# Lost 2.3: "Orientation" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 5, 2005, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852 "2005-10-05T06:24:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/121 "2005-10-06T15:20:41Z")
Sayid…you don’t bother putting the case back on unless you’re sure it’ll work. Especially if it’s something where time is really critical… -Joe, fixes PCs all the time ---
**Author:** ![Boardwalk\_Elvis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/57b2e6/32.png) [@Boardwalk\_Elvis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boardwalk_Elvis)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/122 "2005-10-06T15:20:43Z")
Why not push the button? It buys you some time to explore the hatch to try figure out what the hell is going on. Keep pushing the button until you have found out as much information as you can. Once you are reasonably sure that there are no triggers (bombs, chemicals, whatever) associated with the computer/timer, then you stop pushing the button. That’s what a man of science would do. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/123 "2005-10-06T15:21:58Z")
> [@middleman](#): > > I’m pretty sure Desmond grabbed a load of the drugs to inject. He did. They spilled out when he fell just before Jack caught up with him. He was stuffing them back in the back pack when he caught up. -XT ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/124 "2005-10-06T15:22:47Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > [The Hanso foundation web site.](http://www.thehansofoundation.org/activeproject.html) > > I believe these types of sites are created by ABC, and might in the future contain addtional clues. Note that you get “access denied” if you try to link to any details about the projects. Maybe if you enter “The Numbers” somehow, you get access! The site is definitely owned by ABC/Disney. If you click the tiny “Terms of Service” link at the bottom, you get Disney’s ToS page. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/125 "2005-10-06T15:27:00Z")
My wife just sent me this from TVguild if anyone is interested: > [@](#): > > Lost > I was getting a little worried when the beginning of tonight’s episode rehashed, again, what we’d already seen for the last two weeks in the hatch. But it finally progressed beyond what happened after Jack recognized Desmond. And we got to see a creepy little film that is clearly jumpy and missing some key parts. But who the heck is this Hanso guy who is funding this whole Swan-Dharma plan? Why’d they have to go and give me nightmares by showing that blurry, far-off picture of him? What is the significance of having each pair committed to service for 540 days? And if the Dharma Initiative was created in 1970, why was the copyright on the film 1980? Did it take 10 years to implement, or was it up and running for that long before things went really bad? And why was the orientation film hidden behind a copy of The Turn of the Screw? What exactly does a spooky ghost story about a governess have to do with this island? Is Desmond not real? And I’ve got to know, what exactly did Locke think it was going to be like when he got into the hatch? Does he know something about this whole electromagnetic field that we don’t? He gets odder and odder each week, and the whole backstory with Katey Sagal didn’t really help matters. I get that he’d be ticked off at the fake dad who stole his kidney, but sitting outside of his house every night is not going to do any good. He’s a clever guy; I’m sure he could have figured out a nice plan for payback if he put his mind to it. Hmm… maybe he did, and that’s how he ended up in the wheelchair. > > On the other side of the island, Ana-Lucia totally scammed our boys and looked like Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider coming out of the pit holding on to a rope and carrying Sawyer’s gun. I don’t know if these people are crazy or just power hungry, or even if they are all from the plane, but those are all things I can’t wait to find out. Personally I think the people who captured the raft boys are from the tail section and they captured them because they have had encounters with the Others and are wary of strangers…so they captured them for their own safety because they don’t trust them and are afraid. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Velma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/85e7bf/32.png) [@Velma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velma)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/126 "2005-10-06T15:29:36Z")
I wonder if Desmond will return once he realizes the time has come and gone and nothing happened? If I were him I would want to know if I had been pushing that button the whole time for nothing. I want to know where the door for the hatch is too. It can’t be that far away from where they blew open the first door, so how could they have missed it? Is anyone else picturing a screen door banging in the breeze and a Welcome mat? Didn’t Desmond ever ask the first hatch guy what would happen if they didn’t press the button? Did the first guy even know what would (supposedly) happen? If it was set up as a big experiment just to see how long a guy would push a button, why not set it up that way from the beginning? What was ‘the incident’ that made the button pushing necessary and how long ago did it happen? Desmond must know something more about it than what he said, because if all he did was watch that training video he wouldn’t necessarily think everyone would die if he didn’t press the button. The video does not say anything life threatening will happen if you don’t push it. Does Desmond know about any of the other people on the island? Maybe the Others will get him or the creature will eat him up! ---
**Author:** ![Velma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/85e7bf/32.png) [@Velma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velma)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/127 "2005-10-06T15:34:08Z")
I also agree that Locke is entering creepy-sad territory. I don’t blame Jack for not trusting him. I find myself going both ways in the Jack vs. Locke dilemmas, which I am sure is the writers’ intent here and they are doing a good job of making me second-guess myself! ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/128 "2005-10-06T15:42:04Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > [The Hanso foundation web site.](http://www.thehansofoundation.org/activeproject.html) > > I believe these types of sites are created by ABC, and might in the future contain addtional clues. Note that you get “access denied” if you try to link to any details about the projects. Maybe if you enter “The Numbers” somehow, you get access! Did you notice the non-working link to the Dharma Initiative? It’s below the other projects on the active products page. I suspect there’s going to be a clue there. ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/129 "2005-10-06T15:44:32Z")
> [@Velma](#): > > Does Desmond know about any of the other people on the island? Maybe the Others will get him or the creature will eat him up! I really thought TCM was going to make an appearance. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/130 "2005-10-06T15:46:01Z")
The “button-pusher” wouldn’t need psychoactive drugs to start seeing things. If he’s doing it on his own, he wouldn’t be able to get more than about 104 minutes of sleep at a time. Speaking as someone who knows, this can be kept up for a while, but it doesn’t take long without any late-stage sleep before one starts to go off the rails. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/131 "2005-10-06T16:01:47Z")
> [@DoctorJ](#): > > The “button-pusher” wouldn’t need psychoactive drugs to start seeing things. If he’s doing it on his own, he wouldn’t be able to get more than about 104 minutes of sleep at a time. Speaking as someone who knows, this can be kept up for a while, but it doesn’t take long without any late-stage sleep before one starts to go off the rails. Definitely. And maybe thats part of the plan, another route to perhaps push latent para-normal abilities…maybe as a control group or something (i.e. some get the drug, some get pushed to their limits via sleep depravation, maybe there is a third control group that gets neither…or the other stations have other stresses or other things happening). I figure the monster (TCM?) is either some effect of the ‘electro-magnatism’ (whatever that means to the writers) or some para-normal effect caused by experiment on the subjects. Its definitely getting creepy and going in a different direction than I thought from last year. I’m actually liking this better than what I thought was going on. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/132 "2005-10-06T16:08:35Z")
Did anyone else think that Analucia’s reaction to the gun was a little weird? She seemed pissed that they had the gun a was a little too curious about how they got it. I thought of two reasons. Either she was also undercover on the flight and thought they killed her partner to get the gun, or she is a criminal who thinks one of them may be the marshall. Best lines of the episode: “I like bald men” “I’m not bald” “I can wait” “When Shaft comes back he’s going to get a surprise” (maybe not the exact words) ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/133 "2005-10-06T16:11:05Z")
I thought Desmond recognized Jack when he first saw him, so I was confused to find that he didn’t recognize Jack until last night. Huh. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/134 "2005-10-06T16:27:41Z")
> [@lachesis](#): > > 1. and what kind of freaky-ass organization, no matter WHAT their experimental goals, never checks on their employees/participants for years at a stretch? ok, maybe the original “volunteers” signed waivers and such out the wazoo when they first joined up. but the film itself mentioned some unspecified “incident”, with hearty implications that the fall-out of said incident was not beneficial or desirable in line with the whole operation. don’t you think it would behoove the head honchos to at least send out a team to do health checkups at least once a year? how do those poor slobs get any dental care? what if someone develops cancer, or diabetes, or some other late-onset debilitating disease? that situation would be a lawyer’s wet dream – deliberate denial of adequate health treatment, and a whole HOST of other grounds for getting sued into the ground by the detainees or their heirs and estates. and we all know how the legal and medical system has evolved in the past couple decades. if the original Organization(s) still are operational, their corporate lawyers would be hemorrhaging blood at the mere thought of that place’s set-up. > > 2. in the same vein, if the island has KNOWN anomolous magnetic properties, wouldn’t the Organization be liable for some of the crashes/ founderings/X-marks-the-spot-everybody-lands-here occurrences? they’ve got people there, allegedly studying the phenomenon. don’t they have a responsibility to at least notify the Coast Guard/International Air and Rescue/FAA/_some_body when they notice people turning up on their little preserve? they may not be actively **causing** all these accidents, but i’d think they certainly have at least humanitarian obligations to let the proper authorities know that “X accident has survivors here”. Both of these can really be answered by one simple suggestion: The Dharma people who started this are total bastards. Also, we really can’t take much of anything the filmstrip says as evidence of anything. It’s all probably worded and set up to enforce the Skinner stuff. No reason to assume there are other stations, for example. Is it possible to insert subliminal images into a projecter film like that? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/135 "2005-10-06T16:44:23Z")
A few general comments: (1) I found myself pretty uninterested in the flashbacks. But notice that with both Locke and Jack, we’ve now seen backstory up until a point where they should be basically happy, but haven’t seen what happened to screw up that happiness (2) Desmond definitely knows more than he’s admitted so forth. If nothing else, why did he think that the entire outside world had ended? (3) It now seems unlikely that Ethan came from the hatch (4) Could those grad students from the 70’s have been some of the people on the boat who took Walt? (5) I agree that the filmstrip strongly implied that the other stations were also on the island. (6) Do we have any reason to believe that the Dharma organization still exists, or has existed for years? We know that Desmond’s predecessor’s replacements never came… could he have been there for 20 years? ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/136 "2005-10-06T16:47:28Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Did anyone else think that Analucia’s reaction to the gun was a little weird? She seemed pissed that they had the gun a was a little too curious about how they got it. I thought of two reasons. Either she was also undercover on the flight and thought they killed her partner to get the gun, or she is a criminal who thinks one of them may be the marshall. I think the most obvious reason for her reaction is she saw the gun and thought, “Huh. Somebody, possibly these guys, got a gun past securty and onto the plane and then it mysteriously crashed. I wonder if there’s a connection?” ---
**Author:** ![RancidYakButterTeaParty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/53a042/32.png) [@RancidYakButterTeaParty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RancidYakButterTeaParty)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/137 "2005-10-06T16:52:56Z")
Completely useless first post to the “Lost” thread: 108–1+0+8=9 540–5+4+0=9 (number of days for the experiment) Station 3 of 6? 3+6=9 Hmmm… ---
**Author:** ![RancidYakButterTeaParty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/53a042/32.png) [@RancidYakButterTeaParty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RancidYakButterTeaParty)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/138 "2005-10-06T16:55:52Z")
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that just because we saw that “mole” girl in the pit at the airport doesn’t mean she got on the flight. ---
**Author:** ![lachesis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@lachesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lachesis)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/139 "2005-10-06T16:59:19Z")
**Sam Hell** , i’m surprised at you. yes, they could have (and may well have) inserted subliminal messages into the Indoctrina… em, Orientation film. but [as the Master hath spake](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_187.html), what good would it do? (although i suppose if anyone decides to do a frame-by-frame on that degraded celluloid, it might prove amusing to see what conceits the Foundation thought it could propagate.) ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852/140 "2005-10-06T17:15:30Z")
Well, now we know what button Walt was nattering about. But why would he tell Shannon and not Locke and Jack? Why was he dripping wet? Where did he go? How precisely did Desmond’s predecessor die three years ago? What was done with his body? Why does Desmond take injections? How does the unnamed ‘incident’ tie into the two mummified bodies found in the caves at the beginning of season one? \*\*John Mace’s \*\* link to the Hanso Foundation website indicates several compelling projects that may all well figure into future episodes as well as shedding light on previous ones: The Life-Extension Project (immortality?), The Electromagnetic Research, (The Search For Extra-Terrestrial Life (aliens), Mathematical Forecasting (statistics? formulas for warping probablities?), Cryogenics (suspended animation), Juxapositional Eugenics Development (scientifically devised alternate lifestyles), Accelerated Remote Viewing Training (possibly some sort of disembodied precognition). We’ve seen no evidence of the Life Extension Project… unless Ethan is somehow resurrected. Did anyone catch Rosseau on film? The Electromagnetic Research is revealed by the magnet in the hatch and whatever’s been throwing off the magnetic fields around the island, as Sayid noted last season with his compass. Also seems to be responsible for the plane crashes. May prove to be responsible for the series of anachronisms on the island: prehaps large warp fields disrupt time or something. Is the Electromagnetic Research something that was built and got out of control somehow or something discovered and unearthed that is being barely managed? Is it extraterrestrial? The search for Extra-Terrestrial Life may figure into the above scenario. Mathematical Forecasting is obviously the numbers and seems to figure on a number of other ‘mysteries’ on the island and in Lost’s real world The presence of a Hanso Foundation website even in our ‘Real-World’ context would strongly suggest that the Foundation is still alive and well in the world of Lost. Cryogenics hasn’t figured into the narrative yet. Juxtapositional Eugenics may be what’s responsible for the separated communities on the Island. It suggests there may be six such communities, with the hatch designated as site three. (Or that the island itself is site three of six sites worldwide.) Accelerated Remote Viewing Training – your best guess is probably better than mine what that is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-2-3-orientation/324852.md?page=8)