Lost Season 6 Premiere: "LA X"

[chrisspringob]

First of all - Behold the awesome! LOST is back to melt our brains!

Brain melty 1:

1. LOSTIES don't crash because island is sunk.
2. Island is sunk because LOSTIES blowed up stuff in the past.
3. LOSTIES travelled to the past after crashing on the island.
4 .LOSTIES crashed because stuff wasn't blowed up in the past and island wasn't sunk.

So - how can the island be underwater in the same universe as non-crashing LOSTIES? If anyone says "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" they will be forever cursed and junk and stuff.

Bloody grandfather paradoxes....

Whenever you mess with time travel, you get different, alternate timelines. At least that's how things appear to be in most sci-fi shows/movies (e.g., Star Trek 2009).

But that's not how we were told it worked in Lost. In Lost, the rule had been "whatever happened, happened". There's only one timeline. When someone tries to change history, they just end up fulfilling it. Simple, straightforward rule, that avoids the writers using time travel as a crutch.

Now they seem to be throwing out that rule, and the new rule is "Time travel works however we say it works at the moment, depending on what's most convenient for the story." I definitely feel like it's a cheat.

 

[RoJoHen]

Now they seem to be throwing out that rule, and the new rule is "Time travel works however we say it works at the moment, depending on what's most convenient for the story." I definitely feel like it's a cheat.

Well, to be fair, we don't know that's true yet. For all we know these two timelines will somehow end up fulfilling each other...or something.

 

[chrisspringob]

Now they seem to be throwing out that rule, and the new rule is "Time travel works however we say it works at the moment, depending on what's most convenient for the story." I definitely feel like it's a cheat.

Well, to be fair, we don't know that's true yet. For all we know these two timelines will somehow end up fulfilling each other...or something.

What the heck does "these two timelines will somehow end up fulfilling each other" mean?

 

[RoJoHen]

How the hell should I know? I'm not writing the show.

I'm just saying: this alternate timeline isn't just there. It will serve a purpose for the overall story.

 

[chrisspringob]

How the hell should I know? I'm not writing the show.

I'm just saying: this alternate timeline isn't just there. It will serve a purpose for the overall story.

But that's my point. They're allowing the time travel rules to change midstream to fit whatever story they want to tell. That's a cheat. Not cheating would be setting up a consistent set of rules for their fictional universe, and then telling a story that's constrained by the logic of those rules.

This is why so many people hate time travel stories in televised fiction. Because the writers usually tend to make it work in an inconsistent way, using it as if it's magic. Where it can be used to justify whatever needs to happen to get to the next plot point in the story. For a while, I had thought Lost might be different on this score. But I guess not.

 

[RoJoHen]

Eh, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Considering time travel didn't even show up until, what, Season 4? I don't think it's really fair to judge what they're doing with this alternate timeline until we see where it's going.

As far as I'm concerned, the "rules" have hardly been set in stone so far.

 

[Seven of Five]

I know the rule is whatever happened, happened, but I can also see why exploding a nuke at the Swan site would cause timeline messiness. Poor Des was sent flashing through time after the Hatch blew up, so maybe applying the the force from the bomb onto the 'unique magic island' energy resulted in a much worse explosion.

That sank the island to boot. (still trying to get my head around that one!)

A big technobabbly, MacGuffin answer, but it was Faraday's idea. I suppose he was a leading expert on time travel, and had been on the island for three years by the time he came up with his answer.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Lost tends to have action/adventure episodes and character episodes. This was clearly the former. It remains to be seen if the slightly changed format can handle character episodes (the flash forwards and flashbacks did. Last season had some character moments, but it was quite a bit more linear and plot driven).

That's another reason why I didn't like season 5 so much, it lost its focus on the characters and focused too heavily on the plot. I mean, Locke was one of my favourite characters on television, and yet his death had no impact on me because of the way that it played out. I felt sadder about Boone dying than I did about Locke, and Boone was practically a redshirt. LA X clearly wasn't character-centric, and that's okay because it was the season opener and and event episode, but if the character focus gets shafted again like it did in season 5 then season 6 will be very disappointing for me. If they regain the balance between character and plot that the show had in the second half of season 3 and the entirety of season 4 then I'd be one very satisfied bunny.

I'm glad someone else noticed this about Season 5 (for me, I think the move away from characters began in Season 4 with the flash-forwards). The truth is, Lost has increasingly become a plot-driven series as opposed to the more character-driven series it was in the first couple of seasons. Fortunately it can weave a pretty darn exciting tale. But I do miss the heavy investment in, and exploration of, character.

I think that's why I like the S6 premiere so much. It wasn't character driven, but the alternate timeline is a perfect way to explore character through something a bit more than "what if?"

 

[Agent Richard07]

I agree with RoJoHen, let's see where they're going with this time travel stuff. I'm fine with what's going on so far. I never got the impression that they're breaking any rules and I never liked the "single timeline" business anyway.

As for alll this season 5 talk, I agree that it was quite a departure from what came before. A lot of twists and surprises had less impact because of the full-on scifi mode. Remember how shocking even the smallest teases and revelations were before? The show was still good, but I consider season 4 the high point.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

One line that perplexed me happen in the Temple. When the Oceanic Airlines Stewardess came over and vouched for the four. She said something like, "They were from the first crash." Does this mean their was more then one crash? Is she referring to the other plane crash that everyone thinks Widmore faked?

 

[RoJoHen]

One line that perplexed me happen in the Temple. When the Oceanic Airlines Stewardess came over and vouched for the four. She said something like, "They were from the first crash." Does this mean their was more then one crash? Is she referring to the other plane crash that everyone thinks Widmore faked?

She said they were from the first plane, presumably meaning Oceanic 815. The second plane was the Ajira flight from the end of Season 5.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Forgot about the Ajira plane

 

[Klaus]

I think both timelines are "real" in a quantum Schroedinger's Cat kind of way, until the last episode when the box gets opened... the eventual purpose of the season will be to try to make one or another the universe they all experience, with each having good and bad alternatives for different people. It'll be an extension of the dilemma from last season about setting off the bomb or not, but this time with more-explicit consequences.

And the people like Jack and Desmond and perhaps Juliet who might be able to "see" or "feel" across timelines will be their guides to what's going on, like Guinan in TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise"...

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

so in this alternate timeline, does that mean Charles Widmore, Eloise Hawkins, Faraday for that matter, cease to exist at this point, because there is no island?

 

[Scout101]

Either the island ended up being sunk at an earlier point, kinda hiding it from the timeline, or it sank as part of the explosion in the 70s, meaning Widmore, Hawkins, and the rest were killed in that explosion.

Or transported through time to another point, like what happened to our original group. Maybe all these other people are now also wandering around in the 2007 version of the island? If it dumped Jack, Kate, and co there, maybe the 1970s dharma group is around as well.

Hard saying, since they're just pulling random shit out of their ass, and treating time travel however they want to that week

 

[gh4chiefs]

Forgot about the Ajira plane

I had this . . . discussion . . . in another thread and like you, the way she said the "first plane" really caught my attention when she said it. I've since decided it means nothing, and just another example of odd dialogue choices the writers make for these characters. Cindy was on on the same plane as them, it seems it would ahve been more reasonable to expect her to say something like "They were on the plane with me when we crashed" or something like that. It seems odd to me for her to describe the way she did, but I've decided it's just the way they do things on this show. For some reason the writer must have felt compelled to have her make that distinction.

And speaking of Cindy, one of things that I found myself wondering about it, is why did she get to become one of the Others but "our" Losties were public enemy # 1 basically.

Which leads to, was she an Other before she got on the plane. And will this be addressed? I'm guessing not.

 

[DevilEyes]

There are other more significant differences - Sun and Jin appear not to be married. They are not wearing wedding rings and the airport staff refer to Sun as "Miss Paik".

They shouldn't call her "Mrs Kwon" if they were (are?) married, either, since women in Korea don't take their husband's name.

Most curiously of all, Sayid has an Iranian passport.

Do we know what passport he had in the original timeline? He might have been using any number of passports at the time, considering his history and lifestyle.

 

[Electric Coleslaw]

- Hurley doesn't seem to have his bad luck at all. In fact, as seen when he was waiting for a taxi in Pt 2, he seems fully vested in his fortune and making more of it. That being said, why then was he in Australia at all, since his trip to see Sam Toomey was based solely on his need to uncover the truth of the numbers and his bad luck?

- Arnzt recognised Hurley as a millionare, how is it that he never regognised him as one on the island?

Hurley was in Australia because he was dealing with his chicken stores opening there. And I think he was in a commercial or interview or something where Arnzt must have saw him on TV.

Everytime I see that guy I remember him waving that stick of dynamite around and then BOOM!!!

 

[Hermiod]

There are other more significant differences - Sun and Jin appear not to be married. They are not wearing wedding rings and the airport staff refer to Sun as "Miss Paik".

They shouldn't call her "Mrs Kwon" if they were (are?) married, either, since women in Korea don't take their husband's name.

She's lucky they didn't call her "Miss Sun" given how often us Westerners mangle Korean names.

Still, the lack of wedding rings is further evidence.

Do we know what passport he had in the original timeline? He might have been using any number of passports at the time, considering his history and lifestyle.

Yeah, but an Iranian one ? Not the wisest choice of country.

There are more obvious things. Jack wasn't nervous about flying in the original version, but Rose was. He calmed her down. Here it's the other way around.

Boone got Shannon to come with him, here she stays in Australia.

Kate doesn't try to retrieve the toy airplane from Mars' case.

 

[Klaus]

Everytime I see that guy I remember him waving that stick of dynamite around and then BOOM!!!

Then you'll like this old av I made: