The Russian was stationed in the Flame after Dharma attempted the purge and got wiped out, I think. He wasn’t the original inhabitant, but he may have been stationed there a while.
Actually, I didn’t find Locke’s entering of the code to be that unexpected. Consider…
Back at the Swan station Locke thought that he had found a purpose by entering the numbers every 108 minutes. Then, after the visit to the Pearl station, he had a “crisis of faith” and decided that entering the numbers was meaningless. He stopped entering them, with disastrous consequences. After all, not entering the numbers led directly to the destruction of the hatch and indirectly to Eko’s death.
Locke also keeps talking about how he has a destiny and how the Island wants him to do things. Now, look at this case. The Island (in this case through Eko’s stick) directs him to a certain place. There, he finds another computer that tells him to enter a particular number.
Of course he’s going to enter the number; he’s a born-again number-enterer. From his point of view he probably feels that the Island led him to the Flame station just so he could enter that number. I don’t think he expected the station to blow up, but so what if it pissed everyone else off; the Island wanted him to so he did it.
Stupid? Maybe. Out of character? Not really.
Even if it didn’t, maybe there was another way that an actual Dharma person would have know. You know, press Ctrl-Alt-4815623 to access the communications programs.
Or, work your way through the chess program if you’re an outsider.
Of course, how Mikail could have not beaten a program in years that Locke could beat in an hour or two…
-Joe
Or maybe just a certain chess move–legal or not–remember, Mikail said the game “cheats.”
That’s what I thought as soon as he said that.
I got the impression that he KNEW exactly what that computer did if you beat the chess game and said what he did to Locke to make him stop trying.
So is the consensus that Walt was held in The Flame for a period of time, and this is where he communicated with Michael in The Swan?
It’s time for Locke to put on a red shirt and sailor’s cap. Sawyer could then start calling him “little buddy”.
lol! Brilliant! And good idea for a tshirt 
My take: Mikhail comes to the island to be an Other eleven years ago. At some point DHARMA decides they don’t liek the Others and will try and kill them all off. The Others are too strong though, and kill off everyone Dharma on the island (except Kelvin). They take over all the Dharma facilities, using ‘the barracks’ as their home base, ‘the hydra’ for some projects, including brainwashing, and as a backup medical facility, ‘the staff’ as a medical facility and nursery, and ‘the flame’ to communicate with the outside world and guide submarines to the island. Mikhail is stationed at the flame.
For some reason they don’t seem to bother with ‘the arrow’ or ‘the swan’. They leave ‘the staff’ after Claire escapes. Mikhail is pretty much alone at ‘the flame’ until the sky turns purple and communications stop working, at which point the Others send Ms Klugh to investigate / help out.
The jury is still out on this. Him having been in an omnious room suggests to me that they might have brought him to the room 23 brainwashing place at the hydra. In terms of the computer, my impression was that it was a ploy by the Others to capture Michael and get him to bring Jack to them.
One question I have is why they didn’t bring Ben off the island or another doctor on rather than capturing Jack. Tom starts to insinuate it has something to do with the communications problem, but the plan to capture Jack started a while before the Swan failsafe was activated.
Are we sure Kelvin was Dharma?
[QUOTE]
They take over all the Dharma facilities, using ‘the barracks’ as their home base, ‘the hydra’ for some projects, including brainwashing, and as a backup medical facility, ‘the staff’ as a medical facility and nursery, and ‘the flame’ to communicate with the outside world and guide submarines to the island. Mikhail is stationed at the flame.
For some reason they don’t seem to bother with ‘the arrow’ or ‘the swan’. They leave ‘the staff’ after Claire escapes. Mikhail is pretty much alone at ‘the flame’ until the sky turns purple and communications stop working, at which point the Others send Ms Klugh to investigate / help out. /QUOTE]
Here’s what I don’t get: Mikhail says the hostiles were there long before Dharma. Ok. And the hostiles were also recruiting? They’ve got Ethan (a surgeon) and Julliet (a fertility specialist). Why?
[QUOTEOne question I have is why they didn’t bring Ben off the island or another doctor on rather than capturing Jack. Tom starts to insinuate it has something to do with the communications problem, but the plan to capture Jack started a while before the Swan failsafe was activated.[/QUOTE]
No medical insurance? 
Maybe some or all of the others are wanted by the authorities in the real world. We’ve seen that at one point Ethan and Tom(?) were both off island. But we’ve seen no evidence of back and forth transportation. Maybe they really can’t get back?
I was a little confused about Mikhail’s story, as revised. As I understood it, his initial story was:
- I came here as part of the Dharma Initiative.
- DI decided to wage a war against “the hostiles,” which was a bad idea.
- The hostiles won the war, and I am the last survivor from DI.
- I now have a truce with the hostiles, who let me live here.
Then, he revised his story and said that it was all true, except the part about him being part of DI.
What I don’t understand is what to make of the rest of his story, if the part about him being part of DI was the “only” untrue part. Does he mean that he was one of “the hostiles” who killed off all of DI, and there are no DI survivors? Or does he mean there is one DI survivor somewhere? Or does he mean that the other others are part of DI, but he is not?
Or did I misconstrue something that he said?
Another tricky part of the Mikail incident is its beginning. First thing he does is shoot Sayid and start yelling about a truce. If he’s an other and the DI folks are all dead, who does he have a truce with?
- Another group?
- He lied and DI people are still around?
- Kelvin, and he doesn’t know he’s dead?
- Desmond, who is still lying?
- CFL?
- Imaginary enemy?
His story appears to be completely unreliable.
I think since the time that the Others (Hostiles) fought back against the Purge and killed eveyone in Dharma, Mikhail was assigned to man the flame station and impersonate a Dharma member in case anyone other than the Others showed up. He was already in costume when they spotted him on the Pearl video feed so he has to have been pretending to be Dharma since at least before then.
And shoot at them while yelling about a truce? Why bother with a costume? Of course, he only wounded Sayid. Maybe there’s something there.
Woops, I opened this reply window yesterday and forgot about it.
I always wondered why people talk about this so much. Who cares? There doesn’t have to be some mystical story about it. What if he got in a car accident? Totally plausible, doesn’t contradict anything, and doesn’t matter.
I mean - there are a million questions they legitimately should answer, but that one simply really doesn’t matter.
I can’t believe I’m the first to say it, but Locke didn’t win the chess game. At least not according to the photo where it says “You w”. There were a couple of more moves after that. They even have the notation backwards, they have the black moves listed first. I’m not even that good at chess but I saw it.
I did enjoy this episode though, much better then almost any of the other shows in the series. I hope they more like it.
He was yelling about the truce because the Others want people to think that the truce thing really works. They’re trying to convince anyone else on the island that they really should stay on “their side” of the island, and the Others really will leave them alone if they do.
-FrL-
Heh. Good point. Still not completely convinced, but you are right. He did make a big deal about drawing lines and leaving alone later.
Still, a huge contrast between Ben’s “maintain the Henry facade through days of torture” and Mikail’s “well, you’re not buying it after an hour so let’s try to kill each other”, eh?
-Joe
My thoughts exactly. It’s not that Locke was stupid, but that his actions were completely irrational just to advance the plot. We’ve got 3 people trying to guard a prisoner while searching a house, suspecting there may be a 2nd unfriendly person therein. And one of those 3 decides to go play video games. :smack:
So now I’m confused about the Others, the Hostiles, and the Dharmoids. I thought they were all one & the same. And we know that Juliet was recruited by Dharma, and yet she’s one of the Others/Hostiles. Ah, wait…she is apparently being held against her will. Maybe it does make sense.
Actually, Juliette was recruited by “Mittelos Biosciences”. We don’t know if they are affiliated with Dharma/Hanso or with some other organization.
Yes we do, because Ethan was one of them. Ethan recruited Juliet, and according to Ben, he was their surgeon, and we saw Ben ordering him to make a list of Losties.
They’re all working together, unless Bea Klugh is in cahoots with Mikhail and acting as a double-agent for him amongst the Ben-others. Bea spoke with him familiarly in this episode, and she was at least acting as if she were part of the Ben/Tom/Walt-nappers at the end of season 2.