MANIFEST DESTINY?

From the Hollywood Reporter and the web, there is news that NBC has ordered a pilot for a series which contains some initial traits of LOST. The synopsis is as follows:

A plane mysteriously goes missing mid-flight. Later, it reappears. For the passengers on board, it’s like it never happened. For everyone else, years have passed with the assumption that everyone on board was dead.

That’s the plot of Manifest, a new TV pilot ordered by NBC that’ll be produced by Robert Zemeckis. Jeff Rake (executive producer of The Mysteries of Laura) wrote the show, which will focus on how that passage of time changes the lives of the people on board as well as why it happened in the first place.

The show's premise is set up as a plane disaster to spawn dramatic mysteries which harks to LOST and the genre of castaways like Robinson Caruso. But this series seems to have no beaches, no smoke monsters—just one massive, unfathomable event, a long passage of time, and the fallout from it.

Zemeckis was the director and co-creator of Back to the Future.  He won an Oscar for directing Forrest Gump. He’s produced a few TV series over the years, but nothing in several decades.

This show will investigate maybe not the reason why the plane disappeared (any science fiction reason would probably suffice) but what happens to the characters who suddenly land 5, 10, 15 years later?  Of course their normal lives would have changed. Characters who were married probably no longer have spouses (since one can be declared dead after 7 years). Spouses who have remarried with children would want little to so with the returning spouse (or maybe not - - - that could be a point of conflict.) Characters would be coming home to find they have no job, no home, or lost family members who may have died without knowing their lost family member was still alive.

We could see the use of "flashbacks" to narrate the back stories of the airplane passengers as they try to navigate through a new world which forgot about them.

The pilot episode needs to hit hard and grasp the viewers immediately to avoid the curse of LOST strong start and weak finish.

LOST LINE

Jorge Garcia posted video of his first line in LOST which was deleted from the pilot.

In the scene, Jack turns around in the beach debris and yells,  "Hey you, come here" and then Hurley points at the plane and says "plane crash."

Garcia said it was a great line, and many fans agree.

But with Hurley in a dazed but unhurt expression, the idea of him saying the obvious is an intriguing leaping off point for a theory.

What if Hurley was not dazed by the crash itself, but amazed that he had "created it?"

The question is whether Hurley could have "projected" one of his nightmares into reality.

The concept of projection is well known. A strong personality often "projects" his feelings and opinions on the people around him. Cult leaders are famous for doing this. They can control other people's minds by their charisma and charm, even if the ideas are batsh*t crazy.

Now, throughout the series, Hurley truly believed that he was cursed. When anything good happened to him, he would dread it - - - and suddenly something bad would happen, like his grandfather having a heart attack or the chicken joint hit by a meteorite.

Now if you take the phrase "mind over matter," and turn it around to say "matter over the mind," it would mean that a person's mind can magically create a new physical world order by thought. If Hurley could create events just by thinking about them, then he had god-like abilities. And the island could have been a place for these gods, as Jacob also had those attributes as well as the smoke monster.

It harks back to the Greek legends of the various gods coming to Earth to mess with the human beings. The bred, tortured, cajoled and misused the human race because of the gods arrogant superiority. One could think that Hurley may have been the offspring of such a mythological god race.

Or it could as simple as creating a vast new world in your mind's imagination. We do it all the time. We call it dreams. But if a superbeing has the power to project those dreams into reality, that could be the premise of the series. The struggle of competing minds to fashion their own world.

If Hurley did cause the plane crash, that puts an entirely different spin on the Desmond story arc which he believes his not putting in the Numbers caused the crash. But those Numbers were tied directly to Hurley prior to Flight 815.

MAN IN THE MIDDLE

There is one inflection point between the island and sideways story arcs. People believe it is Desmond, but the real man in the middle is a background character.

This comes about in reviewing a minor detail in the series. The flight manifest contained the names of all the passengers who flew on Flight 815.  The manifest was part of the papers and materials kept by Sawyer in his stash shortly after the survivors started to build camp.

The earliest known time that the mid-section survivors were in possession of the manifest was day 5 - Sunday, September 26th, 2004, during the burning of the plane. It then went into Sawyer's possession for approximately eleven days before passing to Hurley on Day 16.

Hurley used the manifest in order to make a census of everyone on the beach and in the caves.  He asked everyone for his name, place of residence, and the reason he was in Australia to compile the census.  It was during this process, Hurley found that Ethan Rom was not a passenger on the plane, but an Other.

Lostpedia states that only a few people have actually seen the manifest:

Locke knew Hurley and Sawyer's real names (Hugo Reyes and James Ford) from the manifest.

Sawyer had access to the manifest since it was part of his stash.

Hurley used the manifest to create his census of survivors.

And co-pilot Frank Lapidus claimed he had memorialized the entire 815 manifest so he was able to identify Juliet as not being a passenger. How Frank would have received a copy of the manifest (which is created at the gate through boarding passes) is unknown, but a telling bit of information.

In the flash sideways Flight 815, pilot Seth Norris is listed instead of Frank. Which means some details of the original flight were the same. But the  manifest was slightly different, with some characters such as Desmond,  who were not on the plane originally, were on it in the flash sideways. Other passengers were seated differently or missing altogether.
 
After having some realization about this world, Desmond asked his limo driver to get him a copy of the manifest so he could show the other passengers something. Desmond was later seen seeking out various passengers of Flight 815 and manipulating their circumstances to trigger an "awakening"  though it is unclear to what extent he consulted the manifest to accomplish his goal.

What was the cosmic bridge between the island and the sideways plane manifests?

It could be the knowledge of Frank, who is the only character to leave the island more than twice, and the fact that Ajira 316 actually made it off the island with Desmond on it.

Lapidus is a Biblical name derived from the Latin word lapideus, meaning "made of stone."

So was alcoholic, depressed pilot Frank the foundation stone on which the series can be connected?

Frank, as a character, does not get a lot of credit for being independent, resourceful, dynamic, skilled and perceptive. He knew the evil intentions of the freighter crew from day one. He knew something was wrong in the whole disappearing Flight 815 scandal. In some respects, he was the one who had a clear understanding that people and events were being manipulated, so he rode the wave of the deceptions to find his answers. As a pragmatic person, he survived the various dangers on and off the island. And when he found the 815ers on his Ajira flight, he deadpanned that he was not getting to his scheduled destination.

Or was he?  In some respects, Frank represents an guardian angel for some of the 815ers. Through guilt or heavenly redemption, he literally "saves" several people, including Kate twice. He was the man in the middle of the action, but not swept away by it.

By Frank getting Desmond off the island had to have changed the alternative time line to place Desmond on sideways Flight 815. This is the most dramatic change in the sideways manifest, as it creates the path for Desmond to remember and reunite the island memories to their souls. So Desmond takes on the role of an underworld ferryman or priest, to get his charges through judgment and paradise. 

CRASH JACK

After rewatching a blended fan video of what happened during the 815 crash in S1E1, I noticed for the first time what Jack was wearing: a dark tie with light blue but large stars. Could this be the pilot Easter Egg? Stars represent the heavens. Christian, as ghost dad, calls Vincent to go find and wake up Jack in the jungle. Jack opens his eye as Vincent approaches him.

ORIGINAL LOST

An article in the August, 2007 issue of Chicago Magazine had an interesting background on the ABC show we call LOST. When Tom Hanks' successful movie, Cast Away, ended its run, ABC executives thought it would be a good idea for a television drama. They contacted a production company who put a writer, Jeffrey Leiber, to work on a pilot script. The original script concept by Leiber was apparently to combine elements of Cast Away, Survivor and Lord of the Flies. The project was green lighted and he wrote the pilot for NOWHERE.

The premise was that a plane crashes on a remote Pacific Island. There are survivors who have to cope with this tragic situation, then later forge a new island society when rescue never arrives to save them. The focal point was to be a conflict between two half brothers, raised differently by their father: Truman, a rumpled Harry Potter looking 28 year old, and the other, Ross, a 30 year old successful businessman. The brothers would fight for control on who would lead this new island society.

After the pilot was written, ABC reversed course on the project. They decided to ask the hot, young director, JJ Abrams, to look it over. He thought the story line was unsustainable, but maybe it could go somewhere if you threw in supernatural elements. ABC then gave the project over to Abrams, who was too busy to handle it, so he dished it off to D&C to shoot the pilot episode on a re-write fly.

Leiber was axed out of the project, but an arbitration ruling gave him 60 percent creator credit for the pilot (the similarities of the characters, traits, descriptions), even though he stated that the show itself had changed dramatically from what he had in mind.

So the origins of LOST was a story of survivors cut off from society, and the struggles between two brothers for leadership of a new island society - - - with supernatural mysteries.

How does this foundation equate after five seasons? The recent introduction of Jacob and MIB as antagonists over the control of the island would fit into the foundational structure of the original pilot. Both would appear to have supernatural powers or be supernatural beings. The facet that is lost is the struggle to rebuild an island society since the constant idea of rescue or leaving the island was paramount to the survivors. However, in light of the Jacob-MIB conflict, it would be disappointing to find that the survivors were merely interchangeable pawns in that conflict.