Lost -- A New Blog and Thoughts on This Week's Episode

Woohoo! I am going to have a new blog totally devoted to Lost in a few days. I'll put the link here.

Edited 10 Oct 2006: My Lost blog is up and running. Check it out at Lost Fanatic and let me know what you think.

For now, here are my thoughts on this week's show. Let me know where I am way off and what I missed.

What did we learn that was new in the opening episode of season three?

Stations -- according to the film at the Swan station, there are six Dharma stations. So far, we have seen:

Swan -- the station where Desmond was a hatchmonkey and where the electromagnet went haywire at the end of season two

Arrow -- the tail section survivors stayed here. According to a cryptic comment from someone, the arrow may be a storage facility and not a station

Staff -- the medical station where Claire was taken by Ethan

Pearl -- the station found by Locke and Eko. This was where the occupants of the Swan hatch could be viewed.

Hydra -- the zoological station where Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are being held. Bears, sharks, and dolphins

On the blast door map, there is also C3, C4, and a scratched out station between the Staff and the Arrow. To figure out where the Hydra station might be on that map, I'm making a few assumptions. First, that the Hydra is close to where the Others live. Second, that the accuracy of the blast door map can be relied on. Third, that the Hydra station is on the map, just not labeled.

Watching the plane break apart from the point of view of the Others in their compound, the tail landed to the right and the fuselage to the left. That puts the Hydra at C3 or C4.

How far away from the Others' compound did the tail section land? Ben said that Goodwin could make it there in less than an hour if he ran. The fastest time in a marathon (twenty-six miles) was run in 2003 by Paul Tergat at two hours, four minutes, and fifty-three seconds. But Goodwin would have been running cross-country, and marathons are usually run on decent roads. Looking at high school times for cross-country running on Dyestat, I see that thirty-six minutes is an excellent time for two miles. So, the tail section landed between three and thirteen miles away, if Goodwin was an elite athlete, and he ran on a combination of jungle and beach.

It seems a significantly longer distance to the fuselage. Ethan probably spent most of the day getting there. Without knowing a time for Ethan, I won't guess the distance.

The Others are playing mind games with the 815 survivors. But why? That's not really new information, since Henry played with Locke in the hatch. (He pushed the button. No, wait, not really. Locke is one of the good ones, one of the ones Henry was coming for, yet he wasn't on the list of people for Michael to bring.) The mind games they are running amount to torture. What is the point? Probably to break them, but then what?