Lost 4.05: "The Constant"

Cafe Society
181

[QUOTE=nofloyd]
My take is that while we were all distracted with Desmond, the auction scene quietly slipped in many interesting things.

The auctioneer said the Black Rock’s log had one previous owner - Hanso - I would assume this is the same Hanso who started the Dharma project. Since the well funded group on the boat also knows about the island, they might be agents of Widmore, and Penny may have picked up enough from her father’s affairs/ the log to narrow in too.

So if the ship’s log has clues to a mysterious island with great powers, why would Hanso let it out of his hands?

If Hanso’s Dharma experiments were what created the island’s powers and he only found the Black Rock’s log and sold it to make money, how did the ship end up so far inland?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know the exact timeline, but it seems to me that 1996 was about the time that Ben and the Others seized control of the island from Dharma. Maybe the coup led Hanso to wash his hands of the island, inadvertantly passing the knowlege of it on to Widmore and his organization, which eventually sent the boat.

182

[QUOTE=nofloyd]
The auctioneer said the Black Rock’s log had one previous owner - Hanso -
[/QUOTE]

I believe they said it was written by a member of the Hanso family.

-FrL-

183

[QUOTE=Frylock]
I believe they said it was written by a member of the Hanso family.

-FrL-
[/QUOTE]

I recall it being only owned by, not written by, hanso.

If nobody beats me to it, I’ll hit the other computer later to confirm.

184

No, it was written by a crewmember of the Black Rock. The Black Rock went missing and the journal was later found on a pirate ship. The Hanso apparently bought it (or otherwise got possession of the pirate loot) and was the only family to have owned it since. The contents were never made public.

185

[QUOTE=C3]
No, it was written by a crewmember of the Black Rock. The Black Rock went missing and the journal was later found on a pirate ship. The Hanso apparently bought it (or otherwise got possession of the pirate loot) and was the only family to have owned it since. The contents were never made public.
[/QUOTE]

You’re right. I was confused by the fact that the captain of the Black Rock seems to have been a Hanso. I thought he wrote the journal, and that this was what was mentioned at the auction. But no.

-FrL-

186

[QUOTE=Gfactor]
The new podcast is up: http://ll.media.abc.com/podcast/audio/abc/LOST_406_audio_podcast_1577829_9c4b902f-9f7a-4bee-b52c-56931d18ff90.mp3

They rehash the show and talk about how time travel works on the show.
[/QUOTE]

Why do they repeatedly refer to the flashback year as 1994???

187

[QUOTE=flex727]
Why do they repeatedly refer to the flashback year as 1994???
[/QUOTE]

No idea.

188

To everyone who’s not sure Desmond is back in the right year, the evidence is right in the show:

After he convinced Penny in 1996 to give him his phone number, she practically forced him out of the door. They did a series of quick cuts of him with his head against her door, and him banging on it, pleading that she keeps that phone number for eight years. Then we jump back to 2004. Sayid asks if he remembers the phone number, and that’s when he gives it to Sayid. At some place during the phone call, we jump back to 1996, and Desmond is walking away from her stoop into the street, and looks back to see Penny closing the curtains. Had the constant not worked, he would have been catatonic on her stoop, instead of walking away. Therefor the Desmond of 2004, “Island” Desmond was back in his 2004 body, and 1996 Desmond was back in his… for good.

189

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
I don’t know if you’re aware, but Jack is a goddamned moron. It’s the biggest mystery on “Lost”: How did someone so goddamned stupid become a spinal surgeon?

-Joe
[/QUOTE]
Well he’s an orthopedic spinal surgeon, and you know what they say about orthopods, “Strong as an ox and half as smart.”

One of the best episodes of the series. I wonder if “the list” has anything to do with people that can become unstuck in time, or people that would be able to skirt the universes course correcting if they do become unstuck. For example, Jack’s probably on the list and surgeons are exposed to portable x-rays all the time.

190

[QUOTE=RikWriter]

[Quote=Illinois_Boy]

I thought it was an excellent episode. I’ma little conflicted about the time-travel stuff. I was hoping against hope they could pull out an “everything makes sense in a perfectly normal kind of way” explanation, just because it would have been an incredible feat.
[/quote]
That was impossible almost from show number one.
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I don’t think they ever intended that everything would have an explanation based on known, proven science. What they were trying to say is that the explanations would not be supernatural or religious in nature (ie. they aren’t in Purgatory). Everything that happens on the show would have “real world” explanations, even if those explanations are based on pseudoscience (the ghost-hunter) or science fiction-type principles.

As such, this all fits in very well. This is the *Lost *I fell in love with! :smiley:

191

When the ship’s medic injected the radio guy, I was hoping that maybe we would get an explanation for the stuff the Desmond used to inject himself with in the hatch. Maybe it was to protect him from long term exposure to the temporal magnets?

What did the radio guy say had led to him and some other guy from suffering time flashes?

192

I thought that the fact that his nose stopped bleeding was proof that he was “cured.”

193

For those who aren’t following too closely…Alvar Hanso is the CEO of the Hanso Group and the founder of the Hanso Foundation. I don’t know if it’s clear whether he created DHARMA or not. He is affiliated with the group, though, and appeared in the training videos we saw during the Lost Experience Game.

His great grandfather is Magnus Hanso who possibly commanded the Black Rock, was involved in slave trade, and is possibly buried on the island.

Tovard Hanso is the name mentioned in the auction during this episode as the owner of the book before Widmore buys it. It is unclear to the Lostpedia folks as to how Tovard and Alvar are related.

194

[QUOTE=Morbo]
One big problem I had with this episode was with this scene in the helicopter:

Sayid: “What do you hope to find on that freighter?”
Desmond: “Answers.”

This is where I expected Sayid to say: “Oh yes, thanks for bringing that up. I want to know who hired you to monitor that switch, who sent you the food supplies, what do you know about the numbers, what do you know about Dharma, tell me everything from the training films, tell me everything they told you about where this island is…”
[/QUOTE]

That would be a problem since Desmond was drafted, not hired.

195

[QUOTE=Morbo]
One big problem I had with this episode was with this scene in the helicopter:

Sayid: “What do you hope to find on that freighter?”
Desmond: “Answers.”

This is where I expected Sayid to say: “Oh yes, thanks for bringing that up. I want to know who hired you to monitor that switch, who sent you the food supplies, what do you know about the numbers, what do you know about Dharma, tell me everything from the training films, tell me everything they told you about where this island is…”
[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately, Desmond doesn’t know anything about any of those questions.

who hired you to monitor that switch - No one. He was on a round-the-world boat race when he ran into a storm and washed up on the Island. Kelvin dragged him to the Hatch and told him to start typing numbers.

who sent you the food supplies - Presumably DHARMA. All he knows is that there would be a lockdown then, afterwards, Kelvin would go and and bring food back.

what do you know about the numbers - Kelvin told him that unless he entered them every 108 minutes then the world would be destroyed. The film seemed to support that. He probably knows nothing beyond that.

what do you know about DHARMA - Kelvin worked for them, not Desmond. Kelvin said that he answered a want ad and wound up working for them on the Island. He described them as some “hippie, save the world” types and didn’t seem to know or care much about what else they did. They hired him and sent him to the Island; he didn’t know much else about them.

tell me everything from the training films - Sayid has presumably seen the same film that Desmond saw; there was only the one available to him. Desmond didn’t even see the additional footage that Mr. Eko found.

Tell me everything they told you about where this Island is - Somewhere in the south Pacific. Remember, Desmond never left the Hatch after being rescued because Kelvin told him there was a plague or something outside. Kelvin always wore his hazmat suit whenever he went outside. Desmond never went out until he saw Kelvin’s suit was ripped and followed him. Kelvin probably didn’t know much beyond that either (remember, he was continuing to create the invisible ink map so he presumably didn’t know much about the Island for certain either).

Also, remember that people like Juliet were drugged before coming to the Island. All she knows for certain (for example) is that it is “Not in Portland”. A large number of people on the Island may have no idea where they are.

The drug he was taking was presumably something to protect him from the “plague” on the Island. Kelvin injects him with it shortly after he rescues him. It may simply be a placebo designed to keep him in the Hatch by thinking that if he didn’t continue to take it he would become sick and die.
If Sayid needs answers, Desmond is the wrong person to look for them from. Either Ben or the freighter people are probably the only ones who can tell him what he would want to know.

196

[QUOTE=tanstaafl]
If Sayid needs answers, Desmond is the wrong person to look for them from. Either Ben or the freighter people are probably the only ones who can tell him what he would want to know.
[/QUOTE]

It’d be pretty fun, though, to see if Sayid could piece together that Desmond’s Kelvin is his Kelvin, too.

197

[QUOTE=tanstaafl]
If Sayid needs answers, Desmond is the wrong person to look for them from. Either Ben or the freighter people are probably the only ones who can tell him what he would want to know.
[/QUOTE]

[sub]Oh.[/sub]

198

[QUOTE=Ronald C. Semone]
Does anyone still think all these plot lines were thought out, even if only in rough draft, when the series started instead of being made up as we go along?
[/QUOTE]

No. The writers have said something to the effect that they started with the beginning and the ending mapped out, but the middle part was flexible. They are adding bits to the middle as they go along. Though always with the intention of leading to the end they had planned.

For instance, I understand that they had originally intended Ben/ Henry as a one shot character, but liked him so much they made him a major part of the middle.They hadn’t planned him at the beginning.

199

I wonder if the time displacement thing is the sickness that CFL told Sayid about it Season 1. Minkowski said something similar:

200

[QUOTE=Baldwin]
I remember back in the first season, the writers saying that everything would have a real-world explanation. Seems a little unlikely now, what with the time travel ‘n’ such.
[/QUOTE]

I still maintain that any “real world explanation” for Lost was trashed in the first episode when a gigantic invisible monster knocked down a bunch of trees.

Also, did anyone notice that Mr. Widmore left the water running before he left the bathroom? I think he knows what’s happening to Desmond and that was a subtle sign for him. Kind of a “When you wake up, you will have been unconscious for a very long time.”