Well, it's official... last night's Season 4 finale of LOST was mind-blowing!!! "There's No Place Like Home" was just what we needed to pose tantalizing new questions for us to ponder during another 8 month hiatus, but it also answered some very longstanding questions... namely the whole polar bear conundrum that's been puzzling us since the VERY FIRST episode of the series!
Now some of you make think I'm daft for seeing solutions wrapped in that enigma of an episode, but certain revelatory moments got me thinking today, and I believe that these may be some quite deft observations. Hear me out.
After nearly a whole year's worth of setup since the Orchid orientation video was released at Comic-Con 2007, we finally made it to DHARMA's Orchid station proper. It was confirmed once and for all that the station involved experiments in travel through space and time (so called "four dimensional space"), and after Ben blew up the Vault by sticking many forks in the metaphorical microwave he took the dharka and descended into the frozen underground of the Island. Based on our friend Dr. Halliwax's description of "negatively charged exotic matter" in the orientation, the existence of the dharka for no apparent cold climes on the Island, and a similar situation we'd seen with the Swan station (where DHARMA tapped into forces greater than their understanding), we know our favorite Initiative had gone to this seemingly secret lair and just like the electromagnetic forces beneath what we used to call the Hatch, couldn't resist tapping into this mind boggling force for the sake of scientific research.
But WHAT ON EARTH does this have to do with polar bears?!? Well, think waaaaay back. Based on the cages from Kate and Sawyer's incarceration at the Hydra station (on the OTHER island), we know that DHARMA brought the bears there for some sort of experimentation. According to the blast door map in the Swan, supposedly it was to genetically tamper with them and see if science could influence evolution so that the bears could acclimate to the drastic change in environment. But now that we think of it, wasn't that feeding system a little complex? I'd argue that they were training our non-rabbit furry white friends for something more, and as Charlie pointed out in one of his conversations with Locke, polar bears "are like the Einsteins of the bear community," (Further Instructions). What were they being trained for, then? Well, the finale showed us the subterranean ice cavern which contained what will forever be known as the "frozen donkey wheel"... the mechanism used to "move" the Island. Knowing that behind that crank was all that "exotic matter" and not wanting to put a human to the task of making that wheel of uncertain fate turn, what's the next best option to be able to see what it will do? Like sending monkeys into space, the polar bears were a natural choice to send as animal test subjects.
Think about it... polar bears have natural dharkas that would allow them to stand the freezing cold bowels of that chamber for as much time as necessary. And they're smart enough to figure out a complex feeding contraption, so they'd be able to learn how to turn a wheel. Oh, and did you see how long and hard Ben had to struggle (even with the leverage the crowbar provided) before he got that thing to move? 3 words: polar bear strength. The higher ups of DHARMA, Halliwax included, were actually planning to use the polar bears to push that wheel of all frozen wheels below what became the Orchid from the start. And, furthermore, they succeeded.
We know at least one test subject was used... landing in the Tunisian desert just as Ben did after his spin (The Shape of Thing to Come), eventually becoming the skeleton that we saw Charlotte with in her desert digging flashback (Confirmed Dead). Along with the bones she found a DHARMA collar with the Hydra logo, proving that either Sawyer or Kate was kept where our time traveler had once called home.
That leads us to the next tantalizing deduction. If DHARMA used a polar bear to experiment with turning the FDW, and it wound up in Tunisia a la Ben, that can only mean that DHARMA previously moved the Island!!! I think they themselves were responsible for it being located in the South Pacific as it was for all of Seasons 1-4, and that when it appeared there it displaced the wreck of the Black Rock from being underwater to being inland where Rousseau and our Lostaways found it. With Widmore's comments on how the Island used to be/still is his, I have a sneaking suspicion that either a) he was a joint partner with Hanso, or b) was the on-Island manager of the Initiative. Either way, since the Island moved and the Purge occurred he's not been able to find it, until of course he explores the relation to the Black Rock that he somehow knows about. Widmore buys the ship's ledger at the Southfields auction that a consciousness-jarred Desmond witnesses in 1996 (The Constant), and from it he gleans enough about the location to send his motley crew and mercenaries on the Freighter… But not before having successfully planted a staged wreck of Oceanic 815 where he could claim he was searching for the Black Rock: in the Sunda Trench.
There ya have it... Polar bears and the Island's tumultuous recent past. But I'd be remiss if I said that's all I thought of TNPLH. In all honesty, I keep returning to that Frozen Donkey Wheel, and those of you who listen to the official podcasts from Darlton know why. In previous seasons Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (exec producers, writers, and the co-creator/show runner of the show, respectively) gave us the codename of the secret/momentous scene in the finales: "the Bagel" (Season 1), "the Challah" (Season 2), and "the Snake in the Mailbox" (Season 3's mindf*ck of a flash forward reveal). This year's finale, however, they practically handed the moment to us on a silver platter with "the Frozen Donkey Wheel," since that was, quite literally, what we saw used as the device to move the Island. Being the masterminds that they are, and seeing how amazingly genius it was to dare hiding that moment in plain sight, I began to re-evaluate some of the other statements that the dynamic duo have made publicly about LOST to see if anything else jumped out at me. Lo and behold, after seeing all the sci-fi that this show exudes, I have to point to what Darlton have called the series time and time again. Whenever the issue of canonicity has come up, the show itself has been called the "Mothership."
Now, I know what you're all thinking: the Island being an alien spaceship was a theory debunked by Damon ages ago. Normally I would agree with you and move on, but consider for a moment that The Powers That Be initially denied Aaron being a member of the Oceanic 6, leading to wild speculation about who the final member was right up until a promotional clip from ABC revealed him to actually count. The writers and show makers wouldn't just acknowledge if someone figured out a key element of the series, plain and simple. They've said it themselves, and this has been further proven by the fan inspired theories reviewed by Darlton, where the two have picked and rated the speculation of fans not based on accuracy, but rather imagination. (Just look up "What is the Smoke Monster?" on Yahoo Answers and see who they picked out of 8,000 some-odd results, as well as their own comments on the matter, not to mention their more recent U.S. Weekly theory ratings.)
In this latest installment of the show, Locke specifically said "It isn't an Island…" to Jack. And though John may not know what it truly is (yet), or simply have called it "a place where miracles happen," I bet he's right about that first bit. Which brings us back to the Mothership. If the "Island" is really an alien spaceship which crashed on Earth in ancient, possibly even prehistoric times, that would explain quite a lot, to tell the truth. All the earthly vegetation and such could have built up on it from being derelict for so long, effectively masking it as the Island we've come to know and love. It would allow for various cultures [read: the Hostiles/Others] to have come across it and made it their home or some holy site, which would account for what appears to be the ancient evidence of human culture: the Ruins, the door to Ben's Smokey-Summoning Chamber, and perhaps even the Temple and Four-toed Statue). More importantly though, it would give precedence for, if not explain much of the otherworldly things like the electromagnetism and time travel-causing negative exotic matter.
I dunno about the rest of you, but Ben cranking that wheel definitely sounded like it started some turbines to me. Can you say propulsion system? And don't even try to deny that the smoke monster has been acting very similarly to the alien(s) of the "The Abyss" (for those who don't know, in the movie there was an alien made out of what seemed to be a column of water that began to mimic human form when one of the characters touched it, projected images of humanity's barbarism to a hero in his final moments, and then reanimated him for sacrificing himself to save its kind. Change the water to smoke. Sound familiar?) Jacob could even possibly be the last surviving member of the original crew suffering the time-ravaging affects of the crash, or maybe the ship's malfunctioning AI navigation; a holographic representation (in human form) that's actually the ship's systems. Comparisons with Rommie from TV's "Andromeda" come to mind, though Lexa Doig is much more fetching than our ghostly cabin misanthrope.
That would also give major reasons for why the scientific minds of DHARMA wanted to be there sooo badly, too. Why, to experiment with, figure out, and possibly reverse engineer the alien technology of course! Based on DHARMA's classic tact of keeping most of their own people in the dark, I'd say probably the few higher ups would know what they were actually dealing with, but not many: Hanso, Widmore, Dr. Multiple Personality (a.k.a. Candle/Wickmund/Halliwax) from all the orientations. The conflict between DHARMA and the natives was probably just a larger scale version of Science vs. Faith, with the Initiative being seen as exploiting the Island in their research and the "Hostiles" being the ancient sentinels that saw it needing protection at all cost. I wouldn't want anything alien falling into the hands of men like former arms dealer Alvar Hanso or power hungry Charles Widmore, either.
That's all I've got so far, but when I think of more I'll let you all know. Take of this what you will, but rest assured that the polar bears are a mystery solved, and be confident in the knowledge that DHARMA moved the Island to the Black Rock's location, which Widmore used to track it down in the South Pacific. Whether you believe the rest of this and buy into an alien explanation, one thing is certain: we now know that many of the mystical and mythical elements of the show come from the bowels of the Island. The electromagnetism emanating from beneath the Swan, exotic matter far below the Orchid, and the tunnels/vents that are used to summon/release Smokey are all deep, dark secrets indicating that, if nothing else, the knowledge of what we're dealing with will only be revealed by either taking a leap of faith or digging for answers.
Theory by Keeping Pace
Now some of you make think I'm daft for seeing solutions wrapped in that enigma of an episode, but certain revelatory moments got me thinking today, and I believe that these may be some quite deft observations. Hear me out.
After nearly a whole year's worth of setup since the Orchid orientation video was released at Comic-Con 2007, we finally made it to DHARMA's Orchid station proper. It was confirmed once and for all that the station involved experiments in travel through space and time (so called "four dimensional space"), and after Ben blew up the Vault by sticking many forks in the metaphorical microwave he took the dharka and descended into the frozen underground of the Island. Based on our friend Dr. Halliwax's description of "negatively charged exotic matter" in the orientation, the existence of the dharka for no apparent cold climes on the Island, and a similar situation we'd seen with the Swan station (where DHARMA tapped into forces greater than their understanding), we know our favorite Initiative had gone to this seemingly secret lair and just like the electromagnetic forces beneath what we used to call the Hatch, couldn't resist tapping into this mind boggling force for the sake of scientific research.
But WHAT ON EARTH does this have to do with polar bears?!? Well, think waaaaay back. Based on the cages from Kate and Sawyer's incarceration at the Hydra station (on the OTHER island), we know that DHARMA brought the bears there for some sort of experimentation. According to the blast door map in the Swan, supposedly it was to genetically tamper with them and see if science could influence evolution so that the bears could acclimate to the drastic change in environment. But now that we think of it, wasn't that feeding system a little complex? I'd argue that they were training our non-rabbit furry white friends for something more, and as Charlie pointed out in one of his conversations with Locke, polar bears "are like the Einsteins of the bear community," (Further Instructions). What were they being trained for, then? Well, the finale showed us the subterranean ice cavern which contained what will forever be known as the "frozen donkey wheel"... the mechanism used to "move" the Island. Knowing that behind that crank was all that "exotic matter" and not wanting to put a human to the task of making that wheel of uncertain fate turn, what's the next best option to be able to see what it will do? Like sending monkeys into space, the polar bears were a natural choice to send as animal test subjects.
Think about it... polar bears have natural dharkas that would allow them to stand the freezing cold bowels of that chamber for as much time as necessary. And they're smart enough to figure out a complex feeding contraption, so they'd be able to learn how to turn a wheel. Oh, and did you see how long and hard Ben had to struggle (even with the leverage the crowbar provided) before he got that thing to move? 3 words: polar bear strength. The higher ups of DHARMA, Halliwax included, were actually planning to use the polar bears to push that wheel of all frozen wheels below what became the Orchid from the start. And, furthermore, they succeeded.
We know at least one test subject was used... landing in the Tunisian desert just as Ben did after his spin (The Shape of Thing to Come), eventually becoming the skeleton that we saw Charlotte with in her desert digging flashback (Confirmed Dead). Along with the bones she found a DHARMA collar with the Hydra logo, proving that either Sawyer or Kate was kept where our time traveler had once called home.
That leads us to the next tantalizing deduction. If DHARMA used a polar bear to experiment with turning the FDW, and it wound up in Tunisia a la Ben, that can only mean that DHARMA previously moved the Island!!! I think they themselves were responsible for it being located in the South Pacific as it was for all of Seasons 1-4, and that when it appeared there it displaced the wreck of the Black Rock from being underwater to being inland where Rousseau and our Lostaways found it. With Widmore's comments on how the Island used to be/still is his, I have a sneaking suspicion that either a) he was a joint partner with Hanso, or b) was the on-Island manager of the Initiative. Either way, since the Island moved and the Purge occurred he's not been able to find it, until of course he explores the relation to the Black Rock that he somehow knows about. Widmore buys the ship's ledger at the Southfields auction that a consciousness-jarred Desmond witnesses in 1996 (The Constant), and from it he gleans enough about the location to send his motley crew and mercenaries on the Freighter… But not before having successfully planted a staged wreck of Oceanic 815 where he could claim he was searching for the Black Rock: in the Sunda Trench.
There ya have it... Polar bears and the Island's tumultuous recent past. But I'd be remiss if I said that's all I thought of TNPLH. In all honesty, I keep returning to that Frozen Donkey Wheel, and those of you who listen to the official podcasts from Darlton know why. In previous seasons Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (exec producers, writers, and the co-creator/show runner of the show, respectively) gave us the codename of the secret/momentous scene in the finales: "the Bagel" (Season 1), "the Challah" (Season 2), and "the Snake in the Mailbox" (Season 3's mindf*ck of a flash forward reveal). This year's finale, however, they practically handed the moment to us on a silver platter with "the Frozen Donkey Wheel," since that was, quite literally, what we saw used as the device to move the Island. Being the masterminds that they are, and seeing how amazingly genius it was to dare hiding that moment in plain sight, I began to re-evaluate some of the other statements that the dynamic duo have made publicly about LOST to see if anything else jumped out at me. Lo and behold, after seeing all the sci-fi that this show exudes, I have to point to what Darlton have called the series time and time again. Whenever the issue of canonicity has come up, the show itself has been called the "Mothership."
Now, I know what you're all thinking: the Island being an alien spaceship was a theory debunked by Damon ages ago. Normally I would agree with you and move on, but consider for a moment that The Powers That Be initially denied Aaron being a member of the Oceanic 6, leading to wild speculation about who the final member was right up until a promotional clip from ABC revealed him to actually count. The writers and show makers wouldn't just acknowledge if someone figured out a key element of the series, plain and simple. They've said it themselves, and this has been further proven by the fan inspired theories reviewed by Darlton, where the two have picked and rated the speculation of fans not based on accuracy, but rather imagination. (Just look up "What is the Smoke Monster?" on Yahoo Answers and see who they picked out of 8,000 some-odd results, as well as their own comments on the matter, not to mention their more recent U.S. Weekly theory ratings.)
In this latest installment of the show, Locke specifically said "It isn't an Island…" to Jack. And though John may not know what it truly is (yet), or simply have called it "a place where miracles happen," I bet he's right about that first bit. Which brings us back to the Mothership. If the "Island" is really an alien spaceship which crashed on Earth in ancient, possibly even prehistoric times, that would explain quite a lot, to tell the truth. All the earthly vegetation and such could have built up on it from being derelict for so long, effectively masking it as the Island we've come to know and love. It would allow for various cultures [read: the Hostiles/Others] to have come across it and made it their home or some holy site, which would account for what appears to be the ancient evidence of human culture: the Ruins, the door to Ben's Smokey-Summoning Chamber, and perhaps even the Temple and Four-toed Statue). More importantly though, it would give precedence for, if not explain much of the otherworldly things like the electromagnetism and time travel-causing negative exotic matter.
I dunno about the rest of you, but Ben cranking that wheel definitely sounded like it started some turbines to me. Can you say propulsion system? And don't even try to deny that the smoke monster has been acting very similarly to the alien(s) of the "The Abyss" (for those who don't know, in the movie there was an alien made out of what seemed to be a column of water that began to mimic human form when one of the characters touched it, projected images of humanity's barbarism to a hero in his final moments, and then reanimated him for sacrificing himself to save its kind. Change the water to smoke. Sound familiar?) Jacob could even possibly be the last surviving member of the original crew suffering the time-ravaging affects of the crash, or maybe the ship's malfunctioning AI navigation; a holographic representation (in human form) that's actually the ship's systems. Comparisons with Rommie from TV's "Andromeda" come to mind, though Lexa Doig is much more fetching than our ghostly cabin misanthrope.
That would also give major reasons for why the scientific minds of DHARMA wanted to be there sooo badly, too. Why, to experiment with, figure out, and possibly reverse engineer the alien technology of course! Based on DHARMA's classic tact of keeping most of their own people in the dark, I'd say probably the few higher ups would know what they were actually dealing with, but not many: Hanso, Widmore, Dr. Multiple Personality (a.k.a. Candle/Wickmund/Halliwax) from all the orientations. The conflict between DHARMA and the natives was probably just a larger scale version of Science vs. Faith, with the Initiative being seen as exploiting the Island in their research and the "Hostiles" being the ancient sentinels that saw it needing protection at all cost. I wouldn't want anything alien falling into the hands of men like former arms dealer Alvar Hanso or power hungry Charles Widmore, either.
That's all I've got so far, but when I think of more I'll let you all know. Take of this what you will, but rest assured that the polar bears are a mystery solved, and be confident in the knowledge that DHARMA moved the Island to the Black Rock's location, which Widmore used to track it down in the South Pacific. Whether you believe the rest of this and buy into an alien explanation, one thing is certain: we now know that many of the mystical and mythical elements of the show come from the bowels of the Island. The electromagnetism emanating from beneath the Swan, exotic matter far below the Orchid, and the tunnels/vents that are used to summon/release Smokey are all deep, dark secrets indicating that, if nothing else, the knowledge of what we're dealing with will only be revealed by either taking a leap of faith or digging for answers.
Theory by Keeping Pace
