[D-Roc]

Originally Posted by Keeping Pace

Thanks for such a warm welcome

No probs

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).

I do agree with your reasons for why they showed us that the wheel was frozen and i'm not disputing that the Polar Bear could have travelled from this area of the island (Where the exotic matter is), but I don't feel that the PB need to have pushed the wheel to have travelled to Tunisia.

We also have to reconcile the fact that the Polar Bears are on the island - a tropical island - now how did the Polar Bears get to the island? Could they have been sent their via a similar mechanism elsewhere on the world..and what about thNigerian Beach Craft - how did that get to the island? What i'm trying to suggest, is that also we've seen Ben pushing the wheel to travel to Tunisia, there are surely other methods/mechanisms (wormholes..portals?) that exist elsewhere in the world, and possible on the island. Granted, the PB is in Tunisia..the same place where Ben ends up, but one would also assume that the Black Rock and the Beach Craft came from different places in the world, yet both ended up in the same place (the island). I would just like to leave room for the PB not 'having' to have pushed the wheel to have ended up in a similar worm-hole deposit as Ben. However, I certainly don't rule out your premise.

The C4 bomb is a good analogy, and I take that on-board as I also look for parallels within Lost plot-arcs.

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).

Hmm, I see what you're saying, but i'm struggling to see 'why' they would send a Polar Bear through the portal by turning the wheel? Surely Dharma could have rigged up some mechanism whereby the wheel is turned via a mechanical lever or something? Also, if Dharma stumbled upon the wheel, how would they know the dangers that came with it (i.e space-time travel)? Surely they would turn it themselves before having the mindset to bring a bear down to the wheel and have it turn it for them? Also, why use a bear..why not use an animal more closely aligned to humans? Like I said, to turn the wheel Dharma need not use physical man/bear-power..they could have set up some sort of wheel turning mechamism, and thrown a rabbit through the wall when the particles charged up.

Another thing which narks me, is how Dharma would expect to know what happened to the bear? If they send a bear through the wall, then they would have no way of knowing what would become of it, so it seems like a pretty pointless excercise on their part?

Also, these Dharmafolks where willing to die for their science (from what I understand), so wouldn't their be at least a few volunteers? Who knows, perhaps that's how Marvin Candle lost his arm

Again, I don't discount your notion - I just feel that it can be challenged on some areas, and I have to maintain that by sending a PB through the wall, the D.I. had no way of knowing what happened to it or where it went..it would be fruitless, surely?

We should also bear in mind that this method of time-travel 'moves the island', which according to Ben is "a measure of last resort". Now how many times would Dharma have had to move the island in order to perform their "silly experiments"? Would it not be more economical of them to try to replicate this time-travel technique rather than sending PB's through the wall and potentially risking a tear in the space-time mechanism? By sending a PB, they would be sending a creature without human consciousness..a case study that wouldn't be able to report back to them or get back to the island to tell them what happens and where it ended up - as the person (bear) who moves the island, "can never return".

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.

Good point about Ben using the holes in the wheel with the crowbar - although those could be there because it is literally a donkey wheel which was installed by the "natives" or whoever from many an age ago, and that's just how it is. I don't think it necessarily means that the D.I. use the bears to turn the wheel. Whatsmore, if the bears where tied to the wheel, then surely this would mean they would be 'pulling' the wheel and not standing on their hindlegs and 'pushing' the wheel - which I would be more inclined to believe. I think the idea of the PB's 'pulling' the wheel (hence the collar) is less likely than the PB's 'pushing' the wheel, as there was not enough space in-between the spokes for them to pull that half wheel..it wasn't big enough to merit it being pulled, in my opinion. The PB's size and the lenth of the collar doesn't reconcile with the gap in-between the spokes.

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.

I agree with Tunia being 'a' destination from the source (the island), representing the end of 'one' wormhole. But I think that there are also other 'wormholes' with other 'sources' and 'destinations'. Isaac spoke of their being other 'places' in the world which has this energy, I think that the island is one of them, but there could be others and there could be more than one island wormhole that exists.

Granted, Ben came from a cold place and PB's reside in cold places..but seeing as the PB's are/were able to live on the island (a tropical island noless), then we could also assume that the PB need not have arrived in Tunisia from the cold section beneath the Vault.

Infact, we know that other wormholes exist, the plane came from West Africa (and flew south) - already that's a completely different wormhole right there. Is it not possible that the bear could have arrived from another part of the island, or from another Dharma island completely, or at the very least, that it didn't have to push the wheel to get to North Africa?

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.

Indeed, but i'm not sure we would have had two Desmond's in the same place at the same time - this would only have happened if he arrived on a different time-line (Universe) from which he had originally lived, hence causing a major paradox.

Although that said we could indeed have the premise that one cannot phsically travel back in time..and that one is only able to travel forward in time physically (and consciously), but not with consciousness on it's own (again - paradox?). so yeah, i'm pretty open to the boundaries and possibilities of time-travel, but I don't think we have a definitive answer on what is..or rather, what isn't possible.

As for Richard - I agree that he might not have time-travelled back to see Locke as a child..it may well have been 'real-time' interaction, however I certainly don't think it can be ruled out..not until we have proof eitherway.

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.

Oh, I certainly agree that Walt manifested the PB in special - indeed, that was why I posted the screencap of the PB in the comic book - Walt's mind is/was very impressionale and powerful beyond his knowledge (ala the bird crashing into the window whilst he was reading a book in birds).

What I was trying to suggest (or put forward) is that things can also appear in locations by others means than wheel-pushing or electromagnetic charging. Walt (and to a degree, Hurley) have both proven that time and space has far more possibilities than we could ever have imagined.

Nice Forbidden Planet reference.

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.


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.

I agree with the fundemental notion that we could be dealing with 'time' in this way, but I would disagree that the island itself is a spaceship - rather I believe it to be a hybrid - a non-human entity which perhaps crashed on earth many millenia ago (although time is relative)..or perhaps we crashed on it - taking Locke's "the island brought US here" literally.

I do agree that the Losties are special, only Jack would deny that at this stage. Actually, not even Jack is denying it at this stage

I'm not sure you've actually explained or nailed down why all of the manifestations/astral projections etc are possible though? I agree, that the island heightens peoples abilities and makes all kind of things possible, but are you saying that this is advanced science made possible by future humans? I just want to be clear so that I can extend my opinions with more accuracy

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:

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

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.

I agree with the Walt/minds-eye thing - I always have, so we're definetely in the same sphere of thinking here. It's just that we seem disparate in our fundemental opinions on the root/direction of some of these premises.

No doubt Dharma brought the bears to the island - although they might not have seeings the island has a rich and active history or civilisation.

I still cannot agree that the PB turned the wheel - I can buy astral projections and other out-there notions presented by the show, but having a PB push a wheel doesn't seem inkeeping with best scientific practices, seeing as the PB wouldn't be able to report back to them what happened, nor would they know what happened to the bear..only that it 'went'..'somewhere'..

Also, what if the bear didn't feel like pushing the wheel? What would motivate it to push the wheel in the first place..how would it know what a half wheel was intended for? Perhaps i'm doing the bears a dis-service here, but then again, perhaps i'm crediting them for being more intelligent than to push a wheel like a circus animal. I just don't think we'll ever see a bear pushing that half-wheel - i mean, how would they show it without losing credibility and having greenpeace on their case? It would be worse than the CGI bear that they gave us in Further Instructions.

I also referenced the comic book above, and i'm not sure it is in your favour - in what way does it support your argument? I agree that Walt manifested the PB because he saw one in the comic book, but surely this supports my stance that there is more than one way for something to travel (manifest) through time and space?