Let's say you are creating the rules for a long lived organization on an island known to be occasionally visited by time travels, some of them malicious. What sort of rules might you adopt?
Well, first of all, if your organization is extremely hierarchical, you might be particularly worried about a malicious time traveler becoming your leader. You might therefore impose some sort of rule like "You have to kill your own father before becoming our leader" with the hopes that that will keep out at least certain types of time travelers. Note that we have seen Ben and Locke both kill their own father.
Second, you might try to minimize the ability of time travelers to figure out *when* they are. You would do this by saying "When making first contact with outsiders, you must wear very primitive clothes." Fake beards would be optional. It's interesting to me that this rule *wasn't* in place in 1954 when the Others attacked wearing Army uniforms; this suggests that the primitive garb came later, perhaps after Jacob learned via Richard that a time traveler had popped by.
And now for a completely different theory. It seems to me that the Island in its hopping tries to avoid having two copies of the same person there at the same time. It doesn't always succeed; we know that Sawyer, Locke and Juliet were there watching Claire give birth in 2004 while presumably also elsewhere on the island. (But wouldn't it be a mind fuck if the Left Behinders were actually only doing mental time hops ala Desmond? It would require at least two things: first, that their unaging bodies had been on the island the entire time, just like Richard's. Second, it would require Richard to put a compass on Locke's person sometime in 1954 before Locke's modern consciousness flashed in.) So I'm proposing this is more or a "course correction" type of rule, rather than something absolute.
Consider:
1) Danielle and Alex both died right before the time hopping starting, preventing them from time hopping back to 1988. Or maybe Widmore ordered them killed precisely to enable the Island to hop back to 1988.
2) The Others didn't seem to time hop along the Left Behinders. This might be reason.
3) We haven't seen any of the Left Behinders interact with other copies of themselves.
4) If we accept that Miles is Pierre Chung's son, he is the one most in danger of coming across another version of himself. I'm willing to make an exception for a guy who can rearrange distant photographs while talking to dead (perhaps Miles has a change-the-present analog to Desmond's change-the-past ability hypothesized by Faraday?)
Anyway, my theory about why Sun didn't pop down in 1977 with Jack, Hurley, Kate and Sayid is simply that she was already there.Theory by Thomas Colthurst
Well, first of all, if your organization is extremely hierarchical, you might be particularly worried about a malicious time traveler becoming your leader. You might therefore impose some sort of rule like "You have to kill your own father before becoming our leader" with the hopes that that will keep out at least certain types of time travelers. Note that we have seen Ben and Locke both kill their own father.
Second, you might try to minimize the ability of time travelers to figure out *when* they are. You would do this by saying "When making first contact with outsiders, you must wear very primitive clothes." Fake beards would be optional. It's interesting to me that this rule *wasn't* in place in 1954 when the Others attacked wearing Army uniforms; this suggests that the primitive garb came later, perhaps after Jacob learned via Richard that a time traveler had popped by.
And now for a completely different theory. It seems to me that the Island in its hopping tries to avoid having two copies of the same person there at the same time. It doesn't always succeed; we know that Sawyer, Locke and Juliet were there watching Claire give birth in 2004 while presumably also elsewhere on the island. (But wouldn't it be a mind fuck if the Left Behinders were actually only doing mental time hops ala Desmond? It would require at least two things: first, that their unaging bodies had been on the island the entire time, just like Richard's. Second, it would require Richard to put a compass on Locke's person sometime in 1954 before Locke's modern consciousness flashed in.) So I'm proposing this is more or a "course correction" type of rule, rather than something absolute.
Consider:
1) Danielle and Alex both died right before the time hopping starting, preventing them from time hopping back to 1988. Or maybe Widmore ordered them killed precisely to enable the Island to hop back to 1988.
2) The Others didn't seem to time hop along the Left Behinders. This might be reason.
3) We haven't seen any of the Left Behinders interact with other copies of themselves.
4) If we accept that Miles is Pierre Chung's son, he is the one most in danger of coming across another version of himself. I'm willing to make an exception for a guy who can rearrange distant photographs while talking to dead (perhaps Miles has a change-the-present analog to Desmond's change-the-past ability hypothesized by Faraday?)
Anyway, my theory about why Sun didn't pop down in 1977 with Jack, Hurley, Kate and Sayid is simply that she was already there.Theory by Thomas Colthurst
