mixuk
4701
What crate? I don’t remember seeing any.
Jazar
4702
The new plane crash survivors were pulling in a large crate on the beach of the smaller island. My gf said it could be where Locke’s casket came in during travel but it seems much more insidious to me.
Biiiiig metal crate. Also curious what they’ve got in it.
And how the hell did Caesar get a double-barreled sawed-off on a freaking commercial plane?
Khoram
4704
He didn’t bring it on the plane, he found it in Ben’s Hydra station office when ransacking it, along with some maps I believe. This was 3-4 episodes ago I think.
Oh, that’s right, I do remember him ransacking the office and finding the gun and lying about finding it.
My bad.
Khoram
4706
Something I haven’t seen anyone mention yet: what’s your take on when young-Ben (with the laughable wig/hair) took Alex and told Danielle “if you hear the whispers, you turn around and run” or whatever? I think that’s the first time we’ve had one of the Others acknowledge the existence of the whispers, isn’t it? And the way he mentioned them, it seemed to almost suggest that an outsider would encounter them at some point on the island where they are in danger of crossing a boundary of some sort, no? Are the whispers part of the Island’s defense mechanism, along with Smokey?
Man, I can’t wait til we find out just what the heck Smokey and the whispers are for real (and I hope it doesn’t suck). The whispers are pretty interesting/creepy. You guys ever read the transcripts? Really weird stuff. Almost as if its the characters we know observing but unable to directly interact with the events going on. Sometimes they say stuff like “Shhh, they’ll hear us!” or “do you think they saw us?” WTF?!
Khoram
4707
Someone on another forum mentioned an ancient Egyptian story called the “Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor”. Some excerpts from the wikipedia article:
The sailor then describes how his ship, manned by one hundred and twenty sailors, had sunk in a storm and how he alone had survived and was washed up on an island.
While making a burnt offering to the gods he hears thunder and feels the earth shake and sees a giant serpent approach him.
Laughing at him, the serpent says that the sailor is not rich, but that he (the serpent) is Lord of Punt and that the island is rich in incense, and that when the sailor leaves he will not see the island again as it will become water.
John Baines writes that the interpretation of the story has moved from seeing it as a simple folk tale to “one of a complex, many-layered narrative in which the traveller moves in space and time to the limit of the cosmos, to a mythical place where he encounters a primordial god who relates to him a moralized vision of the end of the cosmos, and then returns to Egypt.” while Richard Mathews writes that this “oldest fantasy text contains archetypal narrative of the genre: an uninitiated hero on a sea journey is thrown off course by a storm, encounters an enchanted island, confronts a monster, and survives, wiser for the experience.”
More here.
I suspect we’ll learn more about the whispers next week with the Miles-centric episode.
They do seem to be leaning heavily toward some sort of ancient afterlife angle to both the Smoke Monster and the mystery of the island in general. IF they’re heading that way, then Richard was a brilliant bit of casting way back when as he’s got the “Egyptian High Priest” look down cold, even dressed in modern attire.
Houngan
4709
Hmm. The Land of Punt is mentioned in the recent Geographic article on Hatshepsut, it’s an unknown land but apparently a source of treasure.
H.
I’d buy a Smokey and the Whispers album.
bloo
4712
Except for when smokey grabs you by the leg and pulls you down a hole, sometimes ripping off limbs in the process.
The smoke monster makes observers think that they see that happening, but in reality the person pulled down the hole is going there under his/her own power, or is not even there at all. It’s an illusion, with illusory ripped-off body parts. I’m also going to guess that the persons being fooled by the smoke monster at some subconcious level actually know that it’s an illusion; there isn’t much if any blood, and no one seems to act totally grossed out by the ripped-off body parts in their hands.
And this post also is probably total crap. :)
So when Eko was being slapped around the jungle by the giant fist of awesome smokey doom, he was really just so bad at ballet that it killed him?
He could have been killed by anything, or not killed at all. The Island is good at illusion. Perhaps he fell out of a tree, or was gored by a water buffalo the Island had previously disguised as a tree, or medium-Ben’s hairpiece.
See how this works? My hypothesis cannot be disproven. ;)
Except I thought that there were people totally watching him get the crap slapped out of him. I mean, sure, maybe EVERYBODY’S hallucinating, but that seems like The Evil Genius Problem - Prime Time Edition. It works as a theory, but I’d be disappointed if it were true.
I have to admit I’m fascinated by the plot twists and turns and new and crazy things that come up each show, which have to be explained somehow by the writers in an entertaining (hopefully) way. I’m pretty sure that the Island-as-illusionist theme will be a part of that, maybe a small part.
And to answer your post, suppose the Island can somehow implant false memories in (some) people under the right circumstances? Whatever people thought they saw might not have happened, or more realistically, did happen but not quite the way they remember it? That actually seems somewhat likely, to me at least. It would have to eventually be explained in a more or less plausible way in a future episode, of course, to make the show work as entertainment. I can’t think of any evidence from past episodes to support this, though.
I really, really hope you’re wrong, Arctangent. If the answers turn out to be “It was all a dream/illusion!” there will be riots in the streets.
/hyperbole
bloo
4719
Way to break it down into subjective reality and phenomenology, Thermostellar Bomb #20.
:)
