[Keeping Pace]

Part 1 of 7


Well, it’s official... the 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 the day after, 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 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. Upon biting off more than they could chew or deciding to play it safe, the Initiative built the dummy greenhouse, used the story of a “botanical research facility” in an effort to keep secrecy, and put the Orchid station well below ground, using the Vault to seal off the freezer and downgrade to smaller scale “silly experiments” involving “time traveling bunnies.”



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 — to 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 as animal test subjects.


Think about it... Polar bears have natural dharkas (a.k.a. fur) that would allow them to stand the freezing cold bowels of that chamber which was not too dissimilar to the climate they live(d) in. 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? Three words: polar bear strength. Now, for those of you who are skeptical, I’m not suggesting that the bears necessarily used the same ladders that Ben did in getting down to that chamber. I’m sure that, before the Orchid was finished and the Vault became the final seal between the station and that icebox, there was an easier, less steep way down there. Whatever the case, 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 bear 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. A possible explanation for why the wheel-turners keep winding up in the Tunisian desert: maybe each spoke (and the amount of turning before touching the other side) corresponds to somewhere different, and Ben chose the same as his predecessor...


Continued in Part 2...