Friday, August 7, 2009

No Summer Re-watch

Earlier this week, I was bored and thinking about Daniel's death and stuff. So, I decided to re-watch season 5 and get my thoughts together to start blogging again. Unfortunately, ABC had decided to take down all but Season 1 and half of Season 5.

Now, maybe I'm a little crazed, but I just can't watch part of a season. When I get the urge (and it is a strong urge) I want to watch beginning to end. I have only recently trained myself not to re-watch from the pilot episode... I LOVE that ABC always made Lost available to fans (i'm a late-blooming fan because of this). Loved it so much and appreciated it so much that I had no problems with buying S1-4. However, with season 5 not available until December and not shown on the web... What do I (legally) do?

My inner obsessive-compulsive is weeping bitter tears.

/rant over

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Bye For Now

I think I'm giving up on the blog. I just am not getting enough readership to continue during the hiatus. I'll be back for the final season though.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

What Happened, Happened

Although it was funny, I thought the scene with Miles and Hurley talked down to the audience. I'm still on the fence about changes to the island due to influences of the war to come (if it takes place pre-2007), but not about the actual time-line from the POV of the characters. If there are no stakes (Whatever Happened, Happened), why would Eloise Hawking say 'God help us all?' Speaking of this, we know that not everyone came back so... what's going to happen?

The island is obviously special in some way (it is a world created by writers who can decide what properties it has and what it can do). Perhaps this places us in a position where our knowledge of theoretical physics isn't completely on target in this one fictional place in space-time. After all, there is exotic matter there (which I'm sure points to a wormhole) and other properties that can take us into new realms of speculation.

Further, we have to understand that characters have their own motivations, pasts and flaws. Miles probably has his knowledge from his father (who I'm positive is Pierre) and Faraday, Faraday's theories are influenced by his mother (Eloise), Eloise certainly has her own motivations (if she really believed what she said to Desmond then why would she have to try so hard to convince him), Pierre Chang is severely limited by theoretical physics of 1977. Personally, I know exactly what I believe if this were taking place in the non-fictional world. However, I would like to facilitate more amicable discourse on the matter.

Most people I've talked to seem fairly adamant about their side in this matter; wouldn't it be great if this war in the forums is a antecedent to the war to come? Maybe, we are all taking sides in the war and don't realize it; it would be brilliant if the writers planned it that way.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Time Travel and Lost

Going back in time produces paradoxes if something happens to prevent the time-traveler from going back in time in the first place. If a time traveler goes back in time to prevent a disaster, stops the disaster, then the disaster will no longer exist and the time traveler would have no reason to stop it. The other one is the grandfather paradox which states that you can't go back in time and kill your own grandfather (before he impregnates grandma with your mother/father -after that have at the old coot). This one is closely linked to auto-infacticide - you can't kill baby you because big you wouldn't exist to kill baby you.

"But the producers said we won't have paradoxes!" I can hear you yelling at me.

Note that they said we wouldn't have time travel either. However, I believe we've already seen what I believe to be examples of the ontological paradox: Daniel's machine settings and the compass. For example, Daniel looks in his notebook and gives Desmond the settings for his machine. Desmond travels back and gives those settings to younger Daniel and they work! Then younger Daniel writes them in his notebook where they stay so he can give them to Desmond... who then goes back in time... There is no origin for the settings, they just ARE. By the way, if Daniel didn't actually teach Eloise the maze while Desmond was out of it then things are really wonky - or he has a teeny tiny defibrillator.

I would be careful about taking everything that Daniel or Pierre say as fact. First, Daniel could be influenced by his mother, who I believe has a definite agenda (the longest con on the show: 'course correction'); we haven't definitively seen any course correction first hand, so we are taking Eloise's word for it. I don't believe Charlie is a case of course correction, but rather a sacrifice made by Desmond to find Penny; Charlie and Desmond could easily have gotten out of the station before it was flooded. As for Pierre, he is limited by the science of 1977 and probably even less credible; there is a huge knowledge gap between 1977 and 2007 (in which lies the Novikov self-consistency principle, for one).

I can't shake the feeling that what we are seeing on Lost is a time-loop. If this is the case, something has to give (or already has) or we'll just see the loop begin to repeat as the final *boom* "LOST" hits our screens. In the end it doesn't really matter. The producers have created their own failsafe in Desmond and can turn the key if the storyline starts to blow (figuratively or literally take your pick).