Lost, Season 4 Thread

A fabulous finale. I think the frozen donkey wheel (which I believe is totally separate from the Dharma labs) is a lot more interesting than the coffin. The wheel demonstrates that the island's extraordinary powers were manufactured, not a fluke of nature. So who made the donkey wheel? The Others?

I think the ageless Richard is a key. How did he get to the island? Did he and his crew manufacture the island? Is he a human being?

 

But that's exactly what I mean. The helicopter should have gotten to the ship with no problem, but the connection between the heartbeat monitor at the orchid and the explosion on the ship should not have been instantaneous. Remember the morse code to the ship? What do you mean the doctor's dead? He's right here.

 

The morse code didn't have a delay. The freighter received it at the same time that Daniel sent it from the island.

Remember the payload experiment? Daniel told Regina to release the payload. The payload came later than expected. There was no time delay with their radio communications... there was a time delay with the travel of a physical object. So Keamy's radio-activated bomb wouldn't have been effected.

However... there's no way that signal could have made it out of that Orchid station, which we know was "deep" underground. Radio signals can't really do that, as far as I know.

 

Look at it a different way. The payload arrived later than expected, but that's because it left later than expected. The time on the payload was 31 minutes later than on the island clock. That means it left 31 minutes after Daniel asked to have it sent.

 

The payload arrived late, the doctor washed up on the beach early. Not much has been explained to us at this point...

 

I know. That makes no sense.

 

Well I have a question the heart rate monitor thing how did that work. If it was a dead man switch meaning the bomb would go off if the signal stopped then certainly taking that thing down in the hole at the Orchid station would have sent it off. If on the other hand it had to send a signal to cause the bomb to go off how does a radio signal get through all that earth if not even below the surface of the ocean to reach the freighter.

I'm thinking this tech would be real nice to have in a cell phone as sometimes they don't work and you can see the dam tower!

 

Good questions. Here's one of my own:

Couldn't Locke have ripped the arm band trigger from Keamy while he was on the floor still alive and quickly placed it on his own wrist or arm to prevent the bomb from exploding?

 

No, it just means the time difference is variable, which makes sense. If the island was always ahead of the rest of the world, it would be years and years ahead by now. So sometimes it's ahead, sometimes it's behind, and as a result it's just a little off at any given time.

 

It was a "military grade" transmitter.

No. It was a constant monitor. Any interruption and poof!

 

Military transmitters can't go though earth sorry. I've done quite a bit of cave exploring including spending 3 days under ground in a lava tube near Bend Oregon in High school and no radio especially one with a tiny internal antenna is going to transmit anything out of a hole in the ground like they were in.

 

Doesn't it measure a heart beat or pulse? So, it is constantly interrupted. An individual's heartbeat can vary and I would presume that there is a set measure of time in which the pulse has to re-appear so else, "poof!" If Locke had been quick enough (and we're only talking about a split second) - and Keamy was lying there helpless and dying - how could it have hurt? What was the alternative?

 

It's TV, folks ... I think they do a pretty good job of making things seem plausible (within the "suspension of disbelief" parameters), but sometimes you gotta just sit back and enjoy the ride! I mean, are we really going to debate whether a transmitter can work underground, on a show where an entire ISLAND just vanished into thin air??

 

And men in blue and red tights with a cape can't really fly.

I learned a while back with this show and 24, if you nitpick, it'll drive you crazy.

 

Well said. I kind of hoped for a long while they didn't go the time travel route as it's so cliched in TV and sci-fi. I really hope Battlestar Galactica doesn't go that route with the whole "Starbuck is dead, no she's alive" plot.

 

cliched yes, but they are doing new things with it, and the producers have said they're not gonna use it as a cheat (ie after a bad plot direction, use it to say "aha they're not dea, because we can move in time and fix it!") I'm not a scifi junkie at all, but I like the ride the producers ahve taken us on so far.

 

Oh I agree, I'm not disappointed at all. This season has been awesome.

 

Maybe the bomb did go off when he went underground, and killing him was not the triggering event. How do we know the exact timing of the explosion on the ship in relation to what happened in the Orchid? Does the 10 minute difference make a plot difference?

 

I'd think there are problems both with the transmitter sending a signal underground, and also the apparent difference in time between being on the boat and the island. Unless this transmitter can send a signal through time, one would assume the signal was cut off the moment he landed on the island (which would let Ben off the hook for causing the explosion as well...)

 

Who said we weren't enjoying the ride? Part of the fun is discussing details like this, especially since "Lost" in particular prides itself on the minutia. I have no problem suspending my disbelief within the plausibility of the internal logic of the series. I think this season has been great - one of the best shows on television and I enjoyed the season finale very much. However, I have the feeling that this particular episode might have been slightly rushed. There were a few sloppy details which the producers and writers are usually meticulously careful about and ordinarily would not have overlooked. BTW, if there was no discussion about details like this, this thread would only have about two posts.

 

If the bomb isn't going to go off when the soldier dies, there isn't any tension. I think that's the issue.

 

Just listened to the August 1 podcast, featuring a Q&A with Darlton from Comicon. The most interesting pieces of information:

1) Carlton said that they don't want to use the words "flashbacks" and "flashforwards" anymore, and hinted that they have a different way of telling the story this time.

2) Rousseau's story will be told this season... it won't be a "flashback" though (see above).

3) They would not confirm or deny Jin's death, but said that he would be present this season.

 

I read in another forum that we've got a couple of new interesting characters to look forward to as well.

I think it's time for someone to start a "Lost, Season 5 Thread"... it's only 5 months away, after all.

 

That better be very, very good, as FBs and FFs are key to the show structure and are proven.