Across the Universe

I was walking down the halls of WCC today after my drawing class when I saw this:

Check out the last post if you don’t know why I am so excited!

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I didn’t do a blog entry last week for a number of reasons. The first being I was lazy, the second being I was busy, and the third being anything I say tends to be found elsewhere in other blogs so I get kind of discouraged easily. My fault!

One thing I did want to point out about last week’s episode, “The Economist,” was a painting on the wall in the bedroom. This ‘un right here:

I’ve learned that whenever something is centered on the screen for longer than 0.5 seconds, it’s some kind of clue or easter egg. Apparently this is a map of the universe, so who knows what that could mean? It hangs in Ben’s bedroom so he’s obviously got his eyes on the cosmos. It could be that astronomy is just a personal hobby of his, or it could be something that they actually utilize. More on this in a second.

What’s really interesting here is that, since I had my Chronicles of Narnia collection sitting on my desk anyway last week, I started flipping through the chapter titles again just to see if there were any new relevancies and, wouldn’t you know it, chapter one in the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is called “The Picture in the Bedroom.”

Go figure.

I might have more insight if I actually read the book since last time, but I did not. Even if I did, I’m not so sure it would explain the entire Lost storyline. I just think these connections are essentially saying: watch the picture in the bedroom! It’s important!

However, if the Dawn Treader is a boat, could the freighter be a representation of that? Or, what if the island itself is the Dawn Treader? Going back to the idea that the map on the wall may be something Ben actually utilizes fits nicely with a clue from last night’s episode, also something that was on screen for 0.5 seconds (and thank god for obsessive screen capturing fans):

This book, “Valis,” which Ben has already read, but Locke gives him anyway, telling him he might catch something else the second time through.

According to Amazon, “Valis is known as science fiction only for lack of a better category.” Hmm. So it doesn’t really fit neatly into any one category but sci-fi seems to fit best? Sounds familiar. But there’s more!

“Valis is a fool’s search for God, who turns out to be a virus, a joke, and a mental hologram transmitted from an orbiting satellite.” FUN FACT: The virus sounds an awful lot like “the sickness” from season one, what with that pesky quarantine safety joke “what did one snowman say to the other?” FUNNER FACT: A satellite can orbit the Earth every 108 minutes.

“Don’t push the button, the button is bad.”

More:

“The proponent of the novel, Horselover Fat, is thrust into a theological quest when he receives communion in a burst of pink laser light.” FUN FACT: Upon imploding the hatch, the sky turned purple. FUNNER FACT: Upon finding the hatch in the first place, Locke was blasted with a burst of light that, depending on your vantage point, may have looked like a laser light.

And so the blurb continues: “From the cancer ward of a bay area hospital to the ranch of a fraudulent charismatic religious figure who turns out to have a direct com link with God…” So, Juliet’s sister was in a cancer ward, yes? And then to a fraudulent charismatic religious figure who has a direct com link with… Jacob? Jacob who looks like Christian? Jacob Christian?

Jesus Christ!

Maybe that “god satellite” really is in orbit and every 108 minutes the Swan station’s “unique properties” allowed the signal to be amplified, but now that the Swan is gone the power source is not as strong, and God/Jacob appears sporadically or not at all. I’m thinking that Jacob might have only recently gone “invisible,” because the very first time we heard his name mentioned was by Tom (Mr. Friendly), when he casually said: “They weren’t even on Jacob’s list.” Either he has an undying trust in Ben (which is probably true), or he has seen Jacob with his own eyes and takes it for granted that he’s real.

Juliet may have been on to something when she told Kate and Sawyer what they were being forced to build when they were shackled up the first part of season three: “A runway.” For what? “The aliens.” This assumes that the fake God transmission is alien in origin, of course, which is why Ben might have a map of the universe.

Also, Google tells me “Valis” is an acronym. An acronym is like ASAP meaning “as soon as possible,” or DHARMA meaning “Department of Heuristics and Research into Material Applications.” In the book, “Valis” is an acronym for “Vast Active Living Intelligent System.”

Locke has referred to the island as an entity before, as in “the island told me to,” or “the island won’t let us,” etc. And in a recent interview, the actor who plays Locke (Terry O’Quinn) came out and said it: “Locke believes that the Island has a soul, that it is a being and that he is it’s agent.” In other words, it’s a vast active living intelligent system.

Chills.

Buks wit werds in um is good.

Other thoughts!

There’s a time discrepancy between the real world and the island. Proof:

Usually I’m pretty good with keeping the paradoxes of time travel straight in my head, but I’m having difficulties with this one so I’m going to talk it out right now. Follow with me.

The boat shot off the payload (oohhh, droppin loooaddds all over yer island) which included a clock, which took only seconds to get to the island from the vantage of the boat, but 31 minutes according to Daniel on the island. The reason I’m having trouble with this is that they were able to communicate in real time. The boat people were saying, “okay, it’s landed, I just saw it,” while Daniel was saying, “no, I don’t see it anywhere…. wait, here it is, 31 minutes later.” Doesn’t make sense to me because if the island existed 31 minutes in the past, they would have already had that conversation.

So, that would mean that not everything is effected by this time displacement.

The payload was, and I think Naomi’s helicopter was and maybe even the Oceanic plane itself (since, ya know, they both crashed pretty hard). The submarine going to and from the island having a “bumpy ride” tells me something. But the fact that they can communicate with the outside world in real time via the satellite phones, the underwater hatch, and the Flame station tells me that somehow, the time displaced communication signals are syncing up.

Let’s run through it again.

Imagine I drop a load on the island. To me, it gets there instantaneously. I can watch it land. I then get on the phone to ask “do you see it?” and in doing so am essentially dropping another load: a signal. I can’t watch it, but I know it’s traveling to the island. Except, from my vantage point, it doesn’t land on the island at all. Yet a voice comes back: “No, I don’t see anything.” Then 31 minutes later: “Oh, there it is.”

So, the communication signal itself is lining up with the island-31-minutes-ago, while everything else appears to line up with real time.

Make sense? Head is hurting. Captain Janeway once said it best: “When trying to think about time travel, don’t.”

Though, this has interesting implications if true. Let’s continue with the example that I’m on the boat. I have figured out that what I’m seeing is in real time, but when I call those on the island, I’m talking to them 31 minutes ago. So, I have a pair of binoculars, and am keeping an eye on things. Now let’s say I see Jack sneaking up behind Ben with a gun. “Oh no!” I say to my fictional self. “That’s terrible. Ben can’t die! He’s rich!” So I call him, 31 minutes ago.

“Yes?” He says.

“Ben, in 31 minutes, Jack is going to sneak up behind you and kill you.”

“Thank you, kind sir. I can now alter the time line and prevent my own death. This conveniently explains how we’re always one step ahead of everyone,” but haven’t really been since their communication station (the Flame) was destroyed.

“It also explains,” Ben might say, “how I appeared like I knew Oceanic 815 was coming down in the first episode of season 3. I knew exactly where to send Ethan and Goodwin because I had 31 minutes to prepare. And when I went to see Mikhail right afterward, he was already watching the news feeds 31 minutes from the future.”

You might catch something else the second time through. Right, Locke?

The interesting thing here, though, is what exactly I’d see from the boat. If I see Ben die, then call him and prevent it from happening, if I look back through my binoculars, what would I see? A parallel universe where Ben is dead? Or will things alter and change right in front of me?

Eh, don’t think about it. Captain Janeway was right. Like always.

 ***

ADDITIONAL THOUGHT AT 6PM:  If Jacob is indeed a “projected image,” or some sort of hologram from a satellite, maybe the cabin is, too.  It would explain why Hurley saw it in more than one place within the span of seconds:  maybe the signal was getting distorted.

Ohhh, the mysteries…

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From Peter David:

Monopoly alert: Spread the word

While attending Toyfair, I found out that Hasbro is putting together an international version of Monopoly, and instead of street names on the board, there will be city names. The color coding remains the same: The most valuable real estate will be on blue spots, for instance (normally occupied by Broadway and Park Place), and then green, yellow and so on. There is currently a vote going on that is open to anyone in the world with a computer, and you can vote once a day for up to ten cities. The top vote getters will be on Broadway and Park Place, and the rest will be apportioned to the remainder of the real estate.

Now how, you may ask, is the United States faring in this international voting? The answer: Miserably. Of the twenty eight properties on this quintessentially American game, only two US cities are making any kind of showing, and neither is in prime real estate. New York is #8 (relegated to the much less tony yellow section of the board), while, Las Vegas is an abysmal #23. What’s number one, you may ask? The most popular international city?

Istanbul.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Personally, I think this is an abysmal state of affairs. Istanbul the number one city of international Monopoly? The best thing one can say about Istanbul is that it’s a catchy song covered by “They Might Be Giants.” But “New York, New York” is practically an anthem.

According to the woman at Hasbro I spoke to, the website where the voting is going on–www.monopoly.com–is getting 10,000 votes a day. That’s not all that much. A concerted web effort can turn this around.

Obviously I want to see New York nestled in the top spot, with more US cities occupying as many of the rest of the valuable properties as possible. Knee-jerk patriotism? Unreasonable nationalism? Well…yeah. You got a problem with that? If the residents of freaking Turkey should be allowed that indulgence, so should I.

We’ve only got until February 28th to get it done, so spread the word to all and sundry. Feel free to repost this anywhere and everywhere.

PAD

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Holy crap!

This week’s episode singlehandedly squashed my doubts about the show, and was leaps and bounds ahead of what came before it. I don’t know how the show managed to go from “mediocre” to “incredibly awesome” in one week, but it did. I’ll wait until next week to see if it maintains this new confidence or if it was just a fluke — but wow, even if this show ends up getting tanked, that episode alone is a fine hour of Terminator mythology that can stand alongside the movies. When it ended I immediately wanted to rewind and watch it again, and the only other show that makes me want to do that is Lost.

The storytelling this week took a cue from Lost, I think, in that it told the story of Derik Reese in a series of flash backs (technically flash forwards, I guess, since they occurred in his future). I really like this style of storytelling because I think it works best for the kind of stories I like… it gives you information from the beginning, information from the end, and then fills in the little details slowly over the course of an episode, or, on a larger scale, a season or even the entire series.

For example, what the hell was in the piano room in the basement? That was creepy as hell. They were all locked up in a room after the machines took over, and they pressed their ears against the floorboards… “is that piano music?” It reminded me of Battlestar Galactica, when the four remaining Cylons heard mysterious music… I thought that maybe they were just sharing a hallucination. But no. Derik was taken down there, and what he saw confused and scared him. But what was there? We don’t know yet.

And we finally saw Cameron of the future. I was pretty naive thinking they’d drop the ball on this one — I had even thought up an entire backstory for her on my own because I thought they would never explain it. Yet there she was, and she was there from the beginning of the entire Terminator story arc, too. Since this episode took place in the year John Connor sent back Kyle Reese to protect his mother (the first Terminator movie), she was by his side. What’s interesting is that in my little “backstory,” she was John Connor’s lover. They hinted at it this week, after some of John’s officers were upset that they were letting “one of them” roam around, even though she was reprogrammed. Then someone said, “it’s what John wants.” She was his aide, essentially, and it implies that he trusted her more than what would be expected if she was just brainwashed.

I thought it was amusing that they didn’t cast an older John, instead they just referred to his off-screen presence, such as “John will see you now.” I was hoping that when Derik met him, they’d show him, but I realized that it’s been 20+ years and we have not yet seen future-John. Throwing him in all willy-nilly (yes, willy-nilly) is a big step. Naturally, they want to build the suspense. However, the rumors for the Terminator 4 movie have Christian Bale cast as future John, so we’ll see what happens with that. Maybe the show won’t show him because they want it to tie into the movie.

And what the hell was in the room where John was? Maybe I missed something? It looked like some sort of super-computer, and for a split second I thought they were making John himself into a machine. It’s entirely possibly I got distracted and missed something — was that the time displacement machine?

It’s also interesting that Cameron blatantly lies and collects bits and pieces of Terminators she kills. Obviously there is more going on inside her head than she’s letting on — which is strange, because a robot would just do what it’s programmed to do. Which means either she’s not just a run-of-the-mill robot, or she was programmed by future John to lie for a reason we haven’t seen yet.

Other great things: the music, as always, by Bear McCreary. Battlestar would not be what it is without it, and this show would struggle without it as well. The scene in the future when a Terminator walks into their hideout and starts… well, terminating, had that metallic, industrial tone that made the movies so menacing. And the buildup of both the piano music room and the “John will see you now” segment really built the suspense.

It was also genuinely disturbing seeing the machines salvaging jet engines. What the hey are they up to? Do they need them for time travel or what?

I really hope this show gets a full season order, because as of right now we have two more weeks and that’s it. I would love to see more of the future and how these new characters were there all along. This whole “destory Skynet in the past to protect the future” thing is good, but it isn’t sustainable, because if they do that, then there is nobody to go back in time in the first place to stop it. You can’t go back and kill your grandfather, in other words. The name of the show is also still a bit misleading, and this week’s episode is an example: it wasn’t really a chronicle of Sarah Connor at all.

I’m not sure what it should be, though. Terminator 4 is going to be called “Terminator: Salvation,” so something along those lines would have probably worked better. I think the average viewer doesn’t really like a show with a tongue twister title, especially if it isn’t accurate.

Did you see it? What did you think? Best episode yet? Complete failure?

Best line?  Once again Cameron repeating what she’s heard.  I thought this gag might get old but it’s still really funny.  “It’s a big scary robot,” and “I freak him the hell out…”  I lol’d.

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I had a bad week, and I’d usually have a Lost blog up by now but I’ve been so drained to even write anything. I’ll probably have it up by the end of the weekend.

I also have a Nexterday article and another one for Associated Content I wanted to get up today, but didn’t make it! Now the weekend is here and I still have lots more “real” work to do so I’m putting those on hold.

Until then, enjoy this look into Netflix’s distribution center. I always wondered where my movies were coming from, now I know.

Also, I started a Tumblog about all the crap that I eat.  It’s good, bookmark it.

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For the past couple weeks this show has felt a lot like Smallville to me, in that it’s just mediocre enough to be enjoyable. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but then again it’s not really bad, either, because I’ve made a point to see every Smallville episode since day one. But while Smallville lasted this long because it’s on the CW, Fox has a much worse history of keeping weak shows around. They usually get canceled within weeks of the premiere, which is why I’m still saying there won’t be any more episodes after number 8.

It’s just that they don’t take any risks. Two of my favorite shows, Lost and Battlestar Galactica, take risks every week with their storytelling. You can tell when a show does this because when someone asks you “what is it about?” the answer is so easy, but so complicated. For example, what’s your initial reaction when someone asks you: “What is Lost about?”

Well, it’s about a group of plane crash survivors. But is that it? No, not at all. You can go on for hours with that answer. Same with Battlestar Galactica, and I’m sure a lot of other shows that I don’t know about.

Smallville and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, however, suffer from that answer being a bit too easy. “What is Smallville about?” Superman before he was Superman. But is that it? Well, uhm, for the most part… yes.

What is the Sarah Connor Chronicles about? A robot from the future sent back in time to protect John and Sarah Connor so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place. But is that it? Well, uhm…. yes.

So far, at least. I’m aware that it might take an episode or two, or three or six, to really develop the overall mythology of the show. Lost had it from the start, with the roars, the pilot, and the polar bear. BSG had a bit of it in the beginning because we knew Sharon was a Cylon, and it really picked up later when Baltar realized he has no idea how he knew where a Cylon installation was and accepts the fact that he may be getting played by the hand of God.

The good news is that the Sarah Connor Chronicles might have shown a bit of it in last night’s episode, specifically during the last fifteen minutes, when the mysterious girl at school gets in a car with an unknown person (she’s hiding something), John shows up with Sarah’s ex (just what did he say to him?), and Cameron collecting the Terminator chip then writing a grief note at the end (who was she writing to? suicide girl? and what did she say?)

It’s also interesting that we still don’t know why the girl jumped from the school’s roof and killed herself a few episodes back. Originally I just thought it was lazy writing but I’m smacking myself in the forehead now because it obviously is connected to something. It was both creepy and cool when Cameron replayed the event for the school’s grief counselor. I’m still frustrated, though, that she’s so different from episode 1 to episode 2.

So, what do I hope the Sarah Connor Chronicles is about? A robot from the future who is sent back in time to protect John and Sarah so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place? Sure. But maybe it will also be about Skynet’s realization that they need John and Sarah, because without John and Sarah, the first Terminator (Arnold) has no reason to go back in time and therefore serve as the inspiration for Skynet itself. Therefore, Skynet should be sending Terminators back to protect John and Sarah, and the twist should be that future John is sending back agents to kill himself so the resistance that sparks this whole mess in the first place never happens… thereby ensuring Skynet never exists.

One of those “ultimate sacrifice” stories. If that really is what this show is about, I hope Fox keeps it around after week 8.

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