[Keeping Pace]

Originally Posted by D-Roc

Hey Keeping Pace, welcome to the LC!

Very well written piece and an enjoyable read. I certainly agree that the Polar bear we saw in Confirmed Dead arrived in the desert via Dharma's dabbling. But i'm not sold on the idea of them pushing the wheel. It has crossed my mind since the finale, but at this moment in time I cannot picture a massive bear fitting in-between those narrow spokes and pushing/pulling the wheel.

I'm not saying it's not possible..but I just can't see it:


I do agree that the area below the Orhid (where all the exotic matter is) was a different landscape pre-Dharma tampering, and that the Vault was the final seal on the good stuff.

However re: the Polar bear in Tunisia, my opinion is that it arrived there via the Hydra island and some similar yet non-wheel turning excersise. Just like Desmond was able to time travel without turning the wheel below the Orcid, i'm thinking that there is or was another way in which the Poloar bear was sent through space and possibly time.

I think that the wheel was originally put there by an ancient civilisation..possibly what we humans would call 'alien', and Dharma used it as a prototype in a bid to replicate it's time-travelling effects on a far more 'reliable' scale. I also think that the wheel was difficult to turn not because it required 'polar bear strength', but because it was literally frozen in place after years of non-activity

But who knows, perhaps the Polar bear was unwittingly sent to Tunisia by Walt (we know that the Others got "more than they bargained for" when they took him):


His minds-eye has been known do to crazy things before..that coupled with the islands portal to Tunisia and his impressionable mind:



Or perhaps Desmond..


That said, I do like your post..I don't agree with the method of the Polar ending up in the desert, but I do agree on other aspects. I'll catch up with the other parts later

Thanks for such a warm welcome

First off, I believe there were 2 reasons they showed us that the wheel room was frozen. 1 was to make us realize that cold + Ben's bodily time travel = how Charlotte found the polar bear skeleton in Tunsia. The other would be to have us link the freezing of the C4 bomb's battery to prevent it from activating and blowing up the freighter was the same reason why the Island wasn't traveling all over the place all the time... the exotic matter has been on ice, and only works its magic when someone excites the particles (or when DHARMA taps it in small doses).


That said, we've only seen evidence of one polar bear's remains in Tunisia (in the Sahara just outside Medenine, to be exact), so the scenario I picture is that the DI used a polar bear as a guinea pig to turn the wheel when they first came across it so that they could figure out what exactly would happen. While I understand where you are coming from, I don't think anyone of the DHARMA scientists would be volunteering (or even willing) to be a human test subject that turned a wheel linked to some negatively charged exotic matter without having any idea of what it would to them... nor would it be a smart thing to do if you don't know you're not potentially losing whatever intellect that scientist has if anything negative happens (like, say, appearing to vanish, whether transported somewhere unknown or simply seeming to have been vaporized -- even if they somehow figured out the wheel turner was transported, they likely had no way of telling where they would end up).


And while I'm not convinced that the spokes are really as narrowly spaced as people seem to think (since Ben was pretty spread out in trying to use all his body weight to turn the wheel), I think there's a reason we had our attention drawn to the holes in the ends of the spokes... Ben even seemed to want to use them first when he stuck the crowbar in one and tried to turn, as if he knew they'd been used in that capacity before! I think this is the reason (other than for exposition on the part of the storytellers) that Charlotte found a DI Hydra collar at the dig site... Picture a polar bear chained to the wheel thru one of those spoke-holes. No more problem w/ it fitting between the "narrow" gaps between the spokes... Also, I don't think it's conicidental that Darlton chose the term "Frozen Donkey Wheel." Donkey wheels were big devices that either donkeys or horses (the available beasts of burden in Europe's Middle Ages) were used to turn. Some were put in mammoth gerbil wheels which operated drawbridges or waterwheels, but more commonly they were tied to a contraption much like we saw and used to grind grain in mills.


As for there being an alternative way for the polar bear to have wound up out there, the only evidence we have of bodily time travel thus far is thru use of the Vault in the Orchid station (as the second Bunny 15 does in the Orchid blooper video) or by turning the FDW. And the only time we've seen someone go from the Island to Tunisia is by turning the wheel directly, so I think it's a fair assumption to make that if Ben did it that way, then the polar bear was at the source, too. On a related note, it has been pointed out to me that Tunisia is on the exact opposite spot of the globe as an area of the South Pacific, so we could possibly say that our two travelers used a type of wormhole to effectively journey thru the center of the Earth.


Des (and anyone exposed to high EM or other radiation, like Minkowski) only time traveled via their consciousness, and we know from what we saw in The Constant that there was no bodily travel... otherwise we would've had two Des's in the same spot at the same time in both instances (again, much like we had two Bunny 15's in the Orchid blooper vid). All of those people we just "unstuck in time," which stemmed from the Island itself being so after the blowing of the Hatch and the purple sky. If it helps, think of the sky being the lamp in Dan's lab, and the whole Island being Eloise. IMO, Richard is a whole Other case entirely... but I'll get to that in the future installments and leave him be for now.



In regards to Walt, I agree that the Others got more than they bargained for with him. I even go with the basic concept of what you're saying there, but I'll take it in another direction. I believe Walt manifested the polar bear(s) that appeared in Special (in which Michael believes he was pursued by a polar bear, and Walt is cornered in a banyan tree by one before Locke and Michael chase it away). The reason I believe this to be the case is that we have seen a link between Lost and Shakespeare's The Tempest... (even blatantly in the naming of a Tempest DHARMA station). The Tempest is a story in part about the happenings of a shipwreck on a magical Island (complete with spirits and a creature), but if you look further you will see links to Lost in it's adaptions as well. For one, famed Lost director Jack Bender directed a screen version for TV which he set in the time of the Civil War. But even more important is the classic sci-fi movie adaption Forbidden Planet.

In that version, it is the early 2200's and humanity is sending expeditions throughout space. "[T]he United Planets Cruiser C-57D is sent to the planet Altair IV in the Altair star system, sixteen light-years from Earth, to find out what happened to the Bellerophon expedition, sent out some twenty years earlier," and when they get there the crew finds only man left has been residing there with his daughter. The survivor, a Doctor Morbius, is found to have an increased mental capacity (and created the famous Robby the Robot, amongst other things). Morbius tells the crew that he's been there all this time reconstructing the science and history of the Krell, the long-extinct natives of the planet, and that they unexpectedly died out in a single night of mass destruction. The UPC ship is attacked a few times by an invisible monster, and Morbius reveals that the Krell developed technology which allowed them to, quite literally, create anything that they could think of. In the end the crew figures out that the "monster of id" attacking them is a manifestation of the deep, dark thoughts from Morbius's own subconscious mind, and that despite their advanced brains being able to create such a thing, the Krell still had such untamed corners of their own minds, which is how they destroyed themselves.

"Its storyline features many similar themes to Lost: a mysterious location, geographic isolation, immense power sources, ancient civilizations, hidden underground facilities, an invisible monster, a stranded crew of explorers, lost scientific expeditions, and deadly psychic powers."
~ Lostpedia

I take Forbidden Planet to be circumstantial evidence to support my theory because it is the first portrayal of humans piloting flying saucers and the movie is set in the future... and I think the Island is really a crashed human craft from our own space-faring future. Also, there are clear similarities between the special people, apparitions, and the Monster that we've seen on the show and the Monster of Id situation with Morbius and the technology of the Krell. I think the reason we have the group of Losties we do is because they are all special, and that somehow the Island enhances this ability and allows them to manifest or project things from their subconscious minds. This would explain Walt's astral projection of himself and conjuring up the polar bear as I desribed, Kate's horse appearing to her out of nowhere, how many seem real to the touch (Kate petting the horse, Charlie slapping Hurley at Santa Rosa, etc.), and even why counting to 5 can make these things disappear.

In an interview with Lostpedia, David Fury, the writer/director of Special, even points to Forbidden Planet as an inspiration back in Season 1 for the Monster:

Lostpedia: How much of the Monster’s mythology were you made aware of when writing “Walkabout”?

There was no mythology to speak of in place during the early episodes of the series. We were building it as we went along, discussing possibilities. Metaphorically, the Monster was just the great unknown threat, the imminent danger around the corner that potentially haunts us all… Some thought of it as a monster of the id, much like in Forbidden Planet --- that maybe it appeared differently to everyone who saw it. The most tangible thought, as explained later by Rousseau, was that it functioned as a security system set up by the island’s creators/early residents… whatever we later decided the answer was. For Locke, clearly, the monster was the “soul” of the island that was responsible for his “miracle.”

Later on in the interview, he also says that he himself imagined Walt manifested the polar bear:

Lostpedia: Did Walt make the polar bear appear in “Special”?

"I’d certainly like to think so. That was the intent. But then… things have changed since my time."

Going back to the polar bears for just a second, just to be clear: I think that Walt manifested the polar bear in Special with his psychic abilities, but I still believe that DHARMA was responsible for bringing real polar bears to the Island and that one of them turned the FDW... Oh, and one other thing: Hurley's comic book --- the one Walt reads and causes him to project the polar bear --- is another piece of circumstantial evidence in my favor.

Green Lantern and Flash attacked and defeated a crashed alien known as "Alien X", without checking to see if it was hostile. Realizing their mistake, they hid the ship where it could not be found. Alien X, who had developed cancer as a result of testing at a government lab, escaped fifteen years later. It was not a coincidence when the original Green Lantern and Flash disappeared at the same time. Their wives called on the modern Green Lantern and Flash, who found the ship, but it was blown up by Alien X.[..]
~ Lostpedia synopsis