You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t…

Tuned In » Lostwatch: You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t… « | 80+ comments:
*The Islanders are moving through time in tandem with each other. But only with each other. Not with the Others—who did not appear to get flashed well
*Are we to assume Marvin Candle just got to the Island in the flashback? Because he has a new baby, and his wife is not dead. y I wonder wh if any conclusns to draw fr the baby, who was v cute smiling at approaching dad fr the crib.

-Matt: Based on the fact that the Others (I'm assuming only the original inhabitants, 'cause clearly Juliet moves too) don't move with the flashes, I'm guessing that the Others are *part* of the Island in some way. ~I like Richard Alpert as part of island in some way. but: his camp included Cindy & other 815 tailies who'd been kidnapped & assimilated, and none of them travelled with Locke at the flash.
--TomShaw: why was Ben so eager to let them leave last season, when now he has to get them back. good point: he acted nonchalant about Jack, Kate, et al leaving in the helicopter. Was the freighter supposed to explode earlier, such that the chopper would have to go back to The Island (and thus never make it back?) Or was he given bad info in the past? This sudden change in motives makes no sense to me.
-Dave: I'll go off James' bullets:
*I don't think the Island moved. The place on earth where you can get to the Island (I really don't want to use the word "portal") moved, and apparently continues to move, but I don't think the Island itself physically moved. (Note to anyone shifting around the Island: don't sit on any tree stumps)
*Who's shifting: I don't think we have enough information to know much about the shifting. What we do know: Richard and his camp ie the original or at lst pre-Dharma, pre-Ben 'hostiles' did not flash with Locke and the beach folk. Is there a camp of recruits (Ben's people, if you will) who are flashing somewhere? Are we going to see Cindy and the kids flashing on another part of the Island? right-good. Or are they somehow protected in a way that Locke isn't? Is that why Jacob makes lists?
*How many kinds of time travel? Good question. I'm sure the conversation will return to it
*I think the presence of the baby shows that the baby problem wasn't always there. I think that's a byproduct of the Incident. ah ok good suggestn.
..I didn't think of the soldiers being Widmorian. That makes perfect sense: he's always been saying everything Ben has he took from Widmore, and they were very possessive about the Island. Are those the first guns the Hostiles stole from people? We've never seen a flaming arrow attack, and in the Destiny Calls recap, L&C said that the Hostiles kill, take, and use. Maybe Widmore sells out his troops to lead the Hostiles the same way Ben sells out the DI to lead them. And by "sells out" I mean "kills."
..Side note: what if Chang's baby is Miles?

-Tom Shaw makes a good point that the soldiers would seem to be from AFTER Yemi's plane crashed, making them in the late 1990s

...p2
-yogi: I think we also know how at the season 3 finale, Locke got from shot in a ditch to across the island thowing a knife in Naomi's back, again, the knife thrower Locke was the time traveling Locke. huh: even if not, that's a cool idea and the sort of thing that bears out Lindelof saying it's always been a time travel show: if retrospctvely we realize we witnessed ppl who were time-travelling
-milpool: We've naturally assumed up until now that Richard is some kind of immortal, but isn't it becoming more and more likely that he's a time traveler? well but also there's Ben wryly saying "you remember birthdays Richard?" but I suppose he cld be ageless bcs totally unstuck in time, ~ always travelling. Present Richard finds Locke and tells him "the next time I see you, I won't know you - give me this compass." Okay, great, buuuuut didn't Richard always know Locke? Wasn't he there for his birth? For that specialty test with the knife? Unless, of course, the Richard that witnessed Locke's birth was the present Richard who will later be throttled back in time to be able to witness Locke's birth and only know of him after the fact of actually meeting him on the island. Come to think of it - wasn't one of Richard's items that he showed to kid Locke a compass?? Maybe Richard wanted kid Locke to pick that compass as proof that he was unstuck in time, and not necessarily some kind of chosen one. ooh nice idea (even if unlikely to be intended by the writers)

-sharasays:
OK, so I'm rewatching The Lie, and back to wondering about Sun - particularly wondering about the scene with Kate and Sun where Kate asks Sun why she's in LA and she says "I have some [small deliberate pause] business to attend to". So what would have been in LA for her to do (that would have necessitated a suspicious pause before she said that)? Who do we know that is in LA at that same time, with whom she conceivably be having a secret meeting?
Ben.
My money is on Ben coming to Sun and informing her that Jin is alive on the island, and that the island is under threat from Widmore, and enlisting her help in getting everyone back to the island and getting close to Widmore. I'm always suspicious when any character on this show tries to manipulate another person to do something by telling him/her exactly what they most want to hear (like I was saying about Ben and Ms. Hawking above), and Sun telling Widmore that she wants to help him kill Ben would be exactly what Widmore wants to hear. She gets him to bite, she gets inside information - I'd bet she's the kind of lady who would keep her enemies closer, and knowing that she had to protect Jin would give her the grim determination that she has shown off-island. good point.
And, Sun's warning to Kate that "they want Aaron" and she needs to "take care of" Aaron just sounded like she was manipulating Kate for a particular focus -both distracting her from the possibility of her being spooked by the Back to the Island team (which should have been obvious to two smart ladies used to these ruses, who had just heard Bentham's entreaties that they must return right), and hitting on her worst fear - that someone was trying to hurt or take Aaron - making Kate more likely to view a return trip to the island as a necessary means of safe escape, rather than, like, the worst thing ever.
Yup. Sun is in league with Ben and double-agenting Widmore. nice.

..Plus when Ben is whining to Ms. Hawking about "losing Reyes tonite" to the cops, he doesn't mention "Sun freaking hates me and wants me dead, so we can count her out too". Not that that means anything, but if he's just got 70 hours and major obstacles, I'd count an angry rich widow with a blood vendetta as at least as much of a challenge as a crazy dude in jail.


-Dave:@Chad - I thought about Locke being the only one shifting, and I've got three possible solutions. Solution 1: it looked like the people Locke got to were Richard's people. Maybe Richard's people are all ageless wonders and tied to the Island. Since we didn't see Cindy and the kids there after the Orchid, they could very well be in another part of the Island, shifting and going nuts. Solution 2: by being chosen by Jacob, Cindy and the kids (and, of course, other 815ers taken by the Others) were brought into the Other fold, and are thus tied safely to the present. I like Solution 3 the best: season 1 was all about the characters being interconnected. Off the top of my head, I'm going from Hurley to Locke the box company? to Sayid ? to Desmond(s2) to Jack to Sawyer to Kate, and that's not counting the spider webbing over to other connections. All these people are intertwined somehow, and when the O6 left, it all got screwed up. The Others are their group. ie bcs w their group, they are anchored. When Juliet joined the Losties, she became part of their fabric. Now, that fabric of people was drawn together by the Island into a tight weave. Given the nature of people, the various fabrics can stretch and twist, and even be added to or removed from, but because the FDW was turned and the portal to the Island moved while parts of the 815 fabric were both inside and out, things got messed up. The fabric didn't tear, because if it did, the group would just be 2 different groups; since that fabric was still on either side of the old portal to the Island, the people still on the Island can't be anchored to one time until they're all together again. I'll be honest, at the start of the post I only had the first 2 solutions, but the third one just kept making more and more sense the more I typed. I'm positive it makes way more sense in my head than I can put into words.




*What's Alan Watching?: Lost, "Because You Left" & "The Lie": Uh-oh, Zoot skipped a groove again! | 100+ comments


-christy said... 11:42 AM, January 22, 2009 first-rate (informed about the show, clear about the time travel logic ~ lifestream vs time stream: these things are Always, and funny!):

'For example, if you can't change the past, then how did Ethan shoot Locke in the shift to the past? If it didn't happen the first time, it couldn't happen according to Faraday.'
Who says it didn't happen the first time? We know Yemi's plane crashed before 815, so let's say it was 2003, right? 2005-Locke skipped back in time to 2003, saw the plane crash, and got shot by 2003-Ethan. It didn't happen in the past for Locke, because that's 2005-Locke. He wouldn't remember it in 2004. But Ethan probably would--but he's an Other. We wouldn't know if he remembered it or not because we don't follow them, plus they lie and hide what they know about the island. It's not like we'd have a scene with Ethan in 2004 seeing Locke and saying, HEY that's that guy I shot last year! He was too busy being deceitful and kidnapping pregnant ladies.

'And if the island jumps into the past, shouldn't everyone who knows they will exist in the future act pretty much as if they were immortal, knowing they will survive to fulfill that future?'
Fulfill what future? Landing on the island? The 2005-castaways have already done that. Then later (in their lives) good they went back in time and got shot at with fire arrows.
It's not that I'm such a LOST fan that I'll find a way to understand everything even if I don't. It's the same time travel device used in 12 Monkeys and (forgive me) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I understood it in those movies, and I wasn't some crazed fan when I saw them.

'And why are inanimate objects like the camp affected by these jumps, but things like their clothes aren't affected. I know Juliet spouted something about things they are touching come with them through time, but that's a cheap explanation that really isn't one.'
Actually I agree with you that this one is pretty weak.

'What happens if the island jumps you well into the future, and the place you are standing is occupied by an inanimate object, like a new mountain or plane wreckage or a new amusement park conquering aliens build on the island? Do you die instantly?'
That's a good question. The problem with it is that they can probably just tell this story without that ever needing to come up.

'One problem if Mrs. Hawking is Faraday's mother: She's not in Oxford. Unless Ben is willing to spend some of his 70 hours on transatlantic flights, or still has access to mystical island travel powers, she's got to be in LA.'
Well, another possibility is that Mrs. Hawking moved from Oxford to LA and Daniel is mistaken about her current location (whatever "current" means in this context, given that 2004-Faraday was telling hatch-Desmond to go find her at some unspecified future time after leaving the island), or that she'll go back to Oxford before Desmond gets there, or Desmond will get to Oxford and someone will be like "oh her? She's in LA" and he'll go to LA. Maybe Ben can't move that fast in a few hours, but she can move around within the course of several years, surely. Also we've seen her in Great Britain before. It may not be the same lady, but I don't think her being in LA rules it out.

'Regarding Charlotte, you didn't mention it but she had the same affliction (nose bleed) that the guy who was drilling too close to the core of the island had.'
Also Horace when Locke sees (dreams?) him chopping the tree down over and over again. right. and Horace says ~ "I'm not making any sense am I? well I've been dead for 12 (20?) years."
The funny thing is that when I was looking up info on Yemi's plane, I saw that Locke had had a "vision" of seeing the plane crash before. I have a feeling this will relate to things like child-Locke drawing the smoke monster and Richard expecting him to know which objects belonged to him. And also Faraday's (and Charlotte's?) memory problems.

-christy said... 11:49 AM, January 22, 2009
Also it's all related to the new tagline for the series, "Destiny Calls." Everything is already decided. You make your own decisions, but you can't change anything because you're already destined to make each decision the way you will make it.
It makes me think of Calvinism, but I'm going to choose not even to think about that right now. Leibniz. notion ~ monad. cathy: It's (just) another way of looking at time.


-christy said...9:28 PM, January 22, 2009

'I've read all the comments and the ones that answer my queries about time travel only hold up if you fixate on the perspective of the Lostees.'
No, they don't. Your example is logically flawed. If a 2004-soldier killed 2005-Neil in 2004, then continued to live his life, then ran into Neil in 2005, Neil wouldn't be screaming on the beach. That happened in 2004. He'd be in the zodiac with Faraday. Then he would promptly disappear, because that's when he went to 2004 (or whenever--not the actual dates, obviously). The solider would remember Neil, but Neil wouldn't remember the soldier (because he hasn't gone back in time yet, and he won't get shot until he does). Neither of their timestreams would be "violated" (whatever that means) any more than the other.
I think perhaps the problem is that when you're talking about time travel, there are two things that we call "time." One is a large, cosmic idea of time, in which all history occurs in a certain order, and then you have time as each person perceives it, when they live their lives one event after another, and even if one of those events is a time-jump, they remember things in the order THEY do them, not in the order they occur in the larger concept called time. good. timeline vs lifestream
Of course there are paradoxes in time travel, but it doesn't mean humans aren't capable of understanding the basic concepts. If it's actually so hard to get that fewer people watch...well, then it'll still have many times the viewers that most of the shows I watch have. But I suspect most people will just go along for the ride, they way they have for every other popular time travel story written throughout history.

'so now there are two lockes.
each iteration of locke moving forward in time. one at the box company and one on the island. same for all the rest of the 815s on the island.'
Yes, there are two Lockes in that moment in 2003--2003-Locke (working at the box factory) and 2005-Locke (with his knives on the island)--but they don't go on living in parallel forever and ever. 2003-Locke will eventually become 2005-Locke, who will go back in time.


-Jordan said... 12:51 PM, January 22, 2009
Here's how the loop works, and this contains spoilers for 12 monkeys, so if you haven't seen it yet, what's wrong with you? It's a great movie and came out like a dozen years ago.
There is no beginning or end, that's why it's a loop. It always happened in the past and will always happen. You can't change the past but you can change the future, just from the present, not from the past (this takes into account going back in time and returning, not so much going forward, since to you that hasn't happened yet and doesn't exist).
Bruce Willis sees the shooting at the end of the movie as a child. He always saw it as a child even though it future Willis had not gone back yet. I know that's kind of head-hurting because you want to say that they had to go through once without it, but for the sake of argument, this is the way it always happened. They don't want him try to stop the outbreak, because they know he can't. They just want to find when in started to get an unmutated sample (the person in "insurance" on the plane) to take back to the future, which was their present, so as to try to make things better in their future.

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