Friday, February 08, 2008

Seriously, Ghostbusters?

Wherein too much of this paranormal bullshit and I'm jumping off the Lost train


Plane crash with substituted bodies? I'll need to see if I still have a copy of the John Varley novel "Millennium" around somewhere. Here's part of the wiki description (there's also a bad movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd):
The time travelers can only take people will have no further effect on the timeline - those who have vanished without a trace, or died without being observed - otherwise they would be changing the past, which risks a temporal paradox and perhaps even a catastrophic breakdown of the fabric of time. Though they collect everyone they can, they exert a great deal of effort on those destined to die in various disasters such as sinking ships and crashing airplanes. As such incidents leave no survivors to report interference and change the timeline, they can freely remove the living but soon-to-die victims, and replace them with convincing corpses they have manufactured in the future.

Bullet points


****************************************
I dropped the "Millenium" clue over in Alan Sepinwall's comments but no takers. You'd think that with all the speculation about time travel and possibly faked accident victims there'd be some interest in an actual science fiction story that's about time travel and faked accident victims. Guess it's just me.

For the last year or so I'd pretty much discounted every speculation I'd ever had about Lost -- I had some interesting ideas that were pretty much all wrong. But now I'm starting to see some traction in these old ideas. There's the rescue ship that isn't, for one. Even bigger, with the entire wreckage being found underwater, I'm back to my old speculation that there never was a crash, just that the "survivors" were made to believe there was one. I think this makes more sense than an alternate reality; but again, maybe that's just me. If I'm correct, there would have to be a third, as yet unknown group. The Others didn't know the Losties were coming and Dharma doesn't seem to quite know what's going on...and with Suzanne Pleshette dead there goes another theory.

Just for fun...

Revisiting some old Lost theories
From January, 2006:
fantasy projection #1: Stop the show at the end of season 3. Have them rescued. Happy endings all around, except for the handful killed off for dramatic purposes.

fantasy projection #2: Spring sweeps features the big battle. Last episode of season shows a rescue ship on the horizon. Next season the survivors realize they haven't been rescued, but picked up by a new version of the D.H.A.R.M.A. initiative. Lather, rinse, repeat. Basically turns into The Pretender - an interesting idea that loses our interest because it is unable to resolve anything.

fantasy projection #3: stuff happens, people die, season ends being rescued. Next season, everyone tries to reenter their old lives. But they're probably being observed and keep having weird flashbacks they don't understand. Rent Jacob's Ladder for plot points.


From May 2006:
The Others: At the start of season two I was convinced two groups of Others existed: one good, one bad. And the Losties would need to join forces with one to defeat the other. I've pretty much discounted this theory. Most likely just one group of DHARMA scientists.

I've mentioned this a few times, but I am becoming more and more attached to the idea that no plane crash occurred. We see it from the Losties perspective and they think they've crashed. The purpose is to study just a few of the passengers. Their circumstances were worked to get them on the plane; other passengers are coincidences.

... I'd like to see the Losties rescued in the season finale, but it turns out to be a DHARMA ship and they're still captives.

4 Comments:

Blogger XWL said...

Time travel is just a huge logistical headache and should be avoided at all costs.

If even one person in a society develops time travel, then that entire society would have time travellers screwing up its development throughout its entire history, and evidence of time travelling would exist throughout that culture's existence.

Plus you'd have factional time travelling each trying to erase the other faction from history, and eventually someone would go back far enough, step on the wrong butterfly, and prevent that society from ever forming in the first place negating the existence of time travel and the time travellers.

So every society that ever develops time travel (into the past, that is), immediately ceases to exist. Unless the travellers only effect "timelines" outside of their own experience, then what's the point? Who cares if a parallel universe doesn't have Hitler, if the one you live in did?

Rip Van Winkle-ing yourself into the future, doesn't hold any problems, and is even permissible under Einstein's theories, nothing more exotic than travelling really, really, really fast is required.

As far as Lost goes, I'm willing to give them a chance (unless they do too many Jack stories again, less Jack=Better LOST), seems like the new mysteries they are introducing will tie in with the old mysteries, and given the "tall Walt" comment, at least they have a bit of a sense of humor about the process of revalation.

2/08/2008 03:56:00 PM  
Blogger bill said...

As far as Lost goes, I'm willing to give them a chance (unless they do too many Jack stories again, less Jack=Better LOST), seems like the new mysteries they are introducing will tie in with the old mysteries, and given the "tall Walt" comment, at least they have a bit of a sense of humor about the process of revalation.

I'm with you. I'm not ready to jump ship, though I am starting to look for the life preservor. You know, just in case.

+2 hack cliche metaphor!

2/08/2008 04:11:00 PM  
Blogger Icepick said...

Time travel is just a huge logistical headache and should be avoided at all costs.

X, this is why I've kept time travel (of the reversed time arrow variety) out of this universe. And for similar reasons I've also eliminated "travel" to or from alternate universes. I'm having to put up with a great deal of The Suck in this universe, but I refuse to abide by (backwards) time travel or universe shopping. These are simply unacceptable.

2/11/2008 11:59:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I made the same Lost/Varley connection as you. FYI, the Varley story is actually called Air Raid. The movie made from Air Raid was "Millenium". But the theory is weakening after the past couple of episodes. Still, there definitely seem to be elements of time travel involved, even moreso than just Desmond's mental time travel.

4/11/2008 09:03:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home