I'm "Lost" illiterate. (I never saw the show.) Please help! (Spoilers)

Don't know why I never bothered with Lost. Just didn't. And now it's in Season 4 I think, and I still haven't seen a blessed episode.

Oh well, right?

Meanwhile, I am working on a novel, but my fingers have come to a screeching halt this week with an inner dread that I'm sure many here have had at many times in their writing projects: "What if this novel has been done before??????" And as I ponder that possibility, my mind suddenly reels with horror as I then start to wonder: "What if the TV show Lost has already covered a half dozen or more of the REALLY COOL things I have planned in this novel?"

So ... can you guys give me a thumbnail guide to Lost? Either that or I have to go out and rent the DVD's from Blockbster, and then spend 60 or more hours trying to catch up.



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What if I just highlight MY thumbnails for you?

Okay, gimmie a minute (or two).

My characters start out as just two people cut off form the rest of the world. Then it grows to a group of ten, then fifty, and finally several hundred people. They are separated from civilization and now need to survive as a community. (No, they are NOT on a tropical desert island.) The main thrust of the story is that they need to accomplish all of the following, and I focus heavilly upon their own resourcefulness at achieving it all.

1) They need to generate power/electricity.
2) They need to provide medical care for themselves, including insulin for several diabetics in their midst.
3) They need to grow and harvest food, and even store it long term.
4) They need to negotiate with, placate, and even forge alliances with hostile neighbors.
5) They need to fortify their position militarilly.
6) They need to provide clothes for themselves (this includes shoes).
7) They need to survive the heat of summer and the cold of winter.
8) They need to come up with a system of social governance and agreed upon behavior and customs.

And as far as the way each and every problem gets handled, a lot of the discussions by the characters involve History Channel flashback kind of stuff. This happens whenever the community comes across a lack or a need, and someone in the group is an expert in that particular field. So he or she will elaborate in great detail to the others about how that problem would have gotten solved back in modern society, and then after he/she explains all that, they then have to figure out how to do it the Gilligan's Island way, or (to borrow from a line uttered by Mr. Spock in a very famous episode of Star Trek) "with little more than stone knives and bear skins."



I could go on and on. Forgive me for being so vague. Specifics might have helped some, but I am doing my best to keep this as brief as possible.

If you want more details, I'm happy to oblige. But for now these are MY thumbnails.





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KTC said:

You're fine. Unless of course you have some unknown force f*cking the whole thing up with madness... which it doesn't sound like you do.

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Ummm ... I am toying with maybe having one or two people in this community of several hundred suffer from a sudden onset of mental illness (for no other reason than the fact that it just kinda happens to people at times). And becasue there's no Prozac available, the community has to decide if they can afford to be humanitarian and somehow take care of them, or maybe lock them away in a basement, or drive them away.

ChaosTitan said:

As long as their hostile neighbors are't

1) Decendants of mysterious, unaging people who've been on a magically moving island, commune with a creepy guy in a cabin, and are trying to keep it protected and hidden from....

2) Scientists and their henchman, determined to discover the secrets of said magical island....

Then I think you're safe.

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Uhh .... no. (You are SOOOO kidding me! Is that REALLY what happens in the TV series??????)

KTC said:

Funny you would say you never watch Lost. I actually missed the first three seasons. And then I picked them up on DVD over the past while and watched them all. My wife and I loved it. Then we tried to watch the new season on TV, weekly for the first time... after we watched 3 or 4 episodes we totally lost interest. We're going to buy it when it comes out and watch it all at once again. I find that all series are best watched that way now.

Seriously, though. You have nothing to worry about. Yes... they actually MOVE the island... and that's not even one of the weird things that happen.

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I do have a minor bit of spirituality happen in this story, but it's subjective enough that maybe there's no real substance to it. Basically, the leader of the group (not a terribly religious man) has a dream (which might have been from God), and after agonizing with the local holy man he makes the critical decision to have the community go in a particular direction based upon the warning in the dream--and it proves to be the RIGHT decision. But it's still subjective.

Beyond that, no mystical, sci-fi, other-worldly, hyper-specualtive kind of stuff.




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KTC said:

That too would work. I meant madness in a more obscure way... the show is whacked! I think mental illness is a great tool in a story like the one yours sounds like.

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Does this happen in Lost? Do one or two people in the group go kinda crazy, and after a thorough examination it is determined that they are merely in need of a good solid anti-psychotic, but sadly there are none available?

KTC said:

There is a Jacob on the Island that directs the leader... he's not there, but he is. In a little cabin in the woods. Spooky. But still... what you're describing is different.

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I had no idea Lost was dealing with such way-out elements of fantasy and pseudo-spirituality. I assumed it was all merely about survival on an island. Sounds like my novel is not only in an entirely different genre than Lost, but also that Lost's tone won't even come close to my story.

I so dread unintended comparison to another work--be it comparison of plot elements or merely of tone. The more you guys enlighten me, the more reassured I am of being UTTERLY safe. Thanks for clarifying.

KTC said:

Here. This is an excellent resource... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Lost

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Thanks.

ChaosTitan said:

It doesn't sound quite as silly in the series as when I say it like that, but yep. And then you've got forty plane crash survivors stranded in the middle of the whole mess.

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Well, I can't knock any TV show that has half the planet mesermized for four years straight.

KTC said:

Yes... but don't forget they all died in the sea and the plane landed at the bottom of the ocean with no survivors.

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This is sounding like a grownup variation on The Land of the Lost.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Please don't. I watched the first 6 episodes, got bored, and haven't watched it since.

The more I read about it, the more I realize I haven't missed a thing.

If it helps any, just remember that Dukes of Hazzard was the number one rated show, too.

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Meh. These guys answered my questions in just ONE hour. So now there's no need to spend that originally alotted SIXTY hours. (The internet is just SOOOOO well-suited for interview-based research.)