For the first 64 years of my I life I had an unspecified overall mission and then the Baltic contemporary art centre opened on the banks of the Tyne at Gateshead and I saw a film about the life of Jackson Pollock, read the last two chapters of Concepts of Modern Art, edited by Nikos Stangos and visited the Saatchi 100 Brit Art show, and the Tate Modern on one day in 2003, and knew what I needed to do and how to do it, devoting the greater part of my remaining years of self conscious activity as a consequence. The aspect of my reading, which struck me most was that I had so many similar ideas during my life which others translated into works of contemporary art, including visual, as if I had been living in a parallel universe.
The concept of the parallel universe has been explored over and over again with a Dr Who series and a Star Trek episode coming immediately to mind where a principal character met themselves in a contrasting or counterbalancing personality. This weekend saw the commencement of the last chapter of the Sky 1 series of Lost in which the main characters appear to be existing in two very different worlds at the same time. Since lost commenced six years ago there has been much speculation about what is about with much speculation that the characters were dead and sent to purgatory rather than limbo with the opportunity to behave in ways which would get them to Heaven of if not to Hell but this was strongly rejected by the programme makers.
My own view developed about connectivity and the Butterfly effect as everyone appeared to more related to each other than having randomly chosen a particular flight from Australia to Los Angeles on 22nd September 2004, in which less than quarter of the passengers and crew are said to have survived although the majority are killed or die during the series todate. The Butterfly effect is that an event such as the flying of a Butterfly somewhere in world sets up a series of causes and effect which influences the outcome of major events in individual lives or in world events thus implying that individuals and governments are limited in what they can do to affect the outcome of their actions. All we can do is try to do good or better still no harm. This fits in to fundamentalist Catholic teachings about looking after your own conscience rather than trying to effect or take responsibility for the conscience of others, as well as other belief systems which urge to concentrate on self improvement, acceptance of what happens and the showing of respect without judgement for everyone else.
There may be a big clue in the names given to several of the characters suggesting the programme attempts to juxtaposition the views of philosophers and other thinkers and innovators.
Because of this and the entertainment value of each episode I quickly came to regard Lost as being second or third at the top of the same science fiction league as Babylon 5, with the X Files, the other candidate for runner up and the 4400, somewhere below them. Babylon 5 is exceptional because the ending was written with the beginning and much else was also predetermined so that you have a sense of everything interconnecting and having some relevance without too many red herrings or blind alleys added for divertissement or to keep the series going. My criticism of the 4400 is two fold in that I do not think the script was up to the task and some of the actors failed to engage as a consequence, and that it appeared to have been brought to an untimely end although nothing like the shock everyone experienced when all the major characters were killed in the final episode of Blake’s 7.
I am yet to make up my mind how far the end of Lost was written before the first series was produced and how far subsequent seasons were developed in order to lead to that ending and the various mysteries and overall solution to the predicament of the main characters is resolved. It is likely to be a few years before a complete DVD edition of the six series appears at a price I an prepared to pay when the extras will reveal some of the answers to how the series was created and when the ending was first written. Wikipedia as ever will no doubt prove helpful as the season progresses.
I came to Lost after the first three seasons were completed but managed to get the DVD‘s via an online postal hire service and enjoyed the extras which provided a lot of information on how the actors were recruited and the project came about and then produced
Last night. there was a very helpful one hour overview which linked the characters who have remained throughout the six seasons, including some who were killed off and who are set to reappear. The worst kept secret is that the season commences with not one but two story lines, the first is where Oceanic Flight 815 never crashes but where the major Lost characters interconnect and the second is where they remain on the island but in present time with the potential implication of the two dimensions coexisting.
I was irritated by the two hour opener because of the constant interruption by advertisements which must have taken up forty minutes and on disk each episode lasts 40-45 mins and missed a section of the first part when I dozed off and out last night I missed the re run, but was able to view on my Sky player. The episodes did answer one major question but despite the overview reprise I felt the need to try and remember all the relevant issues before next week
A first with Wikipedia suggested that some characters who I had considered important at the time do not appear scheduled for a return during this final season which in turn challenged the assertion made in the reprise that all mysteries would be solved and questions answered. Wikipedia has extensive information which I have drawn upon but which fails, in my judgement to create a framework for the finals season. I have tried to look at the information in a number of ways based on my memory of the five seasons and settled for this writing on going through each of the 50 characters and creating an overview as a consequence.
Oceanic Flight 815 left Sydney for Los Angeles on 22 September 2004, with 324 passengers of whom 71 survived the crash on a mysterious island and where 14 had speaking parts in the first series of 25 episodes, and where the geography and nature of the island is first explored. The principal characters interact and we learn how they came to be on the flight and the unresolved issues which they bring to their new situation. The question is posed: Are they dead? Is this a form of limbo? Will they return to the former existence? What kind of island is this? Whereas there are some characters who appear in more episodes than others these are often reactors to what happens rather an initiators, so I tore up my first order which was in terms of most episode appearances to those who appear to be central to answering the main questions about the island and its purpose.
The Black Smoke Monster (1) described as such because in the first seasons it appears as a form of black smoke which can and does kill and then as the series progresses it takes human form culminating todate as a resurrected Locke, a Changeling, going back to Star Trek and Babylon 5. Christian Shepherd (character 50) appears to a number of survivors including his son, but is he separate or just a manifestation of the Black Smoke Monster?
The Black Smoke Monster also acts as a protective security system for the Island and a higher authority with the power to punish or forgive and who appears to be interconnected with Jacob, Albert, Ben and Locke as the principal initiators, along with Charles Widmore. In the first programme of the new season the Monster apologies to Ben for showing his murderous tendencies.
Jacob(2) has the ability to time and distance travel and also appears to the Flight 815 crash victims at various points but in his own human form lives including their childhood, some on the island and to some who temporarily manage to leave the island and return to their former lives. Jacob is human form is responsible for getting Hurley to go on Flight 315 and in the first episode of the final season, he appears to Hurley again, explaining that he was killed an hour beforehand and that the dying Sayid can be saved by being taken to Temple, remembering to take the guitar case he provided before the flight.
Richard Alpert (3) appears connected to Jacob and also ageless. In flashbacks he is seen as being at the birth of Locke in 1956 and encouraging Ben to purge the DHARMA initiative in 1992 and recruiting Juliet to the Others and where he seems to be the adviser to their leaders. Is he another form of Jacob who is another form of the Black Smoke Monster? I cannot see how the series can end without some explanation of their roles and interconnectivity. Richard Alpert is the birth name of the spiritual teacher Ram Das.
Ben Linus (4) was brought to Island by his father as a support worker for the DHARMIA Initiative shortly after it is established in the early 1970’s. When Ben grows up he murders the Initiative members before becoming the leader of the other Island residents many of whom appear to have been there as original inhabitants. They are called Hostiles on the first season and then The Others. The Others have a link with the outside world and bring in people from time to time. Ben is made to appear the dictator, the killer, the manipulator and the bad guy through the series todate without redeeming features. He is upset at never seeing Jacob in human form. He is shocked when he sees Locke after having strangled him in Los Angeles and just as shocked when he realises that he has killed Jacob at the behest of the Black Smoke Monster
The Temple dwellers are separate and their origins and roles areas yet to be revealed or remembered by me if they have been before.
A character who had a key role in whole series is John Locke(5), the same name as the philosopher who wrote the Social Contract which I studied in my first year at Ruskin College. He has become paralysed into a wheelchair having been thrown out of a window by his father who only made contact when he needed a transplant to save his own life.
After the plane crash John is cured and feels he has a special affinity with the island. He begins by being a Hunter gatherer for the survivors but also a loner, but then becomes self appointed leader successfully challenging Ben. Ben, we learn, is responsible for a former leader of the Others, Charles Widmore, being expelled from the Island. In the new season Locke meets Jack on the plane and again in the airport and gives his card offering to see if the opinion of others that Locke’s condition cannot be reversed is accurate. Locke also uses the alias of Jeremy Bentham another philosopher and political theorist studied at Ruskin.
For much of the series Charles Widmore (6) appears to have equal significance to those already mentioned yet he only appears in 13 episodes. He was an original Hostile who became a leader of the Others. However he clashed with Ben and is exiled as a means for Ben to gain control of the Others. Charles then spends his wealth trying to find the Island again and take revenge on Ben. Charles has a daughter, Penny, who commences a relationship with Desmond David Hume, (Hume was also a philosopher with links to Locke in that my first tutorial assignment was to discuss aspects of their political theories alongside those of Rousseau) Charles his daughter Penny and her husband Desmond who have important roles during the series are not listed as appearing in the final season and this is a puzzle.
0f the season one fourteen speaking part survivors of Flight 815, Dr Jack Shepherd(7) has appeared in 90 episodes. He is a surgeon specialising in spinal problems, following in his father’s footsteps, a man who continues to dominate his life and whose body he has come to collect from Australia to bring home for burial. In dimension one of the final series, Jack arrives in Los Angeles to be told that the body is missing, two hours before the funeral. Wikipedia reveals that Jack was to have been killed off in season one but the studio moguls took a liking to his character and decided to make him the leader of the Survivors through his role as a doctor and developing his character as someone who appeared to know what to do. This was to come full circle when at the end of season five Jack believes that the only way for them to be able to return to their former lives, on the basis as if nothing has happened, is to blow up the island with a nuclear bomb left over from when the island was used for testing.
It was originally planned that Kate Austin(8) would become the leader of the survivors and to an extent she becomes someone who exerts considerable influence although is primarily through her romantic interaction with Jack and another survivor James Sawyer whose real surname is Ford(9). In the past Kate has killed her criminally abusive step father and she goes on the run but is apprehended in Australia is being transported back to the USA under escort. In the new season starter Kate manages to escape on arrival at the airport having attracted the attention of both Jack and James, but only in passing. Although one the island she becomes attached to Jack for a time she has a love hate relationship with con man James Ford who as a child witnessed his father killing his mother and then himself because of the activities of a man called Sawyer. James then adopts the name Sawyer as a means of reminding himself of the man to destroyed his family. He has a daughter by one of the women from whom he conned money and in Australia he kills a man who he believes is the real Sawyer but is someone innocent.
For me the most likeable of all the characters is Hugo Hurley Reyes (10) who along with Jack, Kate and Sawyer features in over 90 episodes. Hurley has won the lottery with a set of numbers which is given significance in the early part of series. However his financial success appears jinxed as the house he buys for his mother goes up in flames, he buys a fast food chicken chain because he likes chicken and this goes belly up, and when the plane crashes he is convinced he is responsible. He sees his role on the island as bringing some fun. However Hurley is given a major role in saving the Survivors at the commencement of teh finals season, especially when the Temple dwellers take them prison and the order is given for them to be killed. Inside the guitar case there is a wooden symbol which the Temple leader breaks to reveal a message which makes him change his mind
There are two characters whose personalities and roles developed through the series with 76 and 78 performances, Koreans Jin(11 and Sun(12). Jin is the son of a poor fisherman who falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy hotel owner and car manufacturer with connections in Korean criminal underworld. Jin is only allowed to marry Sun on the understanding he works as the enforcer for his father in law something which Sun is unaware of or power being exerted over her husband. Sun is a jealous husband and wants to keep his wife subservient to him but on the island the roles are reversed as he is unable to speak English while she can. Before making the trip to the USA Sun has commenced an affair and is on the trip to the USA with mixed feelings and unaware that her husband is planning to break free from her father’s tyranny. When at the start of series six Jin is apprehended at customs Sun pretends she cannot understand or speak English, reverting to former self.
A major figure with over 80 episode appearances is Sayid(13) Jarrah a former Republican guard communications officer in Iraq which is a cover designation for torturer. He has become attracted to one of his victims and helps her to escape and he is on the plane in the hope of finding her in the USA. Sayid became the fighter and muscle man but also similar to also had other important roles. After the nuclear explosion when the main characters, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley find themselves back oh the present day island, Sayid is crucially injured and when they are all taken prisoners by a group who inhabit a Temple surrounded by an impenetrable wall, the Temple dwellers attempt to save Sayid by immersing him in special waters, unsuccessfully and Dr Jack is unable to revive him, however the double header ends as Sayid springs back to life. The captors having previously exclaimed that failure to save Sayid spells doom and disaster for all of them.
There are two other characters who featured in some sixty episodes before one appears to have been killed and the other disappeared. Charlie Pace(14) is a one hit rock star who becomes addicted to heroin but on the island is able to kick the habit and takes care of pregnant Clare and her child when born. Charlie appears to have died in the Looking Glass Dharma station under the sea in an attempt to contact the outside world on behalf of the survivors. Clare Littleton(15) was last seen going into Jacob’s Hut, drawn by the appearance of her father and has not been seen since, leaving her child to be looked after by Kate. When Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Desmond ( see below re Desmond) mange to get off the island and return to their former lives, Kate reunites the child with his biological grandmother and Jack learns that the grandmother is one of the women with whom his father had an affair and that Clare is/was his half sister! On the plane in season one Clare is staying in Australia according to teh child’s father who is. Charlie tries to commit suicide but is saved by Dr Shepherd and is led off the plane in police custody,
Over the series there are different forces/groups at work which appear dominant and then less so, reappearing from time to time and which may or may not have a bearing in relation to the final outcome. The series commenced with flashbacks to provide the back stories but then also moves into flash forwards as well as time travel back and time travel forward.
The most important force after the Island itself, appears to be the DHARMA Initiative established in the 1970‘s as a communal research compound where scientists and free thinkers could research meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetisms and utopian social living.
One of the projects is to try and predict the time which humanity will exist with a view to find ways to extend this timescale and the equation used has the numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42, the winning numbers of Hurley’s lottery ticket.
The Initiative has a number of station work centres on the Island as well as an accommodation and recreation village. There appears to have been 14 stations with the first that created in California but not all have been identified far. Station 2 -The Arrow was said to be used to monitor the activities of the Hostiles and it has been said after the survivors found the station and inside. a radio, a glass eye and part of an orientation film hidden within a bible that these objects had significance. Will this be explained during the final season?
Station 3 The Swan can be regarded as the most significant because it where the Initiative drill into the electromagnetic core. The Swan is discovered by Locke and Boone (see 20 below) at the end of season 1 and inside they find Desmond continuing to press the button every 108 minutes. Locke does not believe Desmond suggesting the pressing of the button is a psychological test but when the next period ends, all mental object fly about, the ground shakes and the sky turns violet. In a brief moment before Desmond uses the Fail Safe key and the Swan is destroyed, the Island becomes visible to the outside world and is detected by the monitoring system set up by Penny Widmore.
Desmond David Hume(16) was a former monk and member of the Royal Scots regiment who undertakes a round the world boat race after being forced to end his relationship with Penny Widmore (17) but is shipwrecked on the Island and is forced to spend his days pressing the button every 108 minutes to prevent destruction. His temporary failure to press the button on time on September 22nd 2004 causes flight 815 to crash. He tries to escape from the island but is forced back into the area of the survivors and joins them. He is the sixth person to escape the Island and who become known as the Oceanic six. David Hume is a philosopher and political theorist
Desmond is reunited with Penny who has continued to try and find what happened to him after he disappeared presumed lost at sea. They marry and have a child. At one point Ben having established that Charles is out to get him and holding Charles responsible for having to allow his adopted daughter to be killed sets out to kill Penny in retaliation but relents when he finds she has become a mother. Although Charles Widmore continues to have links and influence in other ways to those already mentioned, he, Desmond and Penny appear to have been dropped for the final season
Eloise Hawking (18) only appears in 9 episodes but her role becomes major in that she appears in three different ages as a young adult, in middle ages and old. She is seen in a photograph in the office of the head monk of the monastery in which Desmond stays. and then as jewellery store employee who urges him not to marry Penny and who explains the nature of time travel to him. Heloise in fact was one of the Hostiles and Others who joins the DHARMA initiative at its station in Los Angeles, station The Map Post having broken away from the Island after having had a affair with Charles Widmore, giving birth to mathematician genius Daniel Faraday. It is Heloise who tells Jack, Ben and Sun how to get back to the island by taking a specific new flight which again crashes onto the island. Her name suggest Stephen Hawking the physicist and philosopher.
Daniel Faraday(19) appears in 21 episodes during seasons 4 and 5. He is physicist researching the possibilities of time travel who has kept key records in single notebook. Desmond has contact with Daniel when the scientist is working at Oxford and the Daniel travels back in time to tell Desmond how to save the Island. Daniel is recruited by his father(without knowing who he is) to go with a carefully selected group to try and find the island to rescue survivors after receiving information unwittingly relayed by his daughter Penny, but in fact his purpose is to kill Ben and any survivors, having spent a fortune on faking what happened by placed 324 already dead people in a fake plane which is found at the bottom of the sea and at such depth that makes recovery of the bodies not possible. Michael Faraday was an important physicist.
Charles Widmore has no intention of anyone returning from the expedition and has the freighter wired to blow up just when Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sun and Jin and Hurley (Desmond is rescued by Penny) think they have been rescued and are about to sail home. They are taken off the freighter by helicopter in time although Jin stays behind because the craft is overloaded and he is believed to have been blown up. He survives and reaches the island. Sawyer also jumps into the sea from the helicopter for teh same reason and then finds the island has disappeared, but is then rescued.
Boone Carlyle (21) is the stepbrother of Shannon (22) with whom he is in love! He goes exploring and hunting with Locke and together they discover a hatch which leads to the Swan Centre and Incident room. He dies after finding a small crashed plane in a tree which is found to contain drugs. He is set to return in season 6
Shannon is a ballet teacher who has a relationship with Sayid and is accidentally shot and killed by Ana Lucia. She is not stated to be returning have appeared in 29 episodes
Dharma Station 4 The Flame is the communications and a food distribution centre. It is not underground but a wooden bungalow with a Satellite dish and a computer room below. Station 5 is the Pearl is concerned with psychological study and contains banks of TV screen to monitor work at the stations and has a two person team who work eight hour shifts for a three week period at a time, using notebooks to record observations of interest.
The reason that the Island has disappeared is that it has been successfully moved by John Locke in order to escape from further discovery. John does not want to return to his former life. John does this from Station 6. The Orchid which above ground appears to be an abandoned greenhouse below which there is work and objects which distort space and time. The use of the station for botanical research was a cover story put out by the Dharma project.
Unfortunately Locke’s action creates a time instability and those on the island flip between times past and forward. In one of these Daniel comes across his mother as a young woman and concerned at the implications of the new arrivals to their lifestyle and situation, Daniel is killed by his own mother. She also learns afterwards that he was her son.
Station 6 Is the Hydra island where Flight 316 makes it crash landing. This is where Jack, Kate and Sawyer are also held when they are captured and interrogated by the Others.
Station 7 is the Staff, the medical centre used by Juliet Burke (23) for the monitoring and care of Pregnant women. Juliet had been brought to Island by the Others led by Ben and this reveals that it was possible for the others to leave the Island through a submarine which charted one specific course and which other could follow if they had the accurate coordinates. Juliet is a fertility doctor and has been recruited because anyone becoming pregnant while on the island dies. Ben is in love with her and refuses to let her leave island. She is interrogator of Jack, Kate and Sawyer when they are captured by the Others but eventually she helps them escape and joins the Survivors of Oceanic 815. She remains on the Island when the six escape and becomes part of DHARMA initiative as the Island reverts to the early seventies where she works as a mechanic and sets up house with Sawyer. Their relationship deepens although there is some conflict of emotions when Kate returns to the Island. In the last episode of season six Sawyer has misgiving about Jack’s idea of detonating the nuclear device with a view to returning everyone to their former lives as if nothing has happened, and is understandably horrified when Juliet is accidentally dragged into the drilling shaft and he cannot hold on to her. She falls and although badly injured and dying has the presence to use a rock to detonate the device which had failed when it had been dropped down the shaft without exploding just beforehand. The explosion ended the 5th season. In reality two, when the group find themselves still on the Island but in present, they are by the site of explosion and hear noises from beneath debris, discovering Juliet who dies thus making Sawyer lose what has become the love of his life, twice within moments, and this brings out stronger than ever before the rivalry and hostility between himself and Jack, and he elects to go his separate way but is also captured by the Temple dwellers.
The story of Juliet Burkes also provide the opportunity bring in several other characters who played major roles in the storyline. Ann Lucia Cortez(24) does not appear until season 2 as a survivor in the separated tail section of the craft. She was a LAPD officer who loses her job after killing a man who had previously shot her, killing her unborn child. She has met up with Jack’s father and goes with him to Australia but returns on 815 after his death and talks to Jack at the airport bar without knowing his relationship with the dead man. She becomes aggressive after several of the survivors are kidnapped by the others and kills Goodwin Stanhope, the husband of a Therapist who is part of The Others. He has an affair with Juliet and Ben gets rid of him by sending him off to infiltrate the survivors. She kills Goodwin after discovering he is not a survivor( she has 21 episodes).
Station 8 is the Looking Glass on the sea bed and is used to jam communications from the Island. This is where Charlie Pace appears to have drowned. Station 9 The Tempest is for chemical weapons development and where a button has to pressed every day to prevent the release of lethal vapours over the island. One purpose for the Freighter expedition is for Faraday and Lewis(25) to permanently disable the station. The Tempest is designed a doomsday weapon.
Charlotte Stanley Lewis is an anthropologist brought to the Island by helicopter from the Freighter after being hired by Charles Widmore. Miles Straume(26) suggests she has been to the island before and she chooses to stay when given the option to leave but dies due the ill effects of the various time shifts made by the island. She is listed for season 6 and her name is after C S Lewis.
Miles Straume is a spiritualist hired by Charles Widmore with the ability to read the final thoughts of people after they die. He is on the island as it goes back in time and joins Sawyer and Juliet at the DHARMA Initiative, discovering that his father is the DHARMA scientist Dr Pierre Chang.
Pierre Chang(27) appears in 15 episodes spread over four seasons. He is also called Marvin Candle, Mick Wickmund and Edgar Halliwax and stars in orientation films which the survivors discover. In season 5 he appears live, so to speak, and Daniel Faraday persuades him to stop the drilling but his action is over-ruled.
There are two main storylines to be mentioned concerning Sawyer and Jin and the Oceanic Six. Beginning with the Oceanic Six who are eventually discovered adrift at sea, they pretend to have escaped from the plane and make no reference to the Island when they realise they have all been reported dead, in order to protect the other survivors. There is considerable pressure placed on Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sun to return to the Island by important figures in their individual lives and where it is now suspected this was by the Smoke Monster as a human form Back in LA Hurley has locked himself away in an asylum before he goes to prison for murders he does not commit because he keeps seeing people who are dead the prison as he keeps seeing people he knows to be dead. Dr Jack Shepherd also becomes more and more disturbed and convinced they should not have left the island going on endless flights hoping for a repeat of what happened.
John Locke also leaves the island and returns to the USA where he is murdered by Ben in a bizarre situation where Ben stops Locke committing suicide and then hangs him with the same rope to look like suicide. Because everyone must return to the Island, Jack takes Locke’s body in the plane which they are told will crash and get them back to Island.
As is often the situation one group fragments into two or three groups and in this instance Jack, Kate and Hurley find themselves back on the Island but in 1975 during early days of the DHARMA Initiative. The reason that Sun returns to the island is that although her child was born on return home in real time and she becomes an important and independently minded woman having effectively taken over her father’s empire, she learns that Jin survived the blowing up if the freighter sent by Charles Widmore. On the island their original love had rekindled and although this means leaving their child she decides to return to Island to try and find him. However when the plane crashes for a second time, this us ion Hydra Island to the main island, but on a different time period to Kate Jack and Hurley. Ben who has a way of getting off the island when he wishes and who has murdered Locke is also on the special flight back and he lands in the time period as Sun. He is understandably amazed to then find Locke alive but not as much as the other new plane crash survivors who discover Locke’s body in the coffin brought on the plane. This makes them suspicious when Locke reappears in the presence of his own body still in the coffin.
When Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid return to the Island, the find themselves transported back to 1975 in the early years of the DHARMA initiative and to their amazement find that Sawyer is there as a senior security officer and living with Juliet as a mechanic.
Ana Lucia is in turn killed by another survivor Michael Dawson(28) who appears in 47 episodes. Michael is a New York artist and construction worker who has had no contact with his son since he was a baby taken to Australia by his mother. When the mother dies Michael flies to Australia and is bringing his son, Walt and Walt’s dog back to the USA. The relationship between father and son is understandably strained especially as Walt loses his dog to the jungle. Michael establishes a relationship with Sun when he finds out that she can speak English, which she hides from Jin. Michael and his son and dog attempt to escape the island on a raft, but Walk is captured by the Others and Michael does a deal in which Kate, Jack, Sawyer and Hurley are exchanged for Walt. Michael is required to kill Ana and another survivor as part of the deal. They escape and return reach the USA but when Walt finds out what happened he goes to live with his grandmother leaving Michael distraught by what he has done and how the situation has developed. Michael tries to commit suicide but works out the island wont let him die. He find out about the freighter of Charles Widmore and joins the crew with the intention to help the Survivors. He is blown up while trying to deactivate the bomb on the freighter. He is schedule to reappear in the last season as is Eloise Hawking
Walt, (29) is Michael son’s who Ben and the Others regarded as special rather than just as means to get his father to assist them. Having had a role in 32 episodes it is surprising he is not being reintroduced in the last season even if only to have a reconciliation with his dad. Walt’s dog Vincent (30) features in 40 shows, Labrador retriever who is given to Shannon until she is killed and then appeared to be taken up by Sun and then by Rose and Bernard.
Rose and Bernard Nadler (31 & 32) are a couple who add to the overall story with 22 and 23 episodes to their credit. Dr Nadler is an Australian dentist who weds Rose a year before the crash. She has terminal cancer and after the crash they are separated for a season with Rose surviving and then discovering her husband as a survivor of the tail section group. Rose discovered her disease is in remission on the Island and her husband makes the decision to remain with her living quietly out of trouble and the attention of everyone else. They went back in time with Island to the 1970‘s and it is not clear if we are to learn of their present day island existence although the are seen together on the plane in the first episode of season six. Their role has been has been to show acceptance of fate, making the best of whatever situation they are in.
Some who I thought would have continuing influence is Danielle Rousseau(33) after philosopher, with 22 episodes covering all five season but not the last. Danielle is stranded on the Island after her scientific expedition boat breaks down in 1988. She is young and pregnant and played by a different actor from later. She kills her other team members when they become affected by the Smoke Monster although she blames the Others and for sixteen years she lives in seclusion on the Island in a disturbed condition although she tries to help the Survivors from time to time. He child was kidnapped by the Others and brought up by Ben as his daughter. Jin meets Rousseau after the freighter explodes and he is taken back in time to 1975. Danielle recorded a distress message which broadcasts from a tower on the island for sixteen years and which the survivors try and find when they first arrive as they believe the broadcast is live. She is killed in an ambush on the way to the Temple on orders from Ben) The tower is another Dharma station.
Alexandra Rousseau (34) is in four seasons and 17 episodes. Ben was ordered by Charles Widmore to kill the Alex with her mother he was unable to do so and raises Alex as his own. She helps the survivors and defects from the Others. She is later executed in front of Ben hence his decision to try and kill the daughter of Charles Widmore.
Frank Lapidus (35) is the pilot who was to have taken Flight 815 and is then recruited to fly the helicopter on the freighter. He brings Daniel Faraday Miles Straume and Charlotte Staples Lewis to the island from the freighter and then helps Desmond and the Oceanic six to escape. He then reappears at the Captain of Flight 316 and makes a controlled landing on Hydra Island.
Elizabeth Libby Smith (36) is one of the interesting characters because of how she appears and reappears. She is a young widow who gives Desmond her husband’s boat for his round the world trip. She then becomes a mental patient in the same hospital as Hurley and they become romantically attached. She is then a survivor in the tail section and is then killed by Michael after witnessing him killing Ana Lucia. In season 6 will she and Hurley get to gether?
Cindy Chandler (37) is a Flight 815 air hostess and is tail section survivor captured by the Others and settles down living with them over seasons 1-3 but has an appearance in season 6 (11 episodes)
Edward Mars (38) is the Marshall obsessed with bringing Kate to Justice and has 9 episodes although is killed in the crash, but reappears at the start of the final season as the plane completes its journey
Emma and Zak (39 and 40) are children brother and sister who only appear in 3 episodes when they are taken to live with the Others over seasons 2 and 3 but are listed for season six.
Also listed is Leslie Arzt(41), a survivor who everyone calls Arts despite constant corrections. He is keen to go on the expeditions of Jack and Locke and gets his chance on the trip to Black Rock. He dies as a stick of dynamite explodes when lecturing on how to safely handle the explosive. He is listed for season six. In his former life he was junior high school teacher.
Mr Eko (42) has an important role in season 4 and 5 with 21 episodes. He is Nigerian drug Lord turned priest who is part of the tails section survivors unable to speak for 40 days. It is Eko who finds the DHARMA station with the button that needs to be pressed. The body of his brother was also on another plane which crashed before on the island. At one point he tries to build a church with the help of Charlie and has several confrontations with the Smoke Monster before being killed by it.
Tom Friendly(43) (19 episodes) is the first Other which the survivors meet. He abducts Walt from the Raft as they attempt to escape. Tom recruits Michael to spy on the freighter and is killed by Sawyer at the end of season 3.
Ethan Ron (44)(13 episodes), an anagram of Other Man, who is a Doctor who grew up on the Island as part of the DHARMA initiative who then joins the Others when they destroy the Initiative. He poses as a survivor but is exposed by Hurley and in turn he abducts Charlie and Clare. Charlie then kills Ethan after escaping.
Scot Jackson (45) and Steve Jenkins (46 are two survivors with 12 episodes to their credit in season 1 to 3 and 5 when both are killed as part of the massacre of remaining survivors who are not to have any further role in the series.
Nearly last but not least because of 46 appearances over the first 5 seasons is Aaron (47), the child of Clare Littleton and her boyfriend Thomas and is born on the Island and cared for by Charlie and then Kate before being given to his grandmother. Some 50 babies took the part!
Pride of last place goes to Jack’s father Christian Shepherd (48) Jack’s father went to Australia to find his daughter Claire, after being disbarred while performing an operation when drunk. He had Ana Lucia with him and then reappears to his son and to various other people on the island including Claire, Locke and Miles. So is this Smoke Monster Changeling or does Christian have an ongoing role?
Other on flight 815 are Nikki Fernandez in 7 episodes, Illana 7, Paulo 7, Seth Norris 815 Pilot, Gary Troup 1 and Neil Frogurt 3. Of the Hostiles and Others are Michael Bukunin 8, Karl Martin 10, Bea Khugh 3 and Danny Pickett 8, Dharma Members include Amy 3, Annie 1, Phil 9, Gerald and Karen Dr Groot 4,Horace Godspeed 7, Alvar Hanso 1, Kelvin Inman 2, Roger Linus 6 and Stuart Radzinsky 7. There are Widmore employees Matthew Abadoon 4, Naomi Dorrit 11, Martin Kenny 9, Captain Gault 3 and other characters Anthony Cooper 5, Bram 5, Caesar 4, Diane Janssen 5, Nouir Abbed 5, Jack Lee 3, Cassidy Phillips 4. I make this over 80 characters interconnected in some way
There are over 30 other characters off the island who appear in 2 to 4 episodes but do not appear to connected and which made it the most expensive TV series to be aired with a total of 121 episodes and set in locations in Honolulu.
I will return again midway or at the end of the final season
The concept of the parallel universe has been explored over and over again with a Dr Who series and a Star Trek episode coming immediately to mind where a principal character met themselves in a contrasting or counterbalancing personality. This weekend saw the commencement of the last chapter of the Sky 1 series of Lost in which the main characters appear to be existing in two very different worlds at the same time. Since lost commenced six years ago there has been much speculation about what is about with much speculation that the characters were dead and sent to purgatory rather than limbo with the opportunity to behave in ways which would get them to Heaven of if not to Hell but this was strongly rejected by the programme makers.
My own view developed about connectivity and the Butterfly effect as everyone appeared to more related to each other than having randomly chosen a particular flight from Australia to Los Angeles on 22nd September 2004, in which less than quarter of the passengers and crew are said to have survived although the majority are killed or die during the series todate. The Butterfly effect is that an event such as the flying of a Butterfly somewhere in world sets up a series of causes and effect which influences the outcome of major events in individual lives or in world events thus implying that individuals and governments are limited in what they can do to affect the outcome of their actions. All we can do is try to do good or better still no harm. This fits in to fundamentalist Catholic teachings about looking after your own conscience rather than trying to effect or take responsibility for the conscience of others, as well as other belief systems which urge to concentrate on self improvement, acceptance of what happens and the showing of respect without judgement for everyone else.
There may be a big clue in the names given to several of the characters suggesting the programme attempts to juxtaposition the views of philosophers and other thinkers and innovators.
Because of this and the entertainment value of each episode I quickly came to regard Lost as being second or third at the top of the same science fiction league as Babylon 5, with the X Files, the other candidate for runner up and the 4400, somewhere below them. Babylon 5 is exceptional because the ending was written with the beginning and much else was also predetermined so that you have a sense of everything interconnecting and having some relevance without too many red herrings or blind alleys added for divertissement or to keep the series going. My criticism of the 4400 is two fold in that I do not think the script was up to the task and some of the actors failed to engage as a consequence, and that it appeared to have been brought to an untimely end although nothing like the shock everyone experienced when all the major characters were killed in the final episode of Blake’s 7.
I am yet to make up my mind how far the end of Lost was written before the first series was produced and how far subsequent seasons were developed in order to lead to that ending and the various mysteries and overall solution to the predicament of the main characters is resolved. It is likely to be a few years before a complete DVD edition of the six series appears at a price I an prepared to pay when the extras will reveal some of the answers to how the series was created and when the ending was first written. Wikipedia as ever will no doubt prove helpful as the season progresses.
I came to Lost after the first three seasons were completed but managed to get the DVD‘s via an online postal hire service and enjoyed the extras which provided a lot of information on how the actors were recruited and the project came about and then produced
Last night. there was a very helpful one hour overview which linked the characters who have remained throughout the six seasons, including some who were killed off and who are set to reappear. The worst kept secret is that the season commences with not one but two story lines, the first is where Oceanic Flight 815 never crashes but where the major Lost characters interconnect and the second is where they remain on the island but in present time with the potential implication of the two dimensions coexisting.
I was irritated by the two hour opener because of the constant interruption by advertisements which must have taken up forty minutes and on disk each episode lasts 40-45 mins and missed a section of the first part when I dozed off and out last night I missed the re run, but was able to view on my Sky player. The episodes did answer one major question but despite the overview reprise I felt the need to try and remember all the relevant issues before next week
A first with Wikipedia suggested that some characters who I had considered important at the time do not appear scheduled for a return during this final season which in turn challenged the assertion made in the reprise that all mysteries would be solved and questions answered. Wikipedia has extensive information which I have drawn upon but which fails, in my judgement to create a framework for the finals season. I have tried to look at the information in a number of ways based on my memory of the five seasons and settled for this writing on going through each of the 50 characters and creating an overview as a consequence.
Oceanic Flight 815 left Sydney for Los Angeles on 22 September 2004, with 324 passengers of whom 71 survived the crash on a mysterious island and where 14 had speaking parts in the first series of 25 episodes, and where the geography and nature of the island is first explored. The principal characters interact and we learn how they came to be on the flight and the unresolved issues which they bring to their new situation. The question is posed: Are they dead? Is this a form of limbo? Will they return to the former existence? What kind of island is this? Whereas there are some characters who appear in more episodes than others these are often reactors to what happens rather an initiators, so I tore up my first order which was in terms of most episode appearances to those who appear to be central to answering the main questions about the island and its purpose.
The Black Smoke Monster (1) described as such because in the first seasons it appears as a form of black smoke which can and does kill and then as the series progresses it takes human form culminating todate as a resurrected Locke, a Changeling, going back to Star Trek and Babylon 5. Christian Shepherd (character 50) appears to a number of survivors including his son, but is he separate or just a manifestation of the Black Smoke Monster?
The Black Smoke Monster also acts as a protective security system for the Island and a higher authority with the power to punish or forgive and who appears to be interconnected with Jacob, Albert, Ben and Locke as the principal initiators, along with Charles Widmore. In the first programme of the new season the Monster apologies to Ben for showing his murderous tendencies.
Jacob(2) has the ability to time and distance travel and also appears to the Flight 815 crash victims at various points but in his own human form lives including their childhood, some on the island and to some who temporarily manage to leave the island and return to their former lives. Jacob is human form is responsible for getting Hurley to go on Flight 315 and in the first episode of the final season, he appears to Hurley again, explaining that he was killed an hour beforehand and that the dying Sayid can be saved by being taken to Temple, remembering to take the guitar case he provided before the flight.
Richard Alpert (3) appears connected to Jacob and also ageless. In flashbacks he is seen as being at the birth of Locke in 1956 and encouraging Ben to purge the DHARMA initiative in 1992 and recruiting Juliet to the Others and where he seems to be the adviser to their leaders. Is he another form of Jacob who is another form of the Black Smoke Monster? I cannot see how the series can end without some explanation of their roles and interconnectivity. Richard Alpert is the birth name of the spiritual teacher Ram Das.
Ben Linus (4) was brought to Island by his father as a support worker for the DHARMIA Initiative shortly after it is established in the early 1970’s. When Ben grows up he murders the Initiative members before becoming the leader of the other Island residents many of whom appear to have been there as original inhabitants. They are called Hostiles on the first season and then The Others. The Others have a link with the outside world and bring in people from time to time. Ben is made to appear the dictator, the killer, the manipulator and the bad guy through the series todate without redeeming features. He is upset at never seeing Jacob in human form. He is shocked when he sees Locke after having strangled him in Los Angeles and just as shocked when he realises that he has killed Jacob at the behest of the Black Smoke Monster
The Temple dwellers are separate and their origins and roles areas yet to be revealed or remembered by me if they have been before.
A character who had a key role in whole series is John Locke(5), the same name as the philosopher who wrote the Social Contract which I studied in my first year at Ruskin College. He has become paralysed into a wheelchair having been thrown out of a window by his father who only made contact when he needed a transplant to save his own life.
After the plane crash John is cured and feels he has a special affinity with the island. He begins by being a Hunter gatherer for the survivors but also a loner, but then becomes self appointed leader successfully challenging Ben. Ben, we learn, is responsible for a former leader of the Others, Charles Widmore, being expelled from the Island. In the new season Locke meets Jack on the plane and again in the airport and gives his card offering to see if the opinion of others that Locke’s condition cannot be reversed is accurate. Locke also uses the alias of Jeremy Bentham another philosopher and political theorist studied at Ruskin.
For much of the series Charles Widmore (6) appears to have equal significance to those already mentioned yet he only appears in 13 episodes. He was an original Hostile who became a leader of the Others. However he clashed with Ben and is exiled as a means for Ben to gain control of the Others. Charles then spends his wealth trying to find the Island again and take revenge on Ben. Charles has a daughter, Penny, who commences a relationship with Desmond David Hume, (Hume was also a philosopher with links to Locke in that my first tutorial assignment was to discuss aspects of their political theories alongside those of Rousseau) Charles his daughter Penny and her husband Desmond who have important roles during the series are not listed as appearing in the final season and this is a puzzle.
0f the season one fourteen speaking part survivors of Flight 815, Dr Jack Shepherd(7) has appeared in 90 episodes. He is a surgeon specialising in spinal problems, following in his father’s footsteps, a man who continues to dominate his life and whose body he has come to collect from Australia to bring home for burial. In dimension one of the final series, Jack arrives in Los Angeles to be told that the body is missing, two hours before the funeral. Wikipedia reveals that Jack was to have been killed off in season one but the studio moguls took a liking to his character and decided to make him the leader of the Survivors through his role as a doctor and developing his character as someone who appeared to know what to do. This was to come full circle when at the end of season five Jack believes that the only way for them to be able to return to their former lives, on the basis as if nothing has happened, is to blow up the island with a nuclear bomb left over from when the island was used for testing.
It was originally planned that Kate Austin(8) would become the leader of the survivors and to an extent she becomes someone who exerts considerable influence although is primarily through her romantic interaction with Jack and another survivor James Sawyer whose real surname is Ford(9). In the past Kate has killed her criminally abusive step father and she goes on the run but is apprehended in Australia is being transported back to the USA under escort. In the new season starter Kate manages to escape on arrival at the airport having attracted the attention of both Jack and James, but only in passing. Although one the island she becomes attached to Jack for a time she has a love hate relationship with con man James Ford who as a child witnessed his father killing his mother and then himself because of the activities of a man called Sawyer. James then adopts the name Sawyer as a means of reminding himself of the man to destroyed his family. He has a daughter by one of the women from whom he conned money and in Australia he kills a man who he believes is the real Sawyer but is someone innocent.
For me the most likeable of all the characters is Hugo Hurley Reyes (10) who along with Jack, Kate and Sawyer features in over 90 episodes. Hurley has won the lottery with a set of numbers which is given significance in the early part of series. However his financial success appears jinxed as the house he buys for his mother goes up in flames, he buys a fast food chicken chain because he likes chicken and this goes belly up, and when the plane crashes he is convinced he is responsible. He sees his role on the island as bringing some fun. However Hurley is given a major role in saving the Survivors at the commencement of teh finals season, especially when the Temple dwellers take them prison and the order is given for them to be killed. Inside the guitar case there is a wooden symbol which the Temple leader breaks to reveal a message which makes him change his mind
There are two characters whose personalities and roles developed through the series with 76 and 78 performances, Koreans Jin(11 and Sun(12). Jin is the son of a poor fisherman who falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy hotel owner and car manufacturer with connections in Korean criminal underworld. Jin is only allowed to marry Sun on the understanding he works as the enforcer for his father in law something which Sun is unaware of or power being exerted over her husband. Sun is a jealous husband and wants to keep his wife subservient to him but on the island the roles are reversed as he is unable to speak English while she can. Before making the trip to the USA Sun has commenced an affair and is on the trip to the USA with mixed feelings and unaware that her husband is planning to break free from her father’s tyranny. When at the start of series six Jin is apprehended at customs Sun pretends she cannot understand or speak English, reverting to former self.
A major figure with over 80 episode appearances is Sayid(13) Jarrah a former Republican guard communications officer in Iraq which is a cover designation for torturer. He has become attracted to one of his victims and helps her to escape and he is on the plane in the hope of finding her in the USA. Sayid became the fighter and muscle man but also similar to also had other important roles. After the nuclear explosion when the main characters, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley find themselves back oh the present day island, Sayid is crucially injured and when they are all taken prisoners by a group who inhabit a Temple surrounded by an impenetrable wall, the Temple dwellers attempt to save Sayid by immersing him in special waters, unsuccessfully and Dr Jack is unable to revive him, however the double header ends as Sayid springs back to life. The captors having previously exclaimed that failure to save Sayid spells doom and disaster for all of them.
There are two other characters who featured in some sixty episodes before one appears to have been killed and the other disappeared. Charlie Pace(14) is a one hit rock star who becomes addicted to heroin but on the island is able to kick the habit and takes care of pregnant Clare and her child when born. Charlie appears to have died in the Looking Glass Dharma station under the sea in an attempt to contact the outside world on behalf of the survivors. Clare Littleton(15) was last seen going into Jacob’s Hut, drawn by the appearance of her father and has not been seen since, leaving her child to be looked after by Kate. When Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Desmond ( see below re Desmond) mange to get off the island and return to their former lives, Kate reunites the child with his biological grandmother and Jack learns that the grandmother is one of the women with whom his father had an affair and that Clare is/was his half sister! On the plane in season one Clare is staying in Australia according to teh child’s father who is. Charlie tries to commit suicide but is saved by Dr Shepherd and is led off the plane in police custody,
Over the series there are different forces/groups at work which appear dominant and then less so, reappearing from time to time and which may or may not have a bearing in relation to the final outcome. The series commenced with flashbacks to provide the back stories but then also moves into flash forwards as well as time travel back and time travel forward.
The most important force after the Island itself, appears to be the DHARMA Initiative established in the 1970‘s as a communal research compound where scientists and free thinkers could research meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetisms and utopian social living.
One of the projects is to try and predict the time which humanity will exist with a view to find ways to extend this timescale and the equation used has the numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42, the winning numbers of Hurley’s lottery ticket.
The Initiative has a number of station work centres on the Island as well as an accommodation and recreation village. There appears to have been 14 stations with the first that created in California but not all have been identified far. Station 2 -The Arrow was said to be used to monitor the activities of the Hostiles and it has been said after the survivors found the station and inside. a radio, a glass eye and part of an orientation film hidden within a bible that these objects had significance. Will this be explained during the final season?
Station 3 The Swan can be regarded as the most significant because it where the Initiative drill into the electromagnetic core. The Swan is discovered by Locke and Boone (see 20 below) at the end of season 1 and inside they find Desmond continuing to press the button every 108 minutes. Locke does not believe Desmond suggesting the pressing of the button is a psychological test but when the next period ends, all mental object fly about, the ground shakes and the sky turns violet. In a brief moment before Desmond uses the Fail Safe key and the Swan is destroyed, the Island becomes visible to the outside world and is detected by the monitoring system set up by Penny Widmore.
Desmond David Hume(16) was a former monk and member of the Royal Scots regiment who undertakes a round the world boat race after being forced to end his relationship with Penny Widmore (17) but is shipwrecked on the Island and is forced to spend his days pressing the button every 108 minutes to prevent destruction. His temporary failure to press the button on time on September 22nd 2004 causes flight 815 to crash. He tries to escape from the island but is forced back into the area of the survivors and joins them. He is the sixth person to escape the Island and who become known as the Oceanic six. David Hume is a philosopher and political theorist
Desmond is reunited with Penny who has continued to try and find what happened to him after he disappeared presumed lost at sea. They marry and have a child. At one point Ben having established that Charles is out to get him and holding Charles responsible for having to allow his adopted daughter to be killed sets out to kill Penny in retaliation but relents when he finds she has become a mother. Although Charles Widmore continues to have links and influence in other ways to those already mentioned, he, Desmond and Penny appear to have been dropped for the final season
Eloise Hawking (18) only appears in 9 episodes but her role becomes major in that she appears in three different ages as a young adult, in middle ages and old. She is seen in a photograph in the office of the head monk of the monastery in which Desmond stays. and then as jewellery store employee who urges him not to marry Penny and who explains the nature of time travel to him. Heloise in fact was one of the Hostiles and Others who joins the DHARMA initiative at its station in Los Angeles, station The Map Post having broken away from the Island after having had a affair with Charles Widmore, giving birth to mathematician genius Daniel Faraday. It is Heloise who tells Jack, Ben and Sun how to get back to the island by taking a specific new flight which again crashes onto the island. Her name suggest Stephen Hawking the physicist and philosopher.
Daniel Faraday(19) appears in 21 episodes during seasons 4 and 5. He is physicist researching the possibilities of time travel who has kept key records in single notebook. Desmond has contact with Daniel when the scientist is working at Oxford and the Daniel travels back in time to tell Desmond how to save the Island. Daniel is recruited by his father(without knowing who he is) to go with a carefully selected group to try and find the island to rescue survivors after receiving information unwittingly relayed by his daughter Penny, but in fact his purpose is to kill Ben and any survivors, having spent a fortune on faking what happened by placed 324 already dead people in a fake plane which is found at the bottom of the sea and at such depth that makes recovery of the bodies not possible. Michael Faraday was an important physicist.
Charles Widmore has no intention of anyone returning from the expedition and has the freighter wired to blow up just when Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sun and Jin and Hurley (Desmond is rescued by Penny) think they have been rescued and are about to sail home. They are taken off the freighter by helicopter in time although Jin stays behind because the craft is overloaded and he is believed to have been blown up. He survives and reaches the island. Sawyer also jumps into the sea from the helicopter for teh same reason and then finds the island has disappeared, but is then rescued.
Boone Carlyle (21) is the stepbrother of Shannon (22) with whom he is in love! He goes exploring and hunting with Locke and together they discover a hatch which leads to the Swan Centre and Incident room. He dies after finding a small crashed plane in a tree which is found to contain drugs. He is set to return in season 6
Shannon is a ballet teacher who has a relationship with Sayid and is accidentally shot and killed by Ana Lucia. She is not stated to be returning have appeared in 29 episodes
Dharma Station 4 The Flame is the communications and a food distribution centre. It is not underground but a wooden bungalow with a Satellite dish and a computer room below. Station 5 is the Pearl is concerned with psychological study and contains banks of TV screen to monitor work at the stations and has a two person team who work eight hour shifts for a three week period at a time, using notebooks to record observations of interest.
The reason that the Island has disappeared is that it has been successfully moved by John Locke in order to escape from further discovery. John does not want to return to his former life. John does this from Station 6. The Orchid which above ground appears to be an abandoned greenhouse below which there is work and objects which distort space and time. The use of the station for botanical research was a cover story put out by the Dharma project.
Unfortunately Locke’s action creates a time instability and those on the island flip between times past and forward. In one of these Daniel comes across his mother as a young woman and concerned at the implications of the new arrivals to their lifestyle and situation, Daniel is killed by his own mother. She also learns afterwards that he was her son.
Station 6 Is the Hydra island where Flight 316 makes it crash landing. This is where Jack, Kate and Sawyer are also held when they are captured and interrogated by the Others.
Station 7 is the Staff, the medical centre used by Juliet Burke (23) for the monitoring and care of Pregnant women. Juliet had been brought to Island by the Others led by Ben and this reveals that it was possible for the others to leave the Island through a submarine which charted one specific course and which other could follow if they had the accurate coordinates. Juliet is a fertility doctor and has been recruited because anyone becoming pregnant while on the island dies. Ben is in love with her and refuses to let her leave island. She is interrogator of Jack, Kate and Sawyer when they are captured by the Others but eventually she helps them escape and joins the Survivors of Oceanic 815. She remains on the Island when the six escape and becomes part of DHARMA initiative as the Island reverts to the early seventies where she works as a mechanic and sets up house with Sawyer. Their relationship deepens although there is some conflict of emotions when Kate returns to the Island. In the last episode of season six Sawyer has misgiving about Jack’s idea of detonating the nuclear device with a view to returning everyone to their former lives as if nothing has happened, and is understandably horrified when Juliet is accidentally dragged into the drilling shaft and he cannot hold on to her. She falls and although badly injured and dying has the presence to use a rock to detonate the device which had failed when it had been dropped down the shaft without exploding just beforehand. The explosion ended the 5th season. In reality two, when the group find themselves still on the Island but in present, they are by the site of explosion and hear noises from beneath debris, discovering Juliet who dies thus making Sawyer lose what has become the love of his life, twice within moments, and this brings out stronger than ever before the rivalry and hostility between himself and Jack, and he elects to go his separate way but is also captured by the Temple dwellers.
The story of Juliet Burkes also provide the opportunity bring in several other characters who played major roles in the storyline. Ann Lucia Cortez(24) does not appear until season 2 as a survivor in the separated tail section of the craft. She was a LAPD officer who loses her job after killing a man who had previously shot her, killing her unborn child. She has met up with Jack’s father and goes with him to Australia but returns on 815 after his death and talks to Jack at the airport bar without knowing his relationship with the dead man. She becomes aggressive after several of the survivors are kidnapped by the others and kills Goodwin Stanhope, the husband of a Therapist who is part of The Others. He has an affair with Juliet and Ben gets rid of him by sending him off to infiltrate the survivors. She kills Goodwin after discovering he is not a survivor( she has 21 episodes).
Station 8 is the Looking Glass on the sea bed and is used to jam communications from the Island. This is where Charlie Pace appears to have drowned. Station 9 The Tempest is for chemical weapons development and where a button has to pressed every day to prevent the release of lethal vapours over the island. One purpose for the Freighter expedition is for Faraday and Lewis(25) to permanently disable the station. The Tempest is designed a doomsday weapon.
Charlotte Stanley Lewis is an anthropologist brought to the Island by helicopter from the Freighter after being hired by Charles Widmore. Miles Straume(26) suggests she has been to the island before and she chooses to stay when given the option to leave but dies due the ill effects of the various time shifts made by the island. She is listed for season 6 and her name is after C S Lewis.
Miles Straume is a spiritualist hired by Charles Widmore with the ability to read the final thoughts of people after they die. He is on the island as it goes back in time and joins Sawyer and Juliet at the DHARMA Initiative, discovering that his father is the DHARMA scientist Dr Pierre Chang.
Pierre Chang(27) appears in 15 episodes spread over four seasons. He is also called Marvin Candle, Mick Wickmund and Edgar Halliwax and stars in orientation films which the survivors discover. In season 5 he appears live, so to speak, and Daniel Faraday persuades him to stop the drilling but his action is over-ruled.
There are two main storylines to be mentioned concerning Sawyer and Jin and the Oceanic Six. Beginning with the Oceanic Six who are eventually discovered adrift at sea, they pretend to have escaped from the plane and make no reference to the Island when they realise they have all been reported dead, in order to protect the other survivors. There is considerable pressure placed on Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sun to return to the Island by important figures in their individual lives and where it is now suspected this was by the Smoke Monster as a human form Back in LA Hurley has locked himself away in an asylum before he goes to prison for murders he does not commit because he keeps seeing people who are dead the prison as he keeps seeing people he knows to be dead. Dr Jack Shepherd also becomes more and more disturbed and convinced they should not have left the island going on endless flights hoping for a repeat of what happened.
John Locke also leaves the island and returns to the USA where he is murdered by Ben in a bizarre situation where Ben stops Locke committing suicide and then hangs him with the same rope to look like suicide. Because everyone must return to the Island, Jack takes Locke’s body in the plane which they are told will crash and get them back to Island.
As is often the situation one group fragments into two or three groups and in this instance Jack, Kate and Hurley find themselves back on the Island but in 1975 during early days of the DHARMA Initiative. The reason that Sun returns to the island is that although her child was born on return home in real time and she becomes an important and independently minded woman having effectively taken over her father’s empire, she learns that Jin survived the blowing up if the freighter sent by Charles Widmore. On the island their original love had rekindled and although this means leaving their child she decides to return to Island to try and find him. However when the plane crashes for a second time, this us ion Hydra Island to the main island, but on a different time period to Kate Jack and Hurley. Ben who has a way of getting off the island when he wishes and who has murdered Locke is also on the special flight back and he lands in the time period as Sun. He is understandably amazed to then find Locke alive but not as much as the other new plane crash survivors who discover Locke’s body in the coffin brought on the plane. This makes them suspicious when Locke reappears in the presence of his own body still in the coffin.
When Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid return to the Island, the find themselves transported back to 1975 in the early years of the DHARMA initiative and to their amazement find that Sawyer is there as a senior security officer and living with Juliet as a mechanic.
Ana Lucia is in turn killed by another survivor Michael Dawson(28) who appears in 47 episodes. Michael is a New York artist and construction worker who has had no contact with his son since he was a baby taken to Australia by his mother. When the mother dies Michael flies to Australia and is bringing his son, Walt and Walt’s dog back to the USA. The relationship between father and son is understandably strained especially as Walt loses his dog to the jungle. Michael establishes a relationship with Sun when he finds out that she can speak English, which she hides from Jin. Michael and his son and dog attempt to escape the island on a raft, but Walk is captured by the Others and Michael does a deal in which Kate, Jack, Sawyer and Hurley are exchanged for Walt. Michael is required to kill Ana and another survivor as part of the deal. They escape and return reach the USA but when Walt finds out what happened he goes to live with his grandmother leaving Michael distraught by what he has done and how the situation has developed. Michael tries to commit suicide but works out the island wont let him die. He find out about the freighter of Charles Widmore and joins the crew with the intention to help the Survivors. He is blown up while trying to deactivate the bomb on the freighter. He is schedule to reappear in the last season as is Eloise Hawking
Walt, (29) is Michael son’s who Ben and the Others regarded as special rather than just as means to get his father to assist them. Having had a role in 32 episodes it is surprising he is not being reintroduced in the last season even if only to have a reconciliation with his dad. Walt’s dog Vincent (30) features in 40 shows, Labrador retriever who is given to Shannon until she is killed and then appeared to be taken up by Sun and then by Rose and Bernard.
Rose and Bernard Nadler (31 & 32) are a couple who add to the overall story with 22 and 23 episodes to their credit. Dr Nadler is an Australian dentist who weds Rose a year before the crash. She has terminal cancer and after the crash they are separated for a season with Rose surviving and then discovering her husband as a survivor of the tail section group. Rose discovered her disease is in remission on the Island and her husband makes the decision to remain with her living quietly out of trouble and the attention of everyone else. They went back in time with Island to the 1970‘s and it is not clear if we are to learn of their present day island existence although the are seen together on the plane in the first episode of season six. Their role has been has been to show acceptance of fate, making the best of whatever situation they are in.
Some who I thought would have continuing influence is Danielle Rousseau(33) after philosopher, with 22 episodes covering all five season but not the last. Danielle is stranded on the Island after her scientific expedition boat breaks down in 1988. She is young and pregnant and played by a different actor from later. She kills her other team members when they become affected by the Smoke Monster although she blames the Others and for sixteen years she lives in seclusion on the Island in a disturbed condition although she tries to help the Survivors from time to time. He child was kidnapped by the Others and brought up by Ben as his daughter. Jin meets Rousseau after the freighter explodes and he is taken back in time to 1975. Danielle recorded a distress message which broadcasts from a tower on the island for sixteen years and which the survivors try and find when they first arrive as they believe the broadcast is live. She is killed in an ambush on the way to the Temple on orders from Ben) The tower is another Dharma station.
Alexandra Rousseau (34) is in four seasons and 17 episodes. Ben was ordered by Charles Widmore to kill the Alex with her mother he was unable to do so and raises Alex as his own. She helps the survivors and defects from the Others. She is later executed in front of Ben hence his decision to try and kill the daughter of Charles Widmore.
Frank Lapidus (35) is the pilot who was to have taken Flight 815 and is then recruited to fly the helicopter on the freighter. He brings Daniel Faraday Miles Straume and Charlotte Staples Lewis to the island from the freighter and then helps Desmond and the Oceanic six to escape. He then reappears at the Captain of Flight 316 and makes a controlled landing on Hydra Island.
Elizabeth Libby Smith (36) is one of the interesting characters because of how she appears and reappears. She is a young widow who gives Desmond her husband’s boat for his round the world trip. She then becomes a mental patient in the same hospital as Hurley and they become romantically attached. She is then a survivor in the tail section and is then killed by Michael after witnessing him killing Ana Lucia. In season 6 will she and Hurley get to gether?
Cindy Chandler (37) is a Flight 815 air hostess and is tail section survivor captured by the Others and settles down living with them over seasons 1-3 but has an appearance in season 6 (11 episodes)
Edward Mars (38) is the Marshall obsessed with bringing Kate to Justice and has 9 episodes although is killed in the crash, but reappears at the start of the final season as the plane completes its journey
Emma and Zak (39 and 40) are children brother and sister who only appear in 3 episodes when they are taken to live with the Others over seasons 2 and 3 but are listed for season six.
Also listed is Leslie Arzt(41), a survivor who everyone calls Arts despite constant corrections. He is keen to go on the expeditions of Jack and Locke and gets his chance on the trip to Black Rock. He dies as a stick of dynamite explodes when lecturing on how to safely handle the explosive. He is listed for season six. In his former life he was junior high school teacher.
Mr Eko (42) has an important role in season 4 and 5 with 21 episodes. He is Nigerian drug Lord turned priest who is part of the tails section survivors unable to speak for 40 days. It is Eko who finds the DHARMA station with the button that needs to be pressed. The body of his brother was also on another plane which crashed before on the island. At one point he tries to build a church with the help of Charlie and has several confrontations with the Smoke Monster before being killed by it.
Tom Friendly(43) (19 episodes) is the first Other which the survivors meet. He abducts Walt from the Raft as they attempt to escape. Tom recruits Michael to spy on the freighter and is killed by Sawyer at the end of season 3.
Ethan Ron (44)(13 episodes), an anagram of Other Man, who is a Doctor who grew up on the Island as part of the DHARMA initiative who then joins the Others when they destroy the Initiative. He poses as a survivor but is exposed by Hurley and in turn he abducts Charlie and Clare. Charlie then kills Ethan after escaping.
Scot Jackson (45) and Steve Jenkins (46 are two survivors with 12 episodes to their credit in season 1 to 3 and 5 when both are killed as part of the massacre of remaining survivors who are not to have any further role in the series.
Nearly last but not least because of 46 appearances over the first 5 seasons is Aaron (47), the child of Clare Littleton and her boyfriend Thomas and is born on the Island and cared for by Charlie and then Kate before being given to his grandmother. Some 50 babies took the part!
Pride of last place goes to Jack’s father Christian Shepherd (48) Jack’s father went to Australia to find his daughter Claire, after being disbarred while performing an operation when drunk. He had Ana Lucia with him and then reappears to his son and to various other people on the island including Claire, Locke and Miles. So is this Smoke Monster Changeling or does Christian have an ongoing role?
Other on flight 815 are Nikki Fernandez in 7 episodes, Illana 7, Paulo 7, Seth Norris 815 Pilot, Gary Troup 1 and Neil Frogurt 3. Of the Hostiles and Others are Michael Bukunin 8, Karl Martin 10, Bea Khugh 3 and Danny Pickett 8, Dharma Members include Amy 3, Annie 1, Phil 9, Gerald and Karen Dr Groot 4,Horace Godspeed 7, Alvar Hanso 1, Kelvin Inman 2, Roger Linus 6 and Stuart Radzinsky 7. There are Widmore employees Matthew Abadoon 4, Naomi Dorrit 11, Martin Kenny 9, Captain Gault 3 and other characters Anthony Cooper 5, Bram 5, Caesar 4, Diane Janssen 5, Nouir Abbed 5, Jack Lee 3, Cassidy Phillips 4. I make this over 80 characters interconnected in some way
There are over 30 other characters off the island who appear in 2 to 4 episodes but do not appear to connected and which made it the most expensive TV series to be aired with a total of 121 episodes and set in locations in Honolulu.
I will return again midway or at the end of the final season
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