Set your device to 2.342, oscillation 11, then turn right
when you see the ship and drive straight through to '96...
We just got the biggest chunk of answers from Lost to date!
Desmond is time traveling. Not physically, but mentally. His consciousness is hopping
back and forth between the 1996 and the 2004 Desmond, and soooo much makes sense now. Penny knew he would call on Christmas
Eve 2004 because he went back and told her. He also met Daniel Faraday in '96 because '04 Daniel set it up. No wonder Faraday
was weeping when he was watching the news about 815. It looks like he might have known what was coming.
So we've seen Desmond effect the past and the future. This whole thing is hard for
me to get my mind around, but as I mentioned last week, the Novikov self-consistency principal kind of sheds some light on how it might be possible.
There's also some interesting things in the article about salvaging treasured items from
the past that might explain where the Black Rock ledger came from, and a really strange example of how you could
go back in time and rescue people from the Titanic if you were to put replacement bodies in their place on the wreck.
How many other incidents in the show have been influenced by someone with access to
both the future and the past? Is this how Ben has amassed his wealth of money and information? If so, how does Ben overcome
the "side effects"? So many questions. In theory, I guess you could go back or forward in time and impart information
to yourself. Yikes!
The side effects of time flipping aren't pretty, and we find out why the episode is called
The Constant when "past Daniel" (or Daniel96) tells Desmond that he needs to have a constant, someone or something that exists
in both his past and his future to focus on in order to cease the time flipping, otherwise his mind will implode. We saw the
results of failure to be able to stop the flipping with the deaths of both Daniel's lab rat Eloise and George Minkowski.
We also got our first look at the freighter and it's name is the Kahana. The crew looks
pretty salty. There's the reception commitee, Keamy and Omar, Ray, the doctor and George Minkowsky, radio operator and
nuthatch.
There's got to be others on board also. We still haven't seen Regina or the captain, and
there's also the mystery person, Ben's plant, who wrecks the radio and opens the sick bay door for them. A lot of conjecture
that the saboteur is Michael, and while it's entirely possible I just don't buy it. If the Freightees picked up Michael and
Walt and then suddenly someone started breaking things I would think that they would immediatly become the prime suspects and
would be locked up forthwith. This crew doesn't look like it fools around.
A better guess might be that Minkowsky was Ben's inside man. What the heck was he doing
leaving the ship? Too bad we don't have a timeline on the damage to the radio room and his little excursion yet.
I really enjoyed this episode. It was fast paced and focused, gave us all kinds
of info and all kinds of questions, and the Desmond and Penny scenes were very poignant. I have to admit I got
a lump in my throat when Desmond finally got through to her on Christmas Eve.
Speaking of the phone call, I read on Lostpedia that Sayid couldn't have made a call on
a butt set that was just hooked to a battery. It wasn't. I looked back over the scene and you can clearly see Sayid clip the
leads to the console's wiring first. He needed the battery in the loop also because normally the butt set would draw
line power from the system. No stretch that there was a butt set there either. No worthwhile comm guy ever goes anywhere without
one. With the self penetrating alligator clips you can hook in anywhere without a strip or splice and hardley leave a trace.
So much stuff to go over in this one. We still haven't gotten to the Black Rock, it's first
mate's journal, Tovard Hanso, the Widmores. Man, this episode was huge. I'm gonna have to chew on this awhile.
Meanwhile, check out the screen caps. There's some from next week's preview that show Claire coldcocking Kate and some others
showing Claire and Daniel at a command console dressed in bio gear. The computer screens seem to indicate an imminent disaster.
I wonder if they're in the Orchid?.
Stay tuned...
The Constant - One last thought.
I'm still puzzling over this one so I'm going to save any more comments until
after tomorrow night's episode. Maybe more info will help. Or not.
I do have one last thought though. I had said that it wasn't plausible for the inside man
on the freighter to be Michael and I still believe that, but after further consideration I got to thinking about ole travelin'
Walt. He seems to be able to project himself and his thoughts... perhaps he wrecked the radio and opened the sick bay door
without needing to be physically in either place.
We know that Walt told Locke the same thing that Ben told Jack, to stay away from the
freighter. Maybe Room 23 did have some effect on him, or the island or Jacob has divulged the same things to him as it has
to Ben. Or maybe he's being led by someone or something else...
Just a thought.
