergency warning system sounds an awfully lot like the alarm from the Swan Station. Poor Desmond’s had to hear that sound a lot.

  • The instructions that Faraday gives to Desmond over the phone are read out of Faraday’s journal. There are also notes that say things like “Real Space Imaginary Time” and “Space Like” and “Space-Time matter” and “Object @ Light Speed.”

  • One of my favorite lines from tonight’s show: “Don’t you think my esteemed colleagues could have come up with something just a little more believable, huh? … Time paradox — so uninspired.” Ha.

  • One of my other favorite lines. “You don’t need one. This is for prolonged exposure. I do this 20 times a day.” “So what do you put on your head?” Ha. (I wonder if that’s how Faraday developed his memory problems.)

  • I like that Faraday’s device goes all the way to 11. Nice Spinal Tap reference.

  • Faraday claims that he only sent Eloise’s consciousness, her mind, to the future, yet Desmond, for all intents and purposes, seems to be able to physically interact with people in his past. Whether that’s only occurring in his consciousness is unclear, in much the same way as it was in “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” episode 3.8, last season.

  • Penny is Desmond’s “constant,” something that Desmond really cares about. At the end of the episode, we find out that Faraday writes a note in his journal that if anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume is his constant. How does Faraday come to really care about Desmond?

  • Who opened the door for Sayid, Desmond and Minkowski? Who trashed the radio room and sabotaged the ships communications? Could it be Ben’s man on the boat? If Miles was speaking to Ben in code (and I’m still not convinced), does that mean that maybe he has more than one spy?

  • Charles Widmore (Penney’s father) is at an auction where the sole remaining artifact of the Black Rock is being sold. Here’s what we learn of the Black Rock: it set sail from Portsmith, England on March 22, 1845 on a voyage to Siam (so how did it get to an island in the Pacific Ocean?); the first mate’s journal was discovered on the island of Madagascar (an island of the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean); Tovar Hanso is the seller of the journal (some relation to Alvar Hanso, founder of the Hanso Institute and the DHARMA Initiative, no doubt). We’ve got a solid connection here between Widmore and Hanso, though I always suspected something more direct.

  • Incidentally, the next item to be auctioned was a personal item of Charles Dickens (one of many Dickens references in LOST).

  • December 24, 2004 is a pretty cool date, as numbers go: 12, 24, and another 24 with the two digits separated by two zeros.

  • Penny tells Desmond she’s been looking for him for the last three years and that she knows about the island. Apparently, you can learn about it through “research,” though finding it is still very hard.

I liked this episode a lot. Even though I’m not too crazy about stories involving time travel, I always enjoy Desmond’s episodes. And it seems that the writers managed to tell the story without creating any time paradoxes (well, unless you count the future Faraday’s research depending on sending Desmond to Oxford in 1996 with the proper calibrations for his device, which then becomes the basis for his research from that point on—I suppose that could be a bit of a paradox). No Hurley, no Locke, no indication that Miles isn’t still biting down on that grenade, but I still loved the episode.

Any thoughts, theories or easter eggs that I missed? Add your couple of pennies in the comments below.

53 Comments

  1. I loved the episode. It might rank for me as one of the best they’ve done. I was on the edge of my seat for pretty much the whole episode. Certainly the best this year. Desmond is a great character. More please. Faraday is great too.

    I see one other issue with the time travel and that is this - Having experienced Desmond searching him out at Oxford, having such an impact on his work, writing in his journal that Desmond should be his constant…if Desmond had that kind of impact on his life, wouldn’t Faraday have recognized him right away in present day on the island? Wouldn’t he have seen this problem coming? Did he know and just let it happen because it had to happen? I confuse myself when I think about time travel too much.

    Comment by John K. — February 29, 2008 @ 1:28 am

  2. Surely you mean the last port was “Fiji”, right?

    Comment by Mark D. — February 29, 2008 @ 1:32 am

  3. I was just very satisfied to see the OED (oxford english dictionary) being a meaningful detail back in the first scene where we were introduced to Faraday- he’s academic, went to oxford, who knows, likes that kind of dictionary.

    I also like how the blackboard conversation went pretty quickly- didn’t rehash basic timetravel pseudo-science in movies- Faraday tells Desmond he is helping/saving/communicating with someone in the future.

    Totally neat episode. I did really like the diary being auctioned off, as a tie in motif or detail.

    Questions I had leaving it were similar, and also, what about the short-term memory loss? Faraday is going to start blipping around in time? Has he been doing that since his introduction? Also- maybe Claire can’t leave the island? Maybe anybody who has been cured, can’t leave? Why were folks on the ship so angry that they had brought island people back- and who is instructing people to not answer Penny’s calls?

    Why did Whitmore senior *ever* give Desmond her address? I’m not sure I understand why he also left the water running.

    Comment by anna — February 29, 2008 @ 2:27 am

  4. From what I remember, Hanso, Widmore and Sun’s Dad are all in business together.

    I think it would only be right to see some Penny flashback’s some time, no?

    Comment by Jeff G — February 29, 2008 @ 3:22 am

  5. I have to say, I was a little disappointed that the date is still 2004. I was really convinced that there was going to be a significant discrepancy.

    Comment by Jeff G — February 29, 2008 @ 3:55 am

  6. A couple of other things:

    Maybe those injections were supposed to help prevent time slipping for those who lived in the hatch.

    I also find it interesting how in each case of Desmond time traveling he feels as in he is in the past, but was little to no recollection of the future of that past. In flashes before you eyes, he could slightly remember the island. In the visions of Charlie, he only has bits and pieces. On this episode, he remember nothing until he finally got in contact with Penny. Just something that I thought might unify the post-hatch experiences of Desmond.

    Comment by Jeff G — February 29, 2008 @ 4:46 am

  7. Greg, is it not common for people to refer to the area around Indonesia as “Pacific?” Siam is Thailand, right? What should they have said instead?

    Faraday had a “caretaker” when we were introduced to him, right? And didn’t he find himself crying when he saw the wreckage, but not knowing why? (Or am I confusing him with another character?) If so, this suggests he had some significant brain injury, perhaps as a result of all that radiation.

    I’m also curious about who’s instructing people not to take Penny’s calls, and why she told Charlie “it’s not her boat” even though she’s been trying to call it.

    it also looks like there have been a couple of historically famous Minkowskis, a psychiatrist and a mathematician.

    Comment by amysue — February 29, 2008 @ 7:05 am

  8. I did like the episode quite a bit, but I was a little disappointed that the conflict was resolved so quickly. The incredibly unusual conflict being introduced and then resolved by the end of the 40-something minute episode made it feel a bit pat - kind of the same problem I would have when watching The X-Files. For a show that prides itself on being one big story, to introduce and then resolve this really interesting problem so quickly felt a bit “off.”

    Comment by Brian V — February 29, 2008 @ 7:50 am

  9. I loved this episode. Desmond is my favorite character.

    Comment by Summer — February 29, 2008 @ 8:04 am

  10. Desmond-centric episodes are highly entertaining.

    Comment by Dan — February 29, 2008 @ 8:29 am

  11. Mark D (#2): thanks for the catch. Fixed.

    Anna (#3) “Why did Whitmore senior *ever* give Desmond her address? I’m not sure I understand why he also left the water running”: The first might be because he was convinced that Penelope would be displeased to see Desmond. The last sort of fits with his character in that he’s treating Desmond as a bathroom attendant. Also, it serves the story well by making a nice transition effect for the cuts between scenes.

    Jeff G (#4): I’m not sure we’ve seen anything in the actual show that confirms that Widmore, Pak and Hanso all have a business relationship. This would make a lot of sense, and there was evidence of that in the Bad Twin novel, but I’m not sure that the Bad Twin is canon.

    Amysue (#7): The wreckage of Flight 815 was supposedly found at the bottom of the Sunda Trench, which is in the Indian Ocean. I believe that the entire area of Southeast Asia was considered Siam, with the Indian Ocean to the west and the Pacific to the east. A ship sailing on a voyage to Siam from England would have come by way of the Indian Ocean. (According to the Find 815 RPG–not canon–Flight 815 was found by a vessel searching for the remains of the Black Rock.)

    Brian V (#8): I believe this is the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone complaining that LOST actually resolved some of the issues it raised. Usually, the complaints are of the opposite flavor.

    Comment by BTD Greg — February 29, 2008 @ 8:29 am

  12. by the way, Penny may have been attempting to contact that boat, but that didn’t mean it was her boat.

    Comment by Dan — February 29, 2008 @ 8:32 am

  13. I just assumed that Penny’s been blanketing that area with a wide signal, hoping someone will pick up– maybe after she and her team detected the island after the hatch explosion she knew roughly where to direct it?? Anyway, I figured that’s how Charlie was able to get in touch with her and also why the ship has been receiving her calls.

    I was curious however about how surprised Penny seemed to be to receive Desmond’s call. If she was expecting him to call on Dec. 24 you’d think she would have been sitting by the phone, having reserved that number for him. It’s like she didn’t expect it at all, which means she didn’t remember? But she must have somewhat, since she still had the same number (or just coincidentally has not moved in ~10 years).

    Comment by Bill Anderson — February 29, 2008 @ 8:34 am

  14. I think the fact that Penny’s been looking for Desmond for three years would cast some doubt as to whether he’d really call her or not. I mean, you’d be expecting him to call at this point?

    Comment by Tim J. — February 29, 2008 @ 8:36 am

  15. Good point Tim J, although I’m thinking… if I had spent the last three years consumed with searching for the love of my life and I knew that they were somehow involved with some weird island and I’d just talked to one of their friends (Charlie) a few days earlier, I might be expecting that Dec. 24th call, even if it seems unlikely. I’d be answering every ring that day immediately expecting it to be Desmond. Maybe Penny’s just a very unexcitable lady.

    Comment by Bill Anderson — February 29, 2008 @ 8:41 am

  16. I’m not sure I would remember the date Desmond told me. At the time she just wanted to get rid of him and he was acting pretty crazy. The call was 8 years out from that night and she has only been looking for him for 3. That gives her 5 years or so to have not cared so much. I doubt she remembered the date.

    Brian #8:

    If they brought something this crazy into the show and didn’t resolve it, I think they would lose some viewers. They have so many questions already that if they introduced something like last night and left it open ended it would have made some people incredibly frustrated. I know I was relieved that they tied it up to some degree. It made me feel like the writers are willing to answer some questions, which is a good thing. We don’t always need to wait weeks and weeks to have answers. Heck, we’ve waited years for some. I think by doing it as they did, they got themselves a stellar episode instead of making it part of several ho-hum episode. And in light of the fact that the strike has shortened the season, I’m relly glad they did it this way.

    Comment by John K. — February 29, 2008 @ 10:10 am

  17. I thought this was a dang good episode. Pulled together lots of good things- Penny, time travel, the Black Rock, Hanso, island problems… Riveting stuff.

    Comment by Ben — February 29, 2008 @ 10:47 am

  18. I just wish they’d googled so they could have written some believable equations and graphs on the blackboard…

    Comment by Clark — February 29, 2008 @ 10:49 am

  19. Where was the Black Rock mentioned? Was that the journal being bid on?

    Comment by Clark — February 29, 2008 @ 10:50 am

  20. The journal being bid on was from the Black Rock.

    Comment by Dan — February 29, 2008 @ 10:58 am

  21. Clark, the journal being bid on was the last artifact from The Black Rock, the journal of the ship’s first mate, reportedly stolen by pirates and found on the island of Madagascar.

    Comment by BTD Greg — February 29, 2008 @ 11:03 am

  22. In last weeks show, they mentioned that Jack Shepard was a character in the movie, Frequency. If you saw that movie, you know that the man (jim Caviesal, with is fine self, sorry, I digress) from the movie talks to his dad from the past through some kind of CB radio system.
    An accidental cross-time radio link connects father and son across 30 years. The son tries to save his father’s life, but then must fix the consequences. This leads to the belief that Ben is the one controlling or responsible for releasing all of this time travel because he is possibly trying to save is mother’s life and therefore fix the tragedy of his own life.

    That is why Miles tells Ben, “I know who you are”.

    Comment by Niki — February 29, 2008 @ 11:18 am

  23. Was it just me, or did the location at Oxford where Desmond met Faraday in 1996 look a lot like the church grounds where Charlie and Liam were at in 1st season’s “The Moth” after Charlie went to confession, and this photo of Brother Campbell and Ms. Hawking that was on Brother Campbell’s desk:

    Comment by Jim — February 29, 2008 @ 12:04 pm

  24. http://images.lostpedia.com/images/7/7f/Camhawk.jpg

    Comment by Jim — February 29, 2008 @ 12:04 pm

  25. Yeah, it’s almost like it’s all filmed in a few locations in Hawaii. I always chuckles when they go past the same brook and climb the same hill. At least they often try and change camera angles.

    All in all though they do a remarkably good job on finding locations for non-Hawaii ‘places.’ Some of that is CGI of course. But it really is impressive overall.

    Comment by Clark — February 29, 2008 @ 12:19 pm

  26. #18- Well, if they were going to be realistic at all then Dan wouldn’t have even touched a blackboard and would have been punching numbers into input files for some dos-based program he was running.

    Comment by Pippin — February 29, 2008 @ 12:45 pm

  27. This was a really great episode. Off the cuff, I’d say it was one of the best episodes of any television show I’ve ever seen.

    Speaking of the previous episode, I’m very curious about what grenade-for-breakfast dude is going to have to say about his interest in Ben, assuming he can keep the grenade in his mouth until Locke returns.

    Comment by danithew — February 29, 2008 @ 12:53 pm

  28. LOL, Pippin every lab I’ve ever been in has tons of stuff written on blackboards (or whiteboards). And I used to work at Los Alamos in the period in question. Although I suspect Solaris would get more use than Dos at the time. Workstations were still a dominate force at the time (and Mathematic and Maple were just coming into their own).

    Comment by Clark — February 29, 2008 @ 12:57 pm

  29. So let’s see what we’ve got coming…

    Episodes six, seven and eight, with eight being some cliffhanger. Then we get a break until April (thanks to the strike) and five more episodes.

    I bet Michael and Walt will show up at the end of the eighth episode…

    Comment by Dan — February 29, 2008 @ 1:30 pm

  30. The connections between Hanso company and Paik Industries in the Lost Experience in addition to those in the Bad Twin:

    The latter is building a very expensive and modified ship for the former.

    The CEO of the former receives work related reports from employees of the latter.

    The latter presumably are involved the Korean government turning a blind eye to the off shore actions of the former.

    Connections betwee Widmore and Hanso foundation according to the Lost Experience in addition to those in the Bad Twin:

    The CEO of the latter receives work related reports from the employees of the former.

    Anybody who sent threats to the latter or the former were both prosecuted, presumably by the same prosecution.

    Comment by Jeff G — February 29, 2008 @ 2:15 pm

  31. [...] Kulturblog [...]

    Pingback by LOST: “The Constant” (Quick Points) « For the Record — February 29, 2008 @ 5:32 pm

  32. JACOB, THE MAN IN THE CABIN, IS THE FIRST MATE FROM THE BLACK ROCK

    Comment by DOUG — February 29, 2008 @ 8:26 pm

  33. The name Minkowski is a reference to the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, a teacher of Einstein’s who advocated for the idea that the theory of relativity should be formulated in a four-dimensional space: the standard three dimensions of Euclidean space, plus the fourth dimension of time. The resulting space-time is often referred to as Minkowski spacetime.

    Comment by Bryce I — February 29, 2008 @ 11:23 pm

  34. Pedant alert: Queen’s College does not have a physics department. Oxford University does, however. Obviously the writers have no idea how Oxford works.

    Comment by The Brit — March 1, 2008 @ 2:16 am

  35. Bryce I., I’m just glad to see your name pop up. I’ve missed seeing you around in the ‘Nacle.

    Comment by danithew — March 1, 2008 @ 2:48 am

  36. Another pedantic note - I’m pretty sure the auctioneer said the Black Rock sailed from Portsmouth (not Portsmith). It’s a huge naval town on the English south coast, where I was born!

    And yes - horrible effort at Oxford University. Couldn’t have looked less like it.

    I’m surprised no one else has suggested it as a possibility, but the Brit and I have been saying for the last few weeks, that Michael is Ben’s spy on the boat. So it could’ve been him that opened the door to the sick bay.

    I too love Desmond episodes. He’s a great character.

    Comment by Rebecca — March 1, 2008 @ 7:52 am

  37. [...] weekly LOST [...]

    Pingback by Johnsenclan » Blog Archive » Links 3/1/08 — March 1, 2008 @ 9:03 am

  38. Great episode! Loved it can’t wait for more…

    Is the 3.2 million Milo wanted from Ben the amount that Ben wouldn’t really miss if he was actually a ba-zillionaire? (Sorry, I know that was last weeks episode)

    Comment by Jared — March 1, 2008 @ 12:34 pm

  39. Two problems I noticed with the episode.

    First, how did Eloise ever learn the maze? I suppose Dan could have taught her while Des was gone for 75 min. but how could he teacher her the maze if she already knew it? That seems like a time-travel paradox of sorts.

    Second, how did Desmond call Penny from the army camp if he didn’t know her phone number?

    Comment by Jeff G — March 1, 2008 @ 3:35 pm

  40. Desmond called her from the Army base right before she moved and changed her number if I recall correctly.

    Comment by John K. — March 1, 2008 @ 8:34 pm

  41. On the phone, she told him that she had already moved from the flat, so he shouldn’t bother trying to go see her. Now that you mention it, what phone number was he calling there?

    Comment by Jeff G — March 2, 2008 @ 1:31 am

  42. was it alvar hanso bidding on the book

    Comment by rob — March 2, 2008 @ 4:44 pm

  43. I had the Eloise question as well. My best guess is that when Desmond was ‘out’ he taught the rat the maze.

    The issue of future knowledge is an interesting one. Does the past ‘mind’ remember what it was taught in the future? Or is this something like Kirk’s glasses in Star Trek IV. Personally I don’t mind closed time like causality loops of this sort.

    Still I hope this will be explained. Anyone want to dare going over the Lost Forum to see if there are any good explanations for this? It seems a key issue since it’ll impact directly Desmond and his knowledge.

    It seems to me that the writers came up with some pretty formal rules on time travel and what they would allow or disallow. So I’m sure they’ve thought through this issue.

    Comment by Clark — March 2, 2008 @ 9:29 pm

  44. This was a great episode and reignited my wife’s interest in the show after the first frustrating episodes of this season.

    I actually agree with danithew that this episode was one of the best TV shows I have seen.

    But I was majorly disappointed with Queen’s College? Why did the writers choose Queen’s? The real Queen’s College, Oxford has such a distinctive look that it is simply hard to fake it. Seeing what they portrayed as Queen’s College was just too jarring! (When I heard Faraday tell Desmond to go to Queen’s College I got really excited since my college was right across the street from it and I looked at it every day as a student there.) Obviously they weren’t going to fly to England from Hawaii for just a couple of scenes but if they had it would have been much appreciated by many, I would guess.

    Re # 34 — did the episode actually state that Queen’s College had a Physics Department, or did it just depict Faraday as a Physics professor at Queen’s? (I know you understand the distinction here.) Queen’s College is home to a couple of physics tudors (professors), e.g. Robert Taylor.

    Oh well, the Queen’s College angle kind of sucked in how it was pulled off but the idea of it is cool and forms a kind of association with cool physics-related material at Queen’s College depicted in The Saint (although if I recall correctly that movie zoomed in on undergraduate dorms at Queen’s when purporting to show physics labs).

    Comment by john f. — March 3, 2008 @ 5:27 am

  45. gosh…you Queen snobs sound like doctors watching ER, or lawyers watching Law and Order/Boston Legal, etc…

    Comment by Hayes — March 3, 2008 @ 8:25 am

  46. jf,
    Yeah, I’m pretty sure he said “Queen’s College, Oxford, Physics department…”

    Hayes,
    What can I say? I cycle past Queen’s every day.

    BIG QUESTION:
    Given Des’s clean-shavenness in the past, is the actor sporting a fake beard, wig in the future? How do they film this? (BTW, Rebecca and I like to call Desmond “Jesus”.)

    Comment by The Brit — March 3, 2008 @ 12:26 pm

  47. “Given Des’s clean-shavenness in the past, is the actor sporting a fake beard, wig in the future? How do they film this? (BTW, Rebecca and I like to call Desmond “Jesus”.)”

    Yeah, I was wondering how they pull that off as well.

    Comment by BTD Greg — March 3, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

  48. if it is a fake beard, it is a pretty good one…but, most of the time, isn’t Des just like Jack? A lot of stubble? The long hair, based on the stuff last night, HAS to be a wig, right?

    Comment by Hayes — March 3, 2008 @ 12:48 pm

  49. This is what I dug up on the web. Did not actually think of it myself. Here you go! http://lost-and-gone-forever.blogspot.com/2008/02/lost-constant.html

    This week’s Desmond-centric outing is curiously titled “the constant”, which should immediately give you nightmares of high school math and physics. For those who were sleeping through those classes in their youth, here’s a brief refresher (don’t worry, I didn’t actually remember most of this stuff either – that’s why God created Wikipedia, so that we can simply copy and paste large quantities of information into our Blogs to come across as being far smarter than we actually are):

    Constants are real numbers or numerical values which are significantly interesting in some way. The term “constant” is used both for mathematical constants and for physical constants, but with quite different meanings. A mathematical constant is a quantity, usually a real number or a complex number, that arises naturally in mathematics and does not change. Unlike some physical constants, mathematical constants are defined independently of any physical measurement. A physical constant is a physical quantity that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and constant in time. It can be contrasted with a mathematical constant, which is a fixed numerical value but does not directly involve any physical measurement.

    Huh?

    Basically, things like Pi, the speed of light, the Golden Ratio, gravity, etc. – things that don’t change no matter how you use them in some type of equation, and probably things you had to memorize back in school.

    Initially, I thought this might be some reference to the “funky” properties of the Island (be it time or space). I became especially intrigued when I stumbled across this article from John D. Barrow in 2002:

    “[An] important lesson we learn from the way that pure numbers like α define the world is what it really means for worlds to be different. The pure number we call the fine structure constant and denote by α is a combination of the electron charge, e, the speed of light, c, and Planck’s constant, h. At first we might be tempted to think that a world in which the speed of light was slower would be a different world. But this would be a mistake. If c, h, and e were all changed so that the values they have in metric (or any other) units were different when we looked them up in our tables of physical constants, but the value of α remained the same, this new world would be observationally indistinguishable from our world. The only thing that counts in the definition of worlds are the values of the dimensionless constants of Nature. If all masses were doubled in value you cannot tell because all the pure numbers defined by the ratios of any pair of masses are unchanged.”

    I won’t pretend to understand all that, but the portions underlined above sure sound an awful lot like the nerd-science way of explaining that there could be funky time and space on the Island. “The Constant” could simply refer to some factor in the equation that explains all this (representing the Bubble). Heck, maybe it’s the equation that Daniel Faraday is writing on the chalkboard in the preview for the episode:

    So is it as simple as that? Unfortunately not. When I first saw this episode title, and found that it was a Desmond-centric outing, I was immediately reminded of his Season Three trip-tastic episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes”, where he maybe went back in time, perhaps had a hallucinogenic out of body experience, or might have accidentally altered the future (let the record show that in my analysis of that episode, I came down on the side of “it was all a dream”).

    But for the sake of argument, if you think about it, Desmond was the only one who had knowledge about the “past”, the “present”, and the “future” during that episode. He was reliving life events where he already had prior knowledge of what would happen, attempted to change fate, and ended up back on the Island where he started. With all the variables of space and time around him in the episode, he was the one constant – the one who was seemingly unaffected by the jump in time and space, retaining the same life experiences that he had prior to turning the Swan Hatch Failsafe Key, even though he was interacting with events that happened before he even knew what a Swan Hatch was.

    Desmond is “The Constant”.

    Whatever funky time or space is happening on the Island, Desmond somehow became immune to it through the Hatch Implosion – perhaps his proximity to the magnetic blast put his body on the same “wavelength” as the funky properties of the Island, which somehow gave him the ability to see the future and relive the past.

    If this is the case, when Desmond, Sayid, and Frank break the Bubble in their journey to the Freighter, there may be some unintended side effects for Sayid and Frank, but not Desmond. Maybe they’ll instantly age two years, maybe they’ll forget the past, maybe they’ll all warp to somewhere courtesy of a “funky time” wormhole, leaving Desmond alone in the ocean.

    Of course, there’s also the much, much, much simpler explanation for the episode title. If you look up the dictionary definition of the word “constant”, you receive the following three possibilities:

    1. Marked by firm steadfast resolution or
    2. Invariable, uniform
    3. Continually occurring or recurring

    Looking at the first and second definitions, one could get all sappy and say that “the Constant” in this episode is something like Desmond’s love for Penny and desire to return to her no matter what the cost. A little late for Valentine’s Day, but still a sweet thought (and much simpler than all this mathematical mumbo-jumbo).

    The third option on the other hand, opens up an even more intriguing possibility – that Desmond is stuck in some sort of time loop, continually living the events that led him to the Island, his attempts to escape the Island, and the fate he encounters each time… death. Listen closely to the end of the episode preview, featuring Desmond saying “Tell me, am I going to die?” as he throws Faraday into a blackboard:

    This would tie in nicely to the themes of fate (and attempting to change it) that Desmond found during “Flashes Before Your Eyes”.

    Heck, maybe it’s a combination of all of the above – that’s the great thing about Lost and their episode titles after all, creating complex, multi-layered titles that probably less than 5% of the viewing audience ever even knows, let alone analyzes. We are the few, the proud, the obsessive.

    Comment by Niki — March 3, 2008 @ 2:24 pm

  50. This was posted on another site. I am reposting it here because I think this person has it.

    From Mont
    Here’s what is going to happen next on LOST.

    We have already seen exposition on one major element of the island, namely, time irregularities. Most people however interpret this as time travel/displacement. The show is telling us otherwise. This is CONSCIOUSNESS DISPLACEMENT. Now, with that card on the table, so to speak, I think the LOST writers must tackle the next big question regarding enigmatic developments on the island - the next BIG THEME. Of course the next theme will tie into this latest theme of Consciousness Displacement. The next THEME to undergo exposition on LOST is the long-incubated theme of regeneration/immortality.

    “Nothing buried on this island stays buried”

    Supposition
    If you die on the island, depending on the state of your consciousness when you died, you may not stay dead.
    I think the dead are going to start walking on LOST (like they haven’t already been) but in a BIG way.

    We will start to see it with Naomi, who so obviously is not going to stay dead. She is the first corpse (who dies on the island to travel through the electromagnetic anomoly surrounding the island (if only momentarily as the chopper went off course briefly). Of all the chopper occupants, only Desmond’s consciousness was effected by the anomoly. This is because he had previously been exposed to “high levels of radioactivity or electromagnetism.” when the hatch blew. Sayid’s consciousness wasn’t effected because he wasn’t PRE-DOSED by the hatch-blow electromagnetic incident (he was on a sailboat on the other side of the island). Everyone else in the chopper wasn’t electromagnetically predosed because they weren’t around when the hatch blew either.
    The only other people who were predosed when they passed through the anomoly were of course Desmond… the doomed radio operator who was predosed electromagnetically by virtue of his job, the densely electromagnetic nest of a radio communications room (and the headphones he wore constantly)… And also Naomi, who engaged in the ultimate electromagnetic predosing prior to passage through the anomoly. She died on the island. Death is an electromagnetic event. Death (or the point of death) is determined by the lack of the two electromagnetic signatures, a heart beat (electrical) and brainwaves (also electrical) ({point of) death can be interpreted as an electromagnetic event. Rest assured that Naomi was predosed.
    Also, conception, by the same token, is an electromagnetic event. I propose that any concepetion on the island, the being hence concieved will be predosing all through it’s gestation period. “Predosing” can be understood as “building up a charge,” like when you rub a balloon so it will stick to a wall, or like dead batteries in a battery charger.
    Anything predosed with island energy, especially those who die and those who are conceived will undergo a radically different process than what is understood as a “normal death” or a “normal maturation.”
    This is why pregnant women don’t come full term on the island without dying. The amplified electromagnetic event in their womb fatally stresses their system.
    This is why Walt is so special. Maybe the only island occupant (currently) going through puberty. Which is probably a more potent time with regard to charging up with island energy than conception, gestation or death. Unlike conception, gestation or Death, puberty is a high-charge time concurrent with an active consciousness.
    Remember Patchy (can’t rememeber his name) the Russian Other who kept dying (and who killed Charlie). I guarentee you that he has a Patch because he’s a Buccaneer from the Black Rock. He’s old, old, and he’ll be back. Remember Miss Klugh, the Other sister that Patchy so oddly killed? She’s a Black Rocker too and she’ll be back. Patchy “so oddly killed her” because he knew that he wasn’t really. It was more like “See ya later then Hon.”

    Right now, these, and other dead people, (probably only Black Rockers) ae going to spring up and reassert themselves. Just you watch. Naomi, who accidentally underwent the correct proceedure for reanimation, will surprise everyone.
    Note: It may not be reanimation (people rising from graves) that occurs, but possibly a form of doubling/doppleganger (rabbit number fifteen) manifestation that rehouses a floating consciousness. This will be the next big theme dealt with: What’s up with rabbit 15.

    What else…. oh yeah, clearly this series will end when Desmond and his gal are reunited on the island. It will be found that Desmond cannot leave the island for long without dying. So Penny will romantically give up her life in the world and come to live with Desmond on the island.

    The only people that do leave the island are the only ones who can: All those who were well away from the hatch when it imploded. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid, Jin and Sun (Michael and walt). Sun will die earlier than her third trimester because she concieved so close to the hatch-blow. Sun is doomed. Jin won’t die. He is also working for Ben killing Dharma people post-island and is a player in moves against his father-in-law. Sawyer is going to sacrifice his life to save Kate from something. That won’t be until the last season. It is going to get to the point that we all know that Sawyer died (from flash forwards) and they are going to build on the suspense of us all knowing it’s coming but not how.

    Let’s not forget about that hatch implosion. There were four people IN the hatch when it seemingly disappeared, Desmond, Locke, Eco and Charlie. The whole “what happened to those guys at the point of implosion’ thingy is very murky. We know they all proceeded to rapid evolution. In essence they all became Angels to/for the island with Eco either being rejected, or offered as a blood sacrifice to the demon smoke monster.
    The demon smoke monster may be the collective psychic energy of everyone who has died on the island. The smoke monster is therefore mostly the ghost of Dharma, or the collective ghosts of Dharma manifesting (everyone Ben killed who lays in the bone pit.. Black Rockers know how to free themselves from the smoke community of souls once they have died.That’s what the whispers are too. The smoke monster is repelled by the electro-fence. Patchy is killed (?) by it. They are trying to tell you they are the same. Ben knows exactly what the smoke monster is. He probably also knows where it is at all times. The smoke monster probably moves aboout the island as predictably as weather. It follows dowsing lines - electromagnetics. It is as helpless as a cloud with regard to where it can be at any given time. That is why Ben can walk about without fear of sudden attack.

    Look for Locke to have a toe cut off. he will have four toes and we will be left to chew on that for a while.

    Jacob is going to turn out to be Daniel Farraday. The fact that he didn’t wear head protection during his experiments with Eloise gave him a massive predose. Danial farraday is doomed. The granules surrounding Daniel/Jacob’s cabin repel the smoke monster. The smoke monster’s nature will be fully revealed in the episode that show’s Daniel’s final conversion to Jacob (and then time/displaced), The smoke monster will be the instrument of this conversion. When Jacob says “help me” he means help me from the smoke monster. Jacob himself is a smoke monster consisting of one soul: Daniel Farraday. Jacob’s cabin is a Farraday Cage of sorts. Remember, “no electric devices in the cabin or near Jacob.”

    Mark my words.

    Also…

    Aaron is Jack’s constant (maybe). If he visits Aaron, plays with Aaron, or develops any memories regarding Aaron, then Jack will never be able to return to the island. Or something. Whatever it is, Jack’s apprehension about seeing Aaron (in flash forwards) has got something to do with CONSTANTS and time/consciousness displacement.
    Right now on LOST we are waiting for Daniel to remember why he is there and what he is supposed to do once getting there. They will eventually head to the hatches.
    The reason the hatches are underground and secure is protection from the smoke monster. The hatches are all about Dharma study of the smoke monster. The sonic fence is the same tech as the hatches. Dharma hardware is all about study IN SECURITY of the smoke monster. The whole effort is to be interactive with the smoke monster. The info canisters that emerge in the middle of a fields by way of some pneumatic system of tubes is not a mind game for hatch residents but a com node to the smoke monster. The canisters are info/input for the smoke monster’s consumption all toward a scheme to try to figure out what it is. In killing Dharma, Ben was working for the smoke monster which is a psychic manifestation that the Black Rockers can inhabit and manipulate.
    The hatches are meant to be occupied by people who are doppelgangers of themselves. One hatch is filled with a crew. Another hatch contains the SAME crew from a different timeline - and so on. The hatchers are supposed to be studying themselves and possibly trying to psychically effect their actions through a time/consciousness barrier. Dharma/Hanso understands that the smoke monster is a derivative of this process and engages in it to this end. It is also possible that the smoke monster is the result of time/consciousness displacement experiments that went all wrong in an “incident.”
    The “incident” was Locke smashing the computer terminal and making inevitable, the time meltdown. The smoke monster is Locke. The smoke monster is the anomoly that was created when Locke imploded with the hatch. It/he was then dispersed throughout time. Locke was looking at himself as he gazed at the smoke monster. That is why it was beautiful to a narcisist like Locke. When the hatch imploded, it, in a backwards way, created the four-toed statue, the Black Rockers, the smoke monster, all of the number tomfoolery and even Dharma/Hanso itself. Like the rat that ran the maze because it had learned it in a past which it had skipped, so to did the entire LOST universe come into existance with a past that it had skipped (throughout time) when the hatch blew.

    Like an essence of Locke was attached to Locke’s father as his stolen kidney… so too does Locke attach the essence of others to his new body. If Locke is the smoke monster, then the souls of those who die on the island likewise attach themselves (or are attached) to the Locke essence (the smoke monster). When Locke died/transformed in the hatch-explosion, he became an “extra-temporal soul magnet” otherwise known as the smoke monster.
    The hatch implosion created a temporal rift (in the Universe) that created a new past instantly to inhabit a now newly constructed (because of the rift) present. All of the flashbacks that we have been seeing through the years are merely incidents in an imposed TIME WAR. One faction, Dharma, is trying to correct the rift using Time Agents dispersed throughout the NEW PAST. These are people like Libby who are Time Agent Warriors whose mission is to travel into the NEW PAST (the flashbacks) to set up the conditions on the island (in the NEW PRESENT, our LOST viewing present) necessary to correct the time rift… that is - conduct the war.
    It is all quite simple in a cock-eyed way.
    Ben is leading the other faction in the TIME WAR. These are the people who stand to lose if the Time Rift is corrected. That means anyone who is on the island will cease to exist if Dharma has it’s way. That is why, after a few revelations, it is easy to understand why Sayid appears to be killing for Ben. He isn’t. He and Ben both have a vested interest in eliminating Dharma from their present Timeline. All actions in the upcoming flash forwards will be in service of the above described TIMEWAR which is centered around the hatch-imploded Locke anomoly.
    Why did Widmore give Desmond Penny’s address? For the same reason that he left the water running. For the same reason that he sent his agent Libby in to provide Desmond with a means of getting to the island. Widmore is a TIMEWAR general, if not Commander in Chief. he uses mind control subjects as his front-line warrioirs.
    Mind control subjects are often recruited from mental institutions and prisons.
    Widmore is a Timelord
    Ben is a Timelord
    Locke is a Time God. Locke is the CONSTANT for the entire anomoly. He was made so by being at the center of the implosion. Charlie and Eco were on the edge of it, Desmond had the key (and turned it with LOVE) so he was only going to be bitch slapped by time. It’s Locke that shouldered the implosion unprotected and he was scattered throughout the univerese and all time. Everything instantly became BECAUSE of him, even if he, and we, don’t know it yet. They will find the head of the four-toed statue. It will be Locke’s stone head.

    Jacob is Daniel as a Time Casualty

    Miles is going to find himself in one of the other hatches.

    Charlotte is a Timelord who knew Ben would shoot her so she wore a bulletproof vest.

    Widmore’s agent Libby got Widmore’s other (unwitting) agent Desmond to the island. Widmore’s agent Libby also was a connective presence to Hurley both before and after the crash. It is quite possible that Hurley is Libby’s constant… or rather, Hurley is the constant that Libby engineered for herself. She needed to be on the island as a Time Warrior (as Widmore’s agent) so it was arranged (by Timelord Widmore) for a hapless Hurley to be on the island at the same time as Libby.
    All of the 815ers presences were engineered in advance (by all involved parties) to be on the plane which would deliver to the island all the components of the oddly paradoxical TimeWar… a TimeWar that came into being instantly and for all time when Locke got caught in the center of the time cyclone. a TimeWar that is perpetuated by the very existance of the smoke monster - which is a time-displaced Locke acting as fly paper to any consciousness-displaced soul on the island.

    In the end there will be a truce because Penny will cross through the anomoly and get to the island to reunite with Des. Widmore will understand that to close the rift will mean that his daughter will now also cease to exist. He will stop his part of the Timewar against Ben.

    A timelord is someone who has mastered the art of being unstuck in Time. This means that a Timelord can live their life non-linearly (like Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse Five) but that they can also FEEDBACK and inform their past self with their future self and constantly modify the game. Being a Timelord means you already know what is going to happen to you. But you can change it, but you will also already know what will happen when you do that.
    Being a TimeGOD means that you are the constant to the entire anomoly that gives the Timelords their ability.

    You see, simple. LOST is a story of TimeLords conducting a Timewar with hapless victims being used as TimeFodder.
    Cross your eyes and think of Time and Consciousness as roughly the same thing (Consciousness is the thing that experiences and processes time) and there you have it.

    Mont

    Comment by Berken — March 5, 2008 @ 10:13 pm

  51. “If you die on the island, depending on the state of your consciousness when you died, you may not stay dead.
    I think the dead are going to start walking on LOST (like they haven’t already been) but in a BIG way.”

    Heh. The Zombie Season!

    For the record, the only way this happens is if Cuse and Lindelof have blatantly and repeatedly outright lied to us. They have repeatedly stated, on more than one occassion, that “the dead on LOST stay dead.” That doesn’t mean that there aren’t such things as ghosts (e.g., Charlie in the season premier, and possibly Christian Shepard) or hallucinations of things dead brought about by the Smoke Monster (e.g., Eko’s brother). But I do think it precludes the emergence of the undead.

    Comment by BTD Greg — March 5, 2008 @ 10:38 pm

  52. that whole explanation seemed too clever by half…

    I think the producers/writers have some big themes in mind when the write this stuff, but I also think a lot of it is just easter eggs for the fans and not essential to the storyline or plot development. It’s like the books Sawyer reads. Is it essential to know what those books are to understand the big themes of Lost? Absolutely not. But, for those who care, it is an added layer of the show.

    My wife and I both love Lost…but, after the episodes, she is content turning the TV off and going to bed. I, however, like to theorize and guess and predict…

    Comment by Hayes — March 6, 2008 @ 8:40 am

  53. This episode of the HotConflict radio show discusses the concepts that have developed over the seasons of LOST.

    One of the main characters named Desmond has the ability to time travel. Whenever you have supernatural events or science fiction, time travel is always an interesting phenomenon to watch. The most recent episode titled The Constant explained the ability Desmond has.

    http://www.hotconflict.com/blog/2008/03/lost—religion.html

    Comment by HotConflict — March 12, 2008 @ 5:31 pm