Has anyone looked into whether or not the TCM/Black Smoke thing was the spooky smoke/shadow we saw in an earlier episode when one of the jet engines exploded?
I know it was discussed as being a special effects glitch, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’ll try to find the thread that contained that discussion.
Here’s the gif of the smoke and the plane.
I mean, an asshole in a bad way. Like, for comparison, Col. Tigh on Battlestar Galactica is definitely a gigantic asshole, but he’s an interesting asshole. Possibly my favorite single character on the show, in fact.
Michael’s just a putz.
Thanks for the link. I couldn’t find it.
After seeing it again, they don’t really look the same. However, I’m still curious whether or not anything will come of it. Never can tell with this show.
I wouldn’t place too much importance on them looking exactly the same if you’re wondering about them being connected.
The way an effect is realized can change a whole lot as a project develops. (Look at the difference between Gollum in Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.)
There’s no way that’s an accidental “glitch.” Someone setting up a CGI pyro effect isn’t going to create a path that approaches the explosion in a near miss and then place a translucent object on it and time its motion just so by accident.
I think the intent is for it to be the same thing. Of course it’s not going to look the same in a subtle thing like the opening scene. At that point we weren’t supposed to have a clue what was going on, or pay much attention to a tiny thing like that in the midst of chaos. Delayed significance is always a good thing, IMO.
The smoke looked different when Locke encountered it at the end of season one, too. Now the effect is done with a much more detailed particle system, with added tachyscopic images.
I think it’s the same concept, and the differences are a combination of dramatically-necessary graduated reveals and the use of different effects depending on the requirements of the scene. If you want a “did I just see something?” effect, you use a fast-moving translucent polygonal model with plenty of motion blur. If you need it to grab someone and drag 'em, you want a simple articulated particle system. If you want a scene where it’s got to sit still and be examined, you want a much more detailed particle system that carefully models a sort of convective effect, otherwise it’s not interesting to look at.
Just out of curiosity, how many megabytes is your folder of “Lost” screen caps and associated research?
Would that be the case? Certainly the prompt would be burnt in, but the numbers only appear briefly while being typed.
How did he even manage to get a blank screen by the time Jack came to his side of the desk? Could he have turned off the monitor? That would explain why the prompt wasn’t showing up as a burnt spot.
Or, maybe it’s a magic computer and you only see what it wants you to see… but that would be lame.
Or he’s nuts.
Maybe that’s why that Kelvin guy (his predecessor) died?
It seemed to me that the screen was also blank when Michael first went into the room to see if there were any more messages from WAAAAAAAALT (speaking of which, how does he know to only communicate when Michael’s at the computer?). So it appears that, at least in this episode, the monitor goes completely blank when there are no messages and it isn’t time to enter the numbers, and maybe messages disappear after a certain amount of time. I can’t remember off-hand whether or not this is consistent with previous episodes, but something tells me it isn’t, even if Locke did say something about not being able to type anything unless the alarm was going off.
Also speaking to the question of how much the castaways are assumed to try to hash out all the weird stuff that island living chucks at them: Do you think Eko and Locke mentioned that little bit from the film about using the computer for communication possibly leading to another vague-but-ominous “incident” to Michael?
It seems like Locke would have informed anyone who was going to take a shift that the computer was not to be used for anything other than entering the numbers.
Which, if it happened between episodes, would explain why Michael was being so secretive about wanting to take over Kate’s shift and when Jack came in. Because they had been told not to do anything but enter the numbers.
I suppose this doesn’t really matter, but I’m convinced that WAAALLT wrote…
You need to con
The last letter just didn’t look like an ‘m’ to me. Also, the way the cursor moved after the the letter made me think it was an ‘n’.
I can only assume that he intended to write…“You need to contact the Social Security Administration regading any beneifts I’m entitled to following mom’s death.”
I had also thought it was an “n”, and assumed from context that it was “contact”, but I’m using rabbit ears and a VCR, and it wasn’t that clear when I replayed it. I was relying on those here with hi-def and DVRs. Can anyone confirm which letter it was?
I’m confirming “n” via my plain old memory.
So, only now are some people beginning to think that there’s not a scientific explanation for everything? Would have thought the evidence for that had been piling for quite some time, even without the project names 
I was under the impression that the reason we hadn’t seen the TCM for a while due to the fact that someone “accidentally” dropped some TNT down its lair. Perhaps the reason it looks different is that it had to go regenerate and/or repair itself? Or a newer “version” was released? If it is a “security device” (who said that?), why did it let Locke and Eko go, but take Weiss without even pausing?
Like others, I always had the impression that it’s a utility fog, or would that Prey-type plot device be too cliche?
I wanted to point something out. When Locke and Eko met the fog it was not raining. When the pilot was taken and at other times when they encounter the tree crashing and the train whistle type sound it is raining. Perhaps it’s just very cranky when it rains and that’s the only time it eats people?
Nope, it’s definitely ‘m’.
Skott, I think the TCM is almost certainly nanotech, and probably inspired to some degree by Crichton’s crappy novel. Personally, I don’t think it’s too cliche, even with the association with Crichton. (Sorry, I really hate that hack.)
It looks like smoke, has mechanical/electric/electronic sounds associated with its appearance, has purposeful motility, seemingly telepathic features, and can become solid enough to seize and drag a man. What else could it be? It’s either a swarm of nanobots, a demonic force, or an alien. I know which one of those options has the least “cliche points” in my book. 
