"CHANG: Hello. My name is Dr. Marvin Candle and I....you know what? Forget it. No point in games anymore, right? If you're watching this now, you already know that my name is, my real name is Pierre Chang and I...
(baby cries off screen and the Doctor looks over. He gets up from the couch and yells: "Stanisław! Just take him outside, please! I've got one chance at this." He sits back down.)
[static] ...professor of theoretical astro-physics from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was brought to this... [static] godforsaken island years ago to conduct experiments to study the Kerr metric solution to the Einstein field equation and... [static] If I can hold this pinhole open long enough, you should be receiving my message roughly thirty years [static] If you're... [static] The American president is a man named George W. Bush and you share digital information instantaneously on something called "Internet".
And, unfortunately, my colleagues and I are all dead and if [static], of a violent purge, one that we are apparently powerless to escape. (he looks down sadly at his left arm, which looks normal, and grasps it with his other normal hand). [static] This information comes to me from a source that has proven himself to be credible.
OTHER MAN: None of that matters. It doesn't matter. Just get to it, please! [static]
CHANG: Because, if this transmission is successful, it's proof the work I've been doing here is valid. This place, it has extraordinary properties. I'm begging you, no matter what's happened, it's imperative that the DHARMA Initiative be reconstituted. You have to continue to research [static] and you have to do it now. Time is not just of the essence, it is the essence. Perhaps you'll be able to find a way to save us, to change the past and to [static] (something) You can't let it....
OTHER MAN: This is useless! Pierre? It's just useless. They'll never gonna see this. How do I turn this off?
CHANG: No, no! W-w-what are you doing?
OTHER MAN: How do you turn it off?
CHANG: No! What are you doing? [static]"
I think that the "credible source" that Chang mentions is Daniel Faraday.
How?
It's a bearings issue...
"DANIEL: (carrying suitcase) Hey, Frank. Frank? (quietly) Just one thing. Just be sure that you follow the same exact bearing that we came in on. No matter what. By that, I mean no matter what. Just – just stay on it.
FRANK: Roger that."
"Damon Lindelof: DHARMA drops...
Carlton Cuse: DHARMA drops -
Damon Lindelof: Will we ever learn?
Carlton Cuse: [sigh] You know, that's good. I mean, that- that's- that recalls a lot of history with the show but, I think that next year we will be dealing uh, a little bit more significantly with some DHARMA things and I think DHARMA drops might be one of those questions that season five will provide you with the answer for. Not gonna happen between now and the finale, but when you- when the show is back next season, I'm thinkin DHARMA drops will be your - if that's really what you need to know about the show, I feel like you will feel satisfied.
Damon Lindelof: If a DHARMA drop happens on the wrong bearing, does that mean that something can get dropped off in like 1965 and arrive in 2005?
Carlton Cuse: I think that's an episode.
Damon Lindelof: Whoa... [Carlton chuckling] alright I'm gonna write that one down."
When Doctor Ray had his throat slit and was flung overboard his corpse drifted to The Island on a bearing that meant from the perspective of the people on The Island it washed up at a point in time before he was killed.
Daniel's morse code message to the Kahana suffered from this exact same effect...
"Carlton Cuse: According to the rules of our show, a communication between sat phones is not affected by temporal distortion, but if you were to send a radio broadcast and/or a telegraph message, it would be affected by temporal distortion"
This also explains how the Freighter Folk on The Island were able to communicate with the people onboard the Kahana in "real-time", if the call had been made on one of the sat-phones the people on the boat would've reported that the Doc had had an "accident".
I believe it's also possible that The Others could use this effect to travel back and forth in time, if so then it's possible that when Richard Alpert was playing the Panchen Lama during his visit to a young John Locke it actually occurred on a date after the crash of O815 on September 22nd, 2004, after word got back to The Others camp about a man who was once paralysed and could now walk, someone who could be very special, hence the reason for Alpert's visit and test!
But, I (slightly) digress...
So, at the start of S5 I think Daniel Faraday is going to find himself washing up sometime in the late 1970's, sometime between The DHARMA Initiative's arrival on The Island in 1975 and the latest year the message could have been sent, 1978.
At Comic Con someone asked this question...
"Q. How did Daniel know about the Secondary Protocol.
Damon Lidelof: Daniel knew about the Secondary Protocol because he has this little notebook with him, and written in that notebook are all sorts of things that have already happened or are about to happen, and it will figure very prominently into season five"
The only way I can see that Daniel's notebook can contain information about things that are about to happen is if it travels with him to the past.
This notebook, and his knowledge of things such as the Secondary Protocol, something that should only be known to the top echelon of the Initiative (people like Widmore) convinces Chang that Daniel is for real, that he is a "credible source".
This way we could see Daniel live through the 1970's, through The Incident, through the 1980's when Danielle's team turns up...
"Carlton: We will say that you will see definitively Rousseau's story but to use 'flashback' would be disingenuous"
And finally through the first few years of the 1990's, before The DHARMA Initiative is purged.
Somewhere along the way Daniel could also be responsible for a baby Charlotte Lewis leaving The Island? Which leads me to the next part of my theory...
If you've been exposed to a large dose of the type of EM radiation that Desmond & Daniel have been, one of the side effects of taking a "bad" bearing on a trip through the temporal distorion field that surrounds The Island is an unsticking of the mind in time, like Billy Pilgrim from Slughterhouse-5, though not exactly the same as what happened to Desmond when he turned the key (which was his entire life flashing before his eyes, rather than a jump between two places).
I think in 1996 when Desmond visited Daniel in Oxford and told him that in the future he would end up on an Island, and that it was from this Island his future-self would be giving Desmond information to give to himself in the past* he figured out that there must be another source of the EM radiation he was experimenting with and that if he was going to end up there (one of the things he told Desmond was that "you can't change the future") both he and Desmond would exist in both places at both times, he believed that should anything go wrong, either with his experiments or on his future trip to this Island, Desmond would be able to function as his constant, which is why he wrote in big red capital letters...
"IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG DESMOND HUME WILL BE MY CONSTANT"
What Daniel didn't know when he wrote that is that he would end up in a past in which Desmond David Hume does not exist.
Charlotte, however, does.
*As an aside, when Daniel tells Desmond the correct frequency for his machine (2.342, oscillating at 11hz) where does that information come from? How can Daniel give himself the answer to a question he only knows the answer to because he gave it to himself?
If Daniel, physically in the past, has a mind unstuck in time, and it leaps between the past and the relative future (which is also Daniel's relative past) and during those flashes between now and then Daniel jots down some vague, strange things in his notebook, things about an Island and a strange group of people calling themselves The DI, then you could be left with the possibility that this is how Daniel came by knowledge of things like the Secondary Protocol.
Theory by Richardstone
(baby cries off screen and the Doctor looks over. He gets up from the couch and yells: "Stanisław! Just take him outside, please! I've got one chance at this." He sits back down.)
[static] ...professor of theoretical astro-physics from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was brought to this... [static] godforsaken island years ago to conduct experiments to study the Kerr metric solution to the Einstein field equation and... [static] If I can hold this pinhole open long enough, you should be receiving my message roughly thirty years [static] If you're... [static] The American president is a man named George W. Bush and you share digital information instantaneously on something called "Internet".
And, unfortunately, my colleagues and I are all dead and if [static], of a violent purge, one that we are apparently powerless to escape. (he looks down sadly at his left arm, which looks normal, and grasps it with his other normal hand). [static] This information comes to me from a source that has proven himself to be credible.
OTHER MAN: None of that matters. It doesn't matter. Just get to it, please! [static]
CHANG: Because, if this transmission is successful, it's proof the work I've been doing here is valid. This place, it has extraordinary properties. I'm begging you, no matter what's happened, it's imperative that the DHARMA Initiative be reconstituted. You have to continue to research [static] and you have to do it now. Time is not just of the essence, it is the essence. Perhaps you'll be able to find a way to save us, to change the past and to [static] (something) You can't let it....
OTHER MAN: This is useless! Pierre? It's just useless. They'll never gonna see this. How do I turn this off?
CHANG: No, no! W-w-what are you doing?
OTHER MAN: How do you turn it off?
CHANG: No! What are you doing? [static]"
I think that the "credible source" that Chang mentions is Daniel Faraday.
How?
It's a bearings issue...
"DANIEL: (carrying suitcase) Hey, Frank. Frank? (quietly) Just one thing. Just be sure that you follow the same exact bearing that we came in on. No matter what. By that, I mean no matter what. Just – just stay on it.
FRANK: Roger that."
"Damon Lindelof: DHARMA drops...
Carlton Cuse: DHARMA drops -
Damon Lindelof: Will we ever learn?
Carlton Cuse: [sigh] You know, that's good. I mean, that- that's- that recalls a lot of history with the show but, I think that next year we will be dealing uh, a little bit more significantly with some DHARMA things and I think DHARMA drops might be one of those questions that season five will provide you with the answer for. Not gonna happen between now and the finale, but when you- when the show is back next season, I'm thinkin DHARMA drops will be your - if that's really what you need to know about the show, I feel like you will feel satisfied.
Damon Lindelof: If a DHARMA drop happens on the wrong bearing, does that mean that something can get dropped off in like 1965 and arrive in 2005?
Carlton Cuse: I think that's an episode.
Damon Lindelof: Whoa... [Carlton chuckling] alright I'm gonna write that one down."
When Doctor Ray had his throat slit and was flung overboard his corpse drifted to The Island on a bearing that meant from the perspective of the people on The Island it washed up at a point in time before he was killed.
Daniel's morse code message to the Kahana suffered from this exact same effect...
"Carlton Cuse: According to the rules of our show, a communication between sat phones is not affected by temporal distortion, but if you were to send a radio broadcast and/or a telegraph message, it would be affected by temporal distortion"
This also explains how the Freighter Folk on The Island were able to communicate with the people onboard the Kahana in "real-time", if the call had been made on one of the sat-phones the people on the boat would've reported that the Doc had had an "accident".
I believe it's also possible that The Others could use this effect to travel back and forth in time, if so then it's possible that when Richard Alpert was playing the Panchen Lama during his visit to a young John Locke it actually occurred on a date after the crash of O815 on September 22nd, 2004, after word got back to The Others camp about a man who was once paralysed and could now walk, someone who could be very special, hence the reason for Alpert's visit and test!
But, I (slightly) digress...
So, at the start of S5 I think Daniel Faraday is going to find himself washing up sometime in the late 1970's, sometime between The DHARMA Initiative's arrival on The Island in 1975 and the latest year the message could have been sent, 1978.
At Comic Con someone asked this question...
"Q. How did Daniel know about the Secondary Protocol.
Damon Lidelof: Daniel knew about the Secondary Protocol because he has this little notebook with him, and written in that notebook are all sorts of things that have already happened or are about to happen, and it will figure very prominently into season five"
The only way I can see that Daniel's notebook can contain information about things that are about to happen is if it travels with him to the past.
This notebook, and his knowledge of things such as the Secondary Protocol, something that should only be known to the top echelon of the Initiative (people like Widmore) convinces Chang that Daniel is for real, that he is a "credible source".
This way we could see Daniel live through the 1970's, through The Incident, through the 1980's when Danielle's team turns up...
"Carlton: We will say that you will see definitively Rousseau's story but to use 'flashback' would be disingenuous"
And finally through the first few years of the 1990's, before The DHARMA Initiative is purged.
Somewhere along the way Daniel could also be responsible for a baby Charlotte Lewis leaving The Island? Which leads me to the next part of my theory...
If you've been exposed to a large dose of the type of EM radiation that Desmond & Daniel have been, one of the side effects of taking a "bad" bearing on a trip through the temporal distorion field that surrounds The Island is an unsticking of the mind in time, like Billy Pilgrim from Slughterhouse-5, though not exactly the same as what happened to Desmond when he turned the key (which was his entire life flashing before his eyes, rather than a jump between two places).
I think in 1996 when Desmond visited Daniel in Oxford and told him that in the future he would end up on an Island, and that it was from this Island his future-self would be giving Desmond information to give to himself in the past* he figured out that there must be another source of the EM radiation he was experimenting with and that if he was going to end up there (one of the things he told Desmond was that "you can't change the future") both he and Desmond would exist in both places at both times, he believed that should anything go wrong, either with his experiments or on his future trip to this Island, Desmond would be able to function as his constant, which is why he wrote in big red capital letters...
"IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG DESMOND HUME WILL BE MY CONSTANT"
What Daniel didn't know when he wrote that is that he would end up in a past in which Desmond David Hume does not exist.
Charlotte, however, does.
*As an aside, when Daniel tells Desmond the correct frequency for his machine (2.342, oscillating at 11hz) where does that information come from? How can Daniel give himself the answer to a question he only knows the answer to because he gave it to himself?
If Daniel, physically in the past, has a mind unstuck in time, and it leaps between the past and the relative future (which is also Daniel's relative past) and during those flashes between now and then Daniel jots down some vague, strange things in his notebook, things about an Island and a strange group of people calling themselves The DI, then you could be left with the possibility that this is how Daniel came by knowledge of things like the Secondary Protocol.
Theory by Richardstone
