The Constant & Non-Local Brain Games by J.Wood

Courtesy of Powells.com

Here is the latest recap by the excellent J.Wood.

I. By Way of Introduction
in which a few preliminary points are laid out.

In 1996, Daniel Faraday had a very important meeting with Desmond Hume. In that meeting, Desmond gave Faraday the correct settings to make his machine work and flash the consciousness of Eloise into the future and back.

Eight years later, Faraday doesn't remember that meeting?

Why?

Whatever the answer is, it may be a number, and that number may be 8 (no, not 42, and not even 23... maybe).

In the third season's eighth episode, “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” Desmond experienced a flash unlike anything we had so far seen. This wasn't a flashback for the audience; Desmond was actually back. An explanation for his extended, lucid flashback was left up in the air until now. We always knew there was a causal relationship between his flashing back and being back, and his tripping the failsafe in the Swan Station; we just weren't sure of the why's, how's, and whatsit's. “The Constant” answers this question, and then some.

Here's what we now know:

• Perception of time is different on the island than it is off the island. Faraday lets Jack in on this secret, and tells him if Lapidus didn't keep the helicopter on the specific trajectory that Faraday gave him, there might be “side effects.”
• Side effects of island entry and exit include the strange flashes across time, confusion, nosebleeds, looking narcoleptic, and eventually brain aneurysm.
• Exposure to large doses of radiation or electromagnetism unsettle something in a person that make said person more prone to the side effects of island entry and exit.
  Des tripped the failsafe in “Live Together, Die Alone,” and caught a megadose of an electromagnetic pulse
  • Presumably both Eko and Locke caught a dose, since they were also at ground zero. Locke has since tweaked his psychic link with the island, and Eko was whomped by Smokey.
  Faraday performed an experiment that gave off radiation twenty times a day. He wore a protective apron, but had no protection for his head.
  On the freighter, Minkowski ran the ship's radio equipment until he became unstuck. Being around that equipment all the time would expose Minkowski to higher levels of radiation than normal. According to the Communication Workers of America website, radio equipment emits low levels of non-ionizing radiation that can possibly lead to what they call “thermal effect.” Would the radio equipment alone emit enough radiation to make Minkowski more susceptible to side effects, or is there something more to that equipment?
  • And what was Brandon's story, the man who went out to towards the island with Minkowski and ended up in a body bag?
• The flashes transport the subject's consciousness to different locations in time. The key here is that it's the consciousness that is shifted, and not the physical subject himself.
  Which suggests that consciousness is either a part of or is effected by physical forces, kind of like iron filings being dragged around by a magnet.
• Dr. Ray uses some kind of vaccine on Minkowski; this is either to sedate him—and possibly keep his mind from jumping ship—or its meant to actually counteract the flashes. It doesn't work. (This isn't the first time we've seen a vaccine.)

II. Getting Unstuck
in which the Slaughterhouse-Five references are recouped

This all helps explain why Desmond has flashes to begin with, and why he had such a long-lasting lucid flash; after absorbing the brunt of the pulse, his head was just in a different place for a while. When Faraday zaps the rat Eloise with his light-emitting machine, he tells Des that he's going to “unstick Eloise in time, just like you.” That statement probably sounds familiar to many people, because it's how Kurt Vonnegut describes his protagonist in his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five:
Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
It ends like this:
Poo-tee-weet?
Billy, like Desmond, can't control when, where, or how he flashes to different periods of time, and is forced to relive parts of his life again and again, including his time as a soldier in WWII, and his own death. An alien race called Tralfamadorians also figure into this; they transcendentally exist in four dimensions, and experience all time at once: “All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance.”

For them, the future is already history, and it gives the Tralfamadorians a deep sense of fatalism—their mantra: So it goes. (This is much like Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore's Watchmen, another text referenced here and as an influence on Lost). The Tralfamadorians kidnap Billy Pilgrim and put him in a zoo on their planet. Being unstuck in time, Billy finds their fatalism oddly comforting, and he accepts that “Among the things [he] could not change were the past, the present, and the future.” When Desmond asks if Faraday uses his machine to change the future, Faraday's reply is in a similar vein: “You can't change the future.”

III. Calling Out a Rat
in which the name Eloise gets the rundown

The name of Faraday's rat, Eloise, is also evocative and deserves a sidetrack. Eloise is an Anglicization of the name Heloïse, who was the 12th century abbess of the Oratory of the Paraclete in France. Heloïse was a great scholar and famous for her love affair with the philosopher Peter Abélard. In the film Being John Malkovich, a story all about consciousness becoming unstuck, Craig the puppeteer performs scenes of Heloïse and Abélard with his puppets. Of note, though, is that in 1761 Heloïse and Abélard's story was fictionalized into a philosophical novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, or the New Heloïse. It was a popular epistolary novel (a novel comprised of letters), and it sold well. But Rousseau used the novel to couch a philosophical discussion about how social organization structured emotional development, and how people then managed their emotions in the social sphere.

The author's name is already familiar to the Lost audience, and so is the plot: a working class dude, Saint-Preux, falls in love with the daughter of a nobleman, Julie, and they want to get married—but her father won't have it (echoes of Desmond, Penelope and Charles Widmore). Julie decides to get pregnant in order to coerce her father into allowing the marriage, but she miscarries. Many more plot details occur that lead to SP leaving for Paris with an a English friend of Julie's father. The lovers continue to write, and SP eventually learns that Julie entered into an arranged marriage and decides to live as a virtuous wife and mother, which crushes him. He is about to top himself when the Englishman talks him out of it, and SP instead finds work aboard a ship that's traveling around the world (does Desmond's name even need to be mentioned here?). After ten years, SP returns and visits Julie and her husband at their estate, and finds her happy and with a good man. The better Julie's husband is to SP, the less infatuated he is with Julie. He eventually marries Julie's sister Claire, and they settle down at the estate, where he tutors Julie's children. It will be interesting to see if Penelope has any other suitors (like her name would suggest), or has a sister.

IV. Double-Header
in which a discussion about non-localized consciousness and doubling is (sort of) developed, finishing with some geography.

But what we also learn in “The Constant” is that in the flashes, a person's consciousness isn't just transported across time; it seems to be swapping with the self-same subject from a different period of time. So the 1996 Desmond is at times walking around with 2004 Desmond's knowledge, and 2004 Desmond is at times confusedly walking around in 1996 Desmond's head. To an extent, this somewhat addresses the question of parallel universes in Lost; at least in Desmond's case, he—or his consciousness—is to different locations in spacetime, rather than an alternative universe (unless a different location in spacetime is a parallel universe from the perspective of the original location). So consciousness becomes something more fluid and unsettled.

One writer whose who has something to say about this is Robert Anton Wilson, author of Illuminatus! and Cosmic Trigger, among an immense body of other work. His influence on Lost has been consistently lurking in the background, and his take on consciousness may shed some light on what Desmond is going through. One thing that had a profound effect on RAW was when physicist John S. Bell published his theorem on nonlocality in 1964. The match showed that at the quantum level, particles can effect each other, or communicate, even at great distances. The physical particles had location in space and time, but the information communicated seemed to be everywhere and everywhen. “What Bell seemed to prove was that quantum effects are 'non-local' in [physicist David] Bohm's sense; that is, they are not just here or there, but both. What this apparently means is that space and time are only real to our mammalian sense organs; they are not really real.”

In a 1993 interview published in the book Mavericks of the Mind, RAW builds on this idea with his hunch that consciousness “is a non-local function of the universe as a whole, and our brains are only local transceivers. As a matter of fact, it's a very strong hunch, but I'm not going to dogmatize about it.” RAW later developed this non-local notion of consciousness in his book about Timothy Leary's eight-circuit model of consciousness, Prometheus Rising; he categorizes thoughts/consciousness (software ) apart from its physical housing (hardware), and the function of the two is the self. He developed : “YOUR HARDWARE IS LOCALIZED: BRAIN CELLS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. YOUR SOFTWARE IS NON-LOCALIZED: POINT-EVENTS EVERYWHERE, EVERYWHEN.” What we consider to be the self is the conjunction of these points. More is to be made of this later, but this whole problem of being unstuck gives a new meaning to “double-consciousness,” which may not be far from the mark.

The term “double-consciousness” was first made famous by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1843 essay “The Transcendentalist.” For Emerson, the problem of double-consciousness was that the human intellect and human soul inhabited separate spheres that never coincided (a little like RAW's hardware and software). Emerson worked to transcend that dualistic mode of existence, which is something like what Desmond has to do with his swapped consciousness. Des has to work to understand what is happening to him generally, as well as in his various immediate situations (such as when 1996 Des finds himself on a helicopter, or 2004 Des finds himself on a bathroom floor in Southfields). To do so, he needs to find his constant, and his constant has to do with his soul—Penelope.

Emerson first used the term “double-consciousness,” but W.E.B. Du Bois made the term famous in The Souls of Black Folk. In his book W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought, Adolph L. Reed Jr. considers how Du Bois turned Emersonian double-consciousness inside-out to identify the historical problem of African American social exclusion, rather than an issue with the human condition. “Where Du Bois's notion pointed to a specific product of black American experience, Emerson's indicated a generic human condition, prior to and outside history,” (100). Du Bois discusses double-consciousness in terms of how black folk had to view themselves through the eyes of others, were members of the American populace but without access to all the rights of citizenship, and were at once both American and African. This isn't so much a problem for Des—although he does see himself somewhat through the disapproving gaze of Charles Widmore. However, we've certainly seen a similar double-consciousness at play with characters like Sayid, Eko, and Jin, who all inhabited worlds in which they didn't fully belong and see themselves partly through the eyes of others (Sayid as a turned torturer and then CIA informant, Eko the warlord as a priest, and Jin the fisherman's son as high-class muscle for a business tycoon).

Another recent figure struck with double-consciousness was Horselover Fat, from last week's nod to Philip K. Dick's Valis. After getting hit with the pinkish light reflecting off a delivery person's vesica piscis pendant, he claims an advanced intelligence invaded his consciousness, but that intelligence was from the early Christian era. His chief preoccupation becomes finding out just what this intelligence was (Zebra, he calls it), and what it means, which takes him into the tomes of ancient philosophy, mysticism, and the Gnostic scrolls of the Nag Hammadi library.

If PKD were alive today, we could ask him if the pink light from Faraday's machine looked similar to the pink light that hit him in the head. PKD searched for that frequency of light afterwards, and couldn't find any match.

At any rate, doubleness and consciousness are problems at play, but double-consciousness isn't the only doubling that occurs in the episode. One of the freighter crew is named Omar; this is the second Omar we've seen, as Sayid's commanding officer during the Iraq War was also named Omar. Another of the freighter crew is the doctor named Ray; Ray was also the name of the one-armed Australian farmer who gave Kate work while she was a fugitive (and eventually turned Kate in for a reward). Maybe the most engaging instance of doubling, though, is of the journals. When Des flashes back to the Southfields auction, Charles Widmore is winning the journal of the Black Rock's first mate, found in 1852 on Île Sainte-Marie, Madagascar. The second journal belongs to Faraday, and is comprised of his time-tripping notes prior to and on the island. It will be interesting to see what Tovard Hanso's first mate wrote in that journal, especially if he made any scientific observations. (Did anyone catch what exactly was on auction just after the journal? It was something once “in the possession of Charles Dickens.”)

V. From Geography to Maps to Numbers
in which the geography line is explored using funky shapes that end up being about numbers.

These other instances of doubling lead in two geographical directions. First, freighter Omar notes that the freighter's last port was Fiji. Second, the Black Rock journal was found in Madagascar. This gives us something to work with. In the book Living Lost: Why We're All Stuck on the Island, J. Wood makes mention of 20th century Scottish naturalist Ivan Sanderson and the “vile vortices.” In the 1970's, Sanderson was interested in how ancient sailors mapped the world, and in his studies kept coming across Bermuda Triangle-type accounts coming from a number of places around the globe (navigational instruments malfunction, lost time, odd lights, disappearing ships, etc.) Sanderson tracked where these incidents took place, and found they occurred in a regular frequency around the world, primarily in five equally-spaced regions around the Tropic of Capricorn, five around the Tropic of Cancer, and at each of the poles. He called them the vile vortices.

In the past, cartographers often overlaid polyhedral grids on maps in order to have a clear picture of coordinates and to orient themselves (and maybe they still do). In the Timaeus, Plato even argued that the elements were made up of five regular polyhedral solids: the tetrahedron (pyramid), hexahedron (cube), octahedron (eight-sided diamond), the twelve-sided dodecahedron, and the twenty-sided icosahedron; think of the Bucky Fuller geodesic dome inside the Swan Station. Sanderson noted that when an icosahedron was mapped onto the globe, the points where the icosahedral lines converged pinpointed those twelve vile vortices. Stranger still, of all of those five Platonic solids, only the octahedron—the eight-sided shape—can be overlain on top of the icosahedron, and have convergence points that line up with the twelve points of the icosahedron. We already know how important the number eight is to the narrative; whether the eight-sided Platonic solid matching with twelve vile vortices mapped out by Ivan Sanderson on an icosahedral grid was intentional or not, its a little intriguing, and we'll be getting back to eight shortly. But how all this relate to Fiji and Madagascar? Omar said the freighter's last port was Fiji, and the Black Rock journal was found in Madagascar; both Fiji and Madagascar are located in two of the vile vortex zones.

The octahedron has eight sides, there is an eight-year gap between Desmond's 1996 flash and his being on the island in 2004, and eight is the second number in the Valenzetti Equation (4 8 15 16 23 42). The first time Desmond experienced a flash was in the eighth episode of the third season. The odd spired symbols seen on Juliet's back, the tree, around the portholes in the Looking Glass, and on Mrs. Gardner's wall have eight points. Eight is a magic and sacred number (but really, aren't they all?). With seven days in a week, eight stands just outside of time. It's a Fibonacci number, which is used to express the Golden Spiral found throughout nature, like in sunflowers, nautilus shells, spiral galaxies, DNA, and whirlpools, hurricanes and tornadoes—maelstroms, from which we get Miles Straume. The symbolic representation of eight is the same as the symbolic representation for infinity—timelessness--turned on its side, 8 ∞. For an oxygen molecule to be oxygen, it needs eight protons in its nucleus; one fewer and its nitrogen, one more and its fluorine, and if either were the case, we wouldn't breathe so well. Could there more significance to eight and “The Constant”? Possibly:

VI. Pieces of Eight
in which the previous discussions of consciousness and the number eight are rammed through some of the recurring themes in Lost.

We already know the influence of Buddhism on Lost. The DHARMA Initiative is named after the Buddhist doctrine of essential nature, and each of their stations are labeled with a symbol comprised of an eight-sided bagua. In Buddhism, the way to enlightenment is through the Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration (in that order). The path itself is not so much a map to Nirvana as it is qualities found within a person who has reach Nirvana. The eighth path, right concentration, has to do with meditation. There are four stages, or jhānas, on that path, and they lead through different stages of rapture and an evenness of mind until the individual transcends the pleasure and pain of the material world—when the consciousness literally becomes unstuck.

Incidentally, the fourth jhāna is also the access point into psychic abilities; in the Anguttara Nikaya (which is all about numbers), the Buddha makes mention of the abilities one can access if they attain that state of mind, which include appearing, vanishing, moving through solid objects as easily as through space, flying, and walking on water (there's an online translation here). While Desmond's consciousness is becoming unstuck against his will, it seems some people like Walt have already accessed this fourth jhāna.

And the eights keep on coming. The Catholic element in Lost has already been marked out by Mr. Eko. When thinking of eight in the New Testament, the eight beatitudes in Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount rank right up there. The eighth beatitude states that those who are persecuted for following the path of righteousness will have the kingdom of heaven (yet another path to some transcendent place). As far as I understand it, righteousness is the key idea here, and it has to do with upholding an ethical justice according to God's will—and God's will is unchanging, constant, as is the kingdom of heaven. This means a righteous person will try to be consistent with the unchanging ethics of God, and the only one to fully achieve that consistency was executed (talk about persecution). Mr. Eko attempted to live according to God's will after he was saved by his brother Yemi, but was still judged harshly by Smokey. No character has a more spiritual stance on the island than Locke, and no character has been more persecuted for trying to do what he believes is the right thing.

But like chocolate and peanut butter, text and image, Cuse and Lindelof, Catholicism is a complement of Judaism. There have been Old Testament references all over Lost, and numbers are important in the OT; eight people made it on to Noah's boat, G_d made eight promises to Abraham in Genesis, a boy is circumcised eight days after he is born, and the eighth sefira on the Tree of Life is Hod. The Tree of Life is still another mystical path to the transcendent, and it has ten sefirot, or numbers. Hod, the eighth, means “splendor,” as well as giving thanks (from hodaah). Among other things (and I don't pretend to understand it all), hod is supposed to symbolize observation and steadfastness—constancy—on the Tree of Life. Constants aren't just mathematical.

VII. The Shape of Eight
in which Robert Anton Wilson and physics have more to say about the stuff about eight, consciousness, and dimensions.

Nor are they just psycho-religio-spiritual. Let's bring back Robert Anton Wilson: In Prometheus Rising, RAW breaks down Timothy Leary's Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness (and remember, Leary got his start with Richard Alpert, the namesake of the ageless Other who brings Ben into the fold). Unlike the eight-fold path, the path to righteousness through the eight beatitudes, and the eighth sefira on the Tree of Life, Leary's model isn't so much a yellow brick road to transcendence or a promised land, but rather a map of what's already there, either experienced or uncharted by the individual. And as RAW points out, the eight circuits are only a convenient way of mapping consciousness—and the map is not the territory.

The eighth circuit in Leary's model is the Non-Local Quantum Circuit, which is imprinted on the consciousness “by Shock, by 'near-death' or 'clinical death' experience, by OOBEs (out-of-body-experiences), by trans-time perceptions ("precognition"), by trans-space visions (ESP), etc. It tunes the brain into the non-local quantum communication system suggested by physicists such as Bohm, Walker, Sarfatti, Bell, etc.” Recall that the non-local refers to the software, or consciousness itself. Not to discount the Buddhist, Christian or Jewish models, but of all the eights, this one seems to map onto Lost more accurately than the rest. Just take Desmond as our test rabbit: He had a near-death experience in the Swan Station; his software was shaken loose from its hardware and is free-roaming across time, creating out-of-body-type experiences; he's certainly had precognitive moments (like every time he saved Charlie); and what were his flashes in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” and “The Constant” if not trans-space (and trans-time) visions? But again, as RAW is quick to point out, the model hardly represents the whole system.

The non-local quantum circuit is the least mystical, if no less weird, of the models presented. Are there any more scientific models we can turn to? Maybe in Faraday's work?

When Faraday is paging through his journal at the end of the episode, a few things jump out, like the Lorentz Invariant (a constant in physics), and the picture he drew of large dots connected by lines. This is another one of those screengrab moments, because this looks like he's trying to map out a hypercube, or tesseract.

A good place to turn here is Harvard physicist Lisa Randall's 2005 book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (Charlie Rose did a good interview with her a while back, and it's available on Google Video and YouTube; she was also recently on Stephen Colbert's show).

Randall's work focuses on the possibility that there may be many more dimensions to our universe, but we are not equipped to experience with our senses. In 1884, Edwin A. Abbott wrote the book Flatland that helps Randall explain the point: Flatland is a place where everyone exists in only two dimensions. A square isn't convinced that there is only their two dimensions, but can't convince anyone of this. Then he is visited by a three-dimensional sphere from Spaceland; the square can't wrap its mind around this object (which in flatland wouldn't look like a ball, but a circle) until the sphere takes the square to Spaceland, and the square can experience three-dimensional space. From that perspective, the square understands what it was missing in Flatland. But when the square suggests to the sphere that there may be more than even three dimensions, the sphere is offended and sends it back to Flatland. The square spends the rest of its days despairing over its inability to convince anyone in the two-dimensional world that another dimension exists. (Strangely, this story maps nicely on to Joseph Campbell's archetypal hero trope from The Hero With a Thousand Faces.)

Randall makes no sweeping claims about the existence of other dimensions, but puts out what the math suggests and poses some hypotheses to be tested. One of these hypotheses is that other dimensions may exist in what parallel universes that we can't experience, called branes (short for membrane). She even suggests that experiencing these other dimensions could be impeded by parallel universes, but these are conceived of in a specific way. Here's a thought experiment: If you have a couple sheets of paper handy, hold one a few inches above the other. Call these sheets of paper branes (short for membranes; if it helps, the other sheet of paper could be a stack of newspaper, or something that physically differentiates it from the first). These different sheets/universes/branes are existing within a larger megaverse. One sheet/brane would be our universe, and our galaxy might be a small pencil dot on that sheet. That brane is capable of expressing certain dimensions, like length, width, and depth; if you're in that brane, those are the dimensions you can experience. The other sheet/brane would be another universe, and it might be capable of expressing different dimensions that we can't experience from our brane, just like in Abbott's Flatland. Physicist Brian Greene produced a three-hour special on these issues for NOVA called The Elegant Universe that dives into this material, and it can be viewed online. The third hour gets into examples of branes. There's also a discussion on why it's so difficult for us to imagine dimensions beyond our typical three (we have enough trouble wrapping our heads around time).

An example Randall uses to explain dimensions and branes is of a water droplet on window or shower curtain; that water droplet is stuck on that two-dimensional surface within a larger three-dimensional room. Likewise, it's possible that we're stuck on a three-dimensional brane, even if other dimensions exist. And if they do exist, we don't even know if we could perceive these other dimensions; they could be very tiny, or warped. One of the problems of physics is trying to figure out why gravity is so weak compared to the other forces in nature (in a tug of war between a magnet and gravity over a paper clip, the magnet always wins). One of Randall's hypotheses is that gravity actually exists on another brane, and is exerting a weak force on our brane. (There's a model in John Gribbin's book Q is for Quantum: An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics that shows how branes might look.) In 2008 CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland will go into operation, and will conduct particle physics experiments that will hopefully answer some of these questions.

One way Randall and others geometrically model multiple dimensions/universes/branes is with a hypercube. Hypercubes are multi-dimensional projections of three-dimensional cubes, which we probably couldn't perceive anyway since we're stuck with three-dimensional vision, but they work mathematically. A zero-dimensional cube (0-cube) is a dot • ; a 1-cube is a line — ; a 2-cube is a square □ ; a 3-cube is a three-dimensional cube, etc. Each added number represents another dimension that cube exists within. For Lost, the 4-cube, or tesseract, is interesting; it's also called an octachoron because it is bounded by eight cubicle cells (there's that eight again).

And with that we're back to Faraday, because it looks like Faraday is working on a model of a tesseract in his journal.

Some of the planes/dimensions he maps out are imaginary space, imaginary time, real time, and space-time. In Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (the book Sawyer read in “Deus Ex Machina”), tesseracts figure in heavily. The protagonist, Meg Murry, has two scientist parents, and her astrophysicist father is missing. A mysterious Mrs. Whatsit appears at the Murry household one stormy night, and after a sandwich, proceeds to tell Dr. Kate Murry “There is such a thing as a tesseract.” They come to learn from the strange woman that a tesseract is the fifth dimension after time, and it can bend space and time—an unknown dimension, rather like what Randall discusses with the hypercube example. By using a tesseract, a straight line no longer becomes the shortest distance between two points; why follow the line, when you can bend the two points together? It sounds almost like how the island is accessed, especially if that island doesn't exist in this dimension.

VIII. Eight-Dimension Spin Cycle
in which something is done to rein in the sprawl and make is seem like it might all make sense.

That's a lot of material revolving around the number eight, but what's tying it all together? There's one particular structural element to the episode that puts eight right at its core:

Des has eight flashes throughout the episode.

1.)On the helicopter to sleeping in the Camp Millar barracks;
2.)On the freighter yelling that he's not supposed to be there to drilling out in the rain at Camp Millar;
3.)Dr. Ray checking his eyes to walking in the rain and getting in the phone booth;
4.)On the satellite phone getting the settings from Faraday to waking up at the bottom of the phone booth in Camp Millar and going to find Faraday at Oxford;
5.)Talking to Minkowski and finding out he was seeing calls from Penelope to waking up in Faraday's Oxford lab;
6.)Leaving the freighter sick bay to waking up in a stairwell and going to the Southfields auction;
7.)Holding Minkowski when he dies to waking up on the Southfields bathroom floor;
8.)Calling Penelope from the freighter on Christmas Eve, 2004 to leaving Penelope's place in 1996.

In the final flash, something odd happens. Des comes back to the freighter right when he needs to remember the number, and he just got that number from his flash. When he calls from the freighter, we can hear the phone ringing, and we still hear it ringing when the scene flashes back to Desmond leaving Penelope's place in 1996. The scene is very subtle, because before we were back on the freighter, we were just at the point of Desmond leaving. In other episodes a scene will cut to a flashback, but no other scene in “The Constant” cuts back to a flashback like this, and it does so at the point when Desmond establishes his constant. In that moment, London 1996 and freighter 2004 are connected, as if by a tesseract (at least a narrative one), and Desmond transcends his circumstances and keys in to an unchanging element that will keep his head from imploding. The notion of multiple dimensions is raised through the flashes and Faraday's tesseract, and the way consciousness becomes unstuck echoes RAW's notion that the software of consciousness is non-local—and may very well be part of another dimension that we don't quite get. Maybe now that Faraday has discovered his constant, he'll remember that meeting from 1996. The audience has also been on this flash ride with Desmond, and with this episode we learn why and how it happens, giving us a kind of constant as well.

The theme of the number (our constant?) is reflected in the very architecture of the episode, making “The Constant” possibly the most intricately structured episode of Lost to date. This kind of thematic structuring is what classical and Renaissance artists and architects did when they took classical ratios and had them reflected at the macro and micro levels of the work to create intrinsic harmony and resonance. The eight idea resonates throughout the episode in theme, structure, symbolism. This is not to say that the episode was designed as carefully as suggested above, but at this point many of the themes have already been established and are now being recuperated while questions are answered. If all the thematic pieces were designed to fit together, the writers may not need to over-plan an episode, because the structure is implicit.

But this is just a reading; the map is not the territory.

So it goes.

The Heart and The Head by Luhks

LOCKE: We're going to need to watch that again. (Orientation)


Immediately after its initial airing, audiences already regard The Constant among the greatest Lost episodes of all time. Although this overwhelmingly positive reaction might seem a bit extreme, there are many strong reasons to support such a claim: this episode not only presented a series of mind-blowing scenes one after another, but also built towards a climax that proved to be as emotionally touching as any other moment of the series. Perhaps the episode’s greatest strength, though, is the way in which it casts every other Lost episode, both past and future, in a completely different light.

Before The Constant arrived on television screens, every Lost episode fit neatly into one of two categories. Each episode of Lost utilized flashbacks of one form or another, until the Season Three finale introduced the new concept of a flash-forward. Our notions of past, present, and future all depend on our perspective. As viewers, we tend to regard the island events of 2004 as the present. If we wanted to, though, we could treat the off-island events years later as the present, in which case every event on the island could be considered a flashback. Desmond Hume, the central character of The Constant, perceives the year 1996 as the present, even as he experiences events eight years in his future. Are these scenes flashbacks, flashes forward, or something else entirely? This episode now brings to center stage a question that has been lurking in the background: is there any real difference between a flashback and flash-forward, between the past and the future? In the long run, flashbacks and flash-forwards might be meaningless terms. If we go further back, then all of the events of Lost can be seen as a flash-forward. If we go far enough ahead, then everything can be seen as a flashback. Either way, the entire story begins to resemble a Constant, a permanent and unchanging whole.


To be fair, though, The Constant was not technically the first episode to bend our perception of chronology in this manner. Before Season Four sent younger Desmond's consciousness into his older body, the Season Three episode Flashes Before Your Eyes also sent Desmond's mind back into his past. A previous Luhks article on Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, published in the Forum section, addressed the mechanics of this type of apparent time travel:

Flashes Before Your Eyes will always be remembered as ‘the time travel episode.’ The standard interpretation of the episode says that, when Desmond turned the fail-safe key, he was transported back in time (until a hit from Jimmy Lennon’s cricket back sent him back to the jungle in the present). Upon further examination, the episode did not involve time-travel in the traditional, Back-to-the-Future sense. Physically, no matter was transferred into the past. There were not two Desmonds running around England, but only one body. Desmond himself did not travel back through time, but only part of him, his memories; some memories from 2004 transferred back to Desmond’s body from 1996. Desmond did not even become aware of those memories until he met Charlie on the street, which triggered a series of recollections. The entire ‘time-travel’ story ultimately amounts to a precognition story.

Episode 4.05 presented another instance in which Desmond's memories travel through time. One can choose to interpret the events of Flashes Before Your Eyes and The Constant in one of two fundamentally different ways. The first approach is to use the same notion of time travel used in most science fiction, and to accept that there are multiple timelines. From this perspective, the year 1996 originally played out much differently for Desmond than the way those two episodes portrayed it. Desmond originally broke off his relationship with Penny for different reasons, and he originally experienced an ordinary day in Royal Scots boot camp. The second approach is to say that there was always only one timeline, and there will always be one timeline. Everything that Desmond experienced in 1996 proceeded exactly as shown to the viewer onscreen. The Constant heavily favors the second interpretation of the story. If you can’t change the future, then it also stands to reason that you can’t change the past either. A character's consciousness might experience the different events in a nonlinear order, but the timeline itself cannot be corrupted.

This notion of course leads to a problematic paradox: if Desmond and Daniel knew exactly how future events would transpire, then they would have the power to change them. Daniel suggests as much, by noting: “Wouldn’t I remember meeting you?” Desmond’s response to him cuts like Occam’s razor, right to the simplest explanation: “Maybe you just forgot.” In both stories, imperfect memory offers a way to resolve the problem. Desmond experienced those events back in 1996, but accurate memories of those events were stored in 2004. Desmond has suffered head injuries, as well as exposure to powerful electromagnetism inside the Swan hatch, while Daniel ran his experiments repeatedly without protecting his head from radiation. When Desmond and Daniel crossed paths on the island in The Economist, neither one of them recognized the other, because both of them had forgotten their initial meeting. Perhaps the same forces that made this type of experience possible also limit memory to prevent a paradox.


Outside the confines of the episodes themselves, The Constant also offers the viewer two very provocative lenses for interpreting these bizarre events, through allusions the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski and the American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Although Hermann Minkowski worked in the sciences and Vonnegut worked in the arts, neither one of these references proves more relevant than the other in the analysis of this episode. Amazingly, the most prominent works of these two vastly dissimilar figures express essentially the same concept.


The Constant references Hermann Minkowski in two different ways, through the story of new character George Minkowski, and by referring to Minkowski’s ideas more generally. As a colleague of Albert Einstein, Minkowski served as one of the pioneers in the concept of four-dimensional space-time. Daniel Faraday's journal includes diagrams of such Minkowski space-time. In the first and perhaps only on-screen appearance of George Minkowski (actor Fisher Stevens), the ill-fated communications officer actually experiences the four-dimensional existence that Hermann Minkowski first visualized. Among many of his other contributions to mathematics, Minkowski discovered that Einsten’s theory of special relativity could best be understood in four unified dimensions. Essentially, Minkowski realized that the mathematics of special relativity worked much more nicely if scientists treated time as just another dimension (with its own axis) not significantly different from any of the other three dimensions.

“The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.” –Hermann Minkowski, 1908


To illustrate this idea, consider an example of three-dimensional space with which we are familiar. On December 24, 2004, a man in the Pacific Ocean makes a phone call to a woman on the other side of the globe, in England. Desmond on one end of the phone and Penny on the other end both occupy particular ‘events’ in space-time. Each of these two events have different sets of coordinates in three dimensional space, about as far apart as any two people on the planet could possibly be. Even though they occupy different coordinates in space, they share the same coordinates on the axis of time.


Also consider two different space-time events. Penny Widmore speaks to Desmond on the phone at 423 Cheyene Walk during 2004, and she also speaks to Desmond in person at the exact same location in 1996. These two events occupy the same coordinates in three-dimensional space, but their coordinates rest eight years apart along the axis of time. (I realize that I’m oversimplifying here by ignoring the movement of the earth, but let’s treat that location as the point of origin.)


According to Minkowski’s vision of the universe, the second example is directly analogous to the first example. Every event occupies a different location in space-time. When Penelope receives Desmond’s call in 2004, she is no further away from the Desmond in 2004 as from the Desmond in 1996. In Minkowski space-time, as well as in the narrative of Lost, all of these different events are 'occurring' simultaneously.


[As an important aside, this episode also illustrates the principle of relativity, a chief concern in the work of Einstein and Minkowski. Relativity discards Isaac Newton’s idea of absolute time, the notion that time always passes at a constant rate. In relativity, the only true constant is the speed of light (c). Depending on their rates of motion, two different observers may disagree in their measurements of the distance traveled and the time traveled by any beam of light. Thus, time will pass more slowly for an observer moving more closely to the speed of light. When the helicopter travels from the island to the Kahana freighter, over a few minutes of time on the helicopter, a day passes on the island. The event horizon of clouds surrounding the island obscured the sun and all other points of reference, and the helicopter seemingly became one with the electromagnetic storm. Sayid notes that: “We took off at dusk and landed in the middle of the day”. Relativity can explain the difference in two measurements of time, if the helicopter somehow traveled a much greater distance, and at a much greater velocity, than it appeared to travel. Charlie's question, "Guys, where are we?" now seems as significant as ever.


Many viewers have conjectured, and will continue to conjecture, that time itself somehow moves differently on the island than in the rest of the world. The Constant should put these theories on hold. The calendar on the Kahana freighter coincides with the amount of time that should have passed since the plane crash. Penelope’s reference to her three years of searching also coincides with the amount of time that should have elapsed since Desmond was lost at sea. The opening scene of this epsiode represents the first instance in which the camera shows a character's travel to or from the island. Neither Juliet nor Desmond was conscious during their 'intense' journeys to the island. Naomi described that land suddenly appeared 'out of nowhere' as she was searching over the middle of the ocean. Looking back at the Pilot episode, did a similar experience occur in the crash of Oceanic 815, a sudden jump through space, in which time advanced from evening to morning? In a previous discussion about relativity on the Forum, I also proposed the idea that Richard Alpert’s apparent lack of aging might be related to his travel on and off the island. Suppose that Richard Alpert has been moving back and forth from the island with great frequency, and each time he traveled at speeds approaching the speed of light. Whenever he made such a journey, days became mere minutes, and eventually decades of time became mere months.]


In addition to these applications of Minkowski's work in science, The Constant also pays homage to a work of art that served as one of its primary influences: Kurt Vonnegut’s classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five: or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death. Vonnegut's most famous work began as a commentary on the fire-bombing of the city of Dresden during World War II, an event that he himself witnessed firsthand. Instead of presenting a straight-forward antiwar novel, Vonnegut embraces topics as far-ranging as the origins of Christianity and the prospect of extra-terrestrial life. Slaughterhouse-Five centers around the character Billy Pilgrim, another soldier like Desmond, whose consciousness randomly jumps back and forth among all different time periods of his life. Much like Lost, Slaughterhouse-Five does not address time travel in the traditional sense, but, as Daniel explained, "only the mind, the consciousness" moves through time. Desmond encounters a fellow soldier named Billy in this episode, and, in a clever meta-joke, Billy treats Desmond's experience as insane even by his standards. Later, Daniel Faraday says that he will 'unstick Eloise in time,' which provides an echo to the famous opening lines of Vonnegut's novel.


Although Vonnegut is often characterized as an author of science-fiction, but his literature transcends the confines of the genre, and it appeals to a much wider audience. Vonnegut borrowed some conventions of the genre not due to his intrinsic interest in science, but from his desire to explore humanity. In Slaughterhouse-Five, for instance, Billy Pilgrim interacts with the Tralfamadorians, a race of advanced aliens. Through his contact with these aliens, Billy gains a unique perspective on time. Most readers will take these portions of the story with a post-modern grain of salt, as they should. Vonnegut was not interested literally in aliens any more than he was interested in actual time travel. Vonnegut (and Billy) himself witnessed massive extermination of human life at Dresden, and his soul needed to find a way respond to it. Vonnegut developed a coping mechanism to put that suffering in perspective, and an extra-terrestrial perspective on human life offered a poetic way to address his pain.


“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is: So it goes." -- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

The omniscient camera behind each episode of Lost shares this same perspective on time, as it carefully selects moments from different times to examine. Although this connection between Vonnegut and Lost is astounding, the comparison between Vonnegut and Minkowski is probably more amazing. While writing Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut reached essentially the same conclusions about space and time that Hermann Minkowski did in experimental physics, but for completely different reasons. Minkowski developed the idea to solve a problem of the mind, specifically the mathematics of special relativity. In his work, Vonnegut developed that same perspective, to deal with an emotional problem rather than a scientific one. Both Minkowski's head and Vonnegut's heart led these two vastly different men to the same endpoint. Those two forces might be much more similar to each other than they ever seem to be.


Most episodes of Lost explore the conflicts that speak to the very core issues of the human experience: good and evil, past and present, present and future, science and faith, fate and free will, life and death. Lost has the audacity to suggest that every one of these dichotomies might be a false one, and instead only a matter of perspective. Consider the title of the most recent episode. Daniel Faraday borrows the term ‘constant’ from the language of the mathematics: “All this … this is all variables. It’s a random scale. Every equation needs stability, something known.” As Daniel explains this concept to Desmond, he instantly interprets it on his own terms, in the language of the love: “This constant … can it be a person?” Only the combined efforts of Daniel’s head and Desmond’s heart (as well as Daniel’s heart and Desmond’s mind) could find salvation from this predicament. The unlucky lab rat Eloise lacked either one of these human characteristics, so she could not survive the journey. Our short-lived newcomer George Minkowski seemed to possess enough mental faculties to understand what was happening to him, but he could not find the emotional grounding necessary to get back to reality. The Constant not only appeals equally to the hearts and minds of its audience, but the story also suggests that those two forces (much like space and time) cannot exist independently from each other.


Flash forward to the year 2010. Lost has completed its initial six-season run on network television. Every one of the show’s mysteries has either been resolved, or has been left intentionally open for ongoing discussion. Anyone can now go back and re-watch the ultimate fates of the show’s characters via Blue-Ray discs on your High-Definition televisions. United States President Barack Obama has ended the occupation of Iraq. The Philadelphia Phillies have won the World Series in consecutive years. (Now that's what I call science fiction!) Two new films, which you have never even heard of yet, have won Oscars for Best Picture. Someone reading these words right now has conceived and delivered a new life into the world. A number of well-known and well-loved individuals have shuffled off their mortal coils along the way. Every person reading these words right now has undergone dynamic changes, in appearance and memory. The whole world, and everyone in it, has changed.

From a certain perspective, all of those things listed above have already happened (well, except for the part about the Phillies). For any person looking back from 2010, all of these events occurred in the past. To them, the events of 2010 are just as fixed as the events of 2004 or 1996 or 1845. Every moment in space and time on the show occupies a permanent position somewhere in its four-dimensional universe. Everyone knows that we cannot change the past. The Constant introduces a much more controversial concept into the mythology of Lost: “You can’t change the future,” either. The lives of Desmond, Penny, and all of the characters on Lost are just as permanent as those passengers of the Black Rock who perished centuries earlier. Everything that happens has already happened and always will happen. Is this idea merely a metaphor, a mathematical convention, or does it describe reality? Until our own minds become unstuck in time, none of us will know.

Some behind the scenes photos

Thanks to our photo scooper Lyly, here are some previously unseen behind the scenes photos from recent filming.

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Kos Tour - Behind the Scenes

Here are 5 videos that showcase the KOS Lost Tour in Hawaii.

Tour - Part 1
Tour - Part 2
Tour - Part 3
Tour - Part 4
Tour - Part 5

Finally - The Alex Petrovitch Interview

Some of you may remember way back in September, we gave you the chance to submit questions to Alex Petrovitch, one of the mysterious men at the Listening Station at the end of the Season 2 Finale. Well finally I'm pleased to say that we now have permission from ABC to release this Interview (which was actually conducted last year).

This is my first ever interview (so please don't be too harsh with me!) and I tried to get as many of your questions in that I could. I hope you enjoy it and a massive thanks to Alex for being so cool.

The Alex Petrovitch Interview

LOST Questions

How have you been?
Busy. I feel really bad about this. I’m not sure if you’ll mention it in the interview but my representation had received this interview and then the Powers that be were made it very clear that I lose all contact with anyone when it came to my character on Lost. Luckily everything has now been settled, so I’m fairly happy.

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How did you get the role on Lost?
A mixture of luck and opportunity really. I grew up speaking Portuguese because my father is from Sao Paolo Brazil. LOST was looking for actors that could speak a foreign language. That was the opportunity part. The luck of the equation was hoping that they would pick Portuguese as the foreign language. At the audition, it was clear they weren’t certain who they were looking for. They had guys ranging from mid-20s into their 50s. And they had every different language you could imagine: Russian, German, Italian, Dutch.

How high would you rate appearing on LOST on a list of your accomplishments?
As far as acting career accomplishments, I’d have to say pretty high. I had an awesome time, and it has really opened doors for me. I am so grateful.

Were you a fan of the show before getting the role?
Actually I had never seen the show before. I knew it was a hit, but I don’t watch much television. Of course after booking the role, I netflix’ed every episode before shooting. I was hooked after that. a) How did you react to the script of your character? Even now we know nothing about your character – how is that dynamic for you as an actor?

Challenging. When you don’t know everything about your character, or if you don’t have all the answers to your questions, you have to fill them in for yourself. The most important part is to keep a high sense of purpose and urgency, high stakes, and with a script from LOST, it makes it easy. Bottom line, the best thing about LOST is its phenomenal writing. The script is awesome. There is always something going on, secrets being revealed, action, etc. In our scene, stuff happens really quick. That made it fun for us. The key to our scene was making the most out of such a short time. We wanted the scene to rock, to be a cliffhanger. So with each set of lines, you’ll notice something new happens, a new beat, a mini-discovery, nothing is wasted, no moments are dull. That is what makes LOST awesome. The script is always so powerful.

Where was the Listening Station sequence shot?
In Hawaii. Irony right? Shooting a scene that takes place in a really freakin cold place, yet we were in Hawaii. I wasn’t complaining. It was awesome.

How long did filming last and how many takes were involved?
Filming was fast. 3 days. Two travel days, and on the day of the shoot, my call time was at 430am. We were finished by Noon, and I took the rest of the day to try and pick up surfing. Pretty cool.

Do you know if you will be seen again on the show?
Hmmm….Let’s just say that the people at LOST is really good at tying up loose ends.

Which of the cast, apart from Len Cordova did you actually get to meet?
Jorge Garcia (Hurly). Absolutely the nicest guy ever.

Did the subtitles accurately portray what was spoken between you and Len Cordova?
Yes.

You speak Portuguese when we see your character. Do you have a link with Naomi? Have you got a double function, one with Charles Widmore and one with Penny?
I really wish I could answer that question, but I can’t.

Well do you think that your role will get bigger in the future?
I hope it’s okay to say that I really want to see what happens to my character regardless.

How far in advance of filming were you given access to the scripts/scene info?
A couple of days before we shot we were given the scene. Because of the nature of the show, the producers are very tight about letting their scripts out. It was pretty cool. The scene I auditioned for was different from the shooting script, because they didn’t want too many people having access to the Season Finale Storyline. I never got the full episode, just what I was working on.

What was the reaction of family and friends to your role on LOST? Were any of them fans of the show before you got your role?
Actually, my family had not heard of the show because none of them are big television watchers. Obviously now, they are huge fans. It was especially cool for my Dad, since he is from Brazil, and here his son is on TV speaking Portuguese – a proud parent moment. All of our extended family in Sao Paolo loved it. Now everyone watches it.

Who is your favorite LOST character and why?
Don’t have one. It seems that in every other episode I tend to switch who I’m really into, who I’m rooting for, and who I want to see more of. As each storyline unfolds, I am just more curious to learn more. It’s all about satisfying viewer curiosity – and they are really good at that. I think that the next couple seasons are going to be intense.

So what’s next on the horizon?
I am playing a very secretive character in an on-line series that will be premiering this summer. It’s titled the Panda Chase that was created by two young up-and-coming producers (Will Lamborn and Sean Hackett). Sean is a buddy holly glasses Twilight Zone loving nerd and Will is amazing at creating thought provoking, Cohen-like moments.

Most people web projects sent to me are very MTV-ish or Soap-ish, but when I read this one it was like sharp 40 minute movie composed of 20 something scenes. I guess people plug their other work in these interviews, but when I first read it was eerily similar to something you’d see on Lost.

They aren’t letting me give too much away, but basically it’s a large action paced foot chase throughout Los Angeles, but the story starts in the middle and we have to put it together like a puzzle. Each episode is shot differently which sort of made me interested in the greater scheme of things.

About two minutes ago they showed me the final cut of the first episode and I got permission to show “the teaser” on her. I’m really excited to see what everyone has to think of it.

http://www.vimeo.com/user330232/videos


Notes on General Filming and Other Work

I’ve seen that you’ve been quite busy with a number of roles including the horror film “BLED”, in which you play “Eric”, the comedy “OFF THE LEDGE”, playing “Bob”, which also stars Brooke Anderson who worked on LOST, and the adventure story “PASSAGE TO ZARAHEMLA” in which you play “Hitch”. Can you tells us a little something about each of these roles and films for those who are not familiar with them?

Definitely. I have been quite fortunate in the last year or so since LOST aired. I shot the movie “BLED” this past spring, directed by Christopher Hutson, and produced by Jeffrey Allard, who produced “TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE” with Jessica Biel. It’s a movie about a bunch of artist friends hungry for success, who fall into a dangerous game, crossing paths into a dark Vampire underworld of lust and addiction. It’s a pretty sweet movie and I got to play a cool character, “Eric”, who is a womanizing, self-centered son-of-a-b*tch. Hahaha. Good times. It was great fun. It should be coming out towards the end of this year, or early next year. (www.bledmovie.com)

“OFF THE LEDGE” is an awesome movie about a bunch of people at a New Year’s Eve party, their crossing paths, and some good old sex and drugs to stir things up. Kind of a crazy mix of stuff going on – but it’s an awesome script. The director and star Brooke Anderson is amazing to work with. She rocks! I had a great time working on that production. I got to play a total pothead stoner – it was so much fun. (www.offtheledgemovie.com)

And “PASSAGE TO ZARAHEMLA” was different from anything that I have ever done. The character I played, “Hitch”, is a Hispanic, shaved head, gangster. To say the least, that was an interesting departure from my every day world. It has been in theaters since October, as a limited release in Utah. It goes into a wider release in Feb 2008. Check out www.passagetozarahemla.com for all the info.

What are the major differences in filming a TV show to that of a Movie?
Your commitment level is the same in terms of the acting work per se, (I’m always striving to do my best) but in my experience, since I haven’t yet been the series regular on a show, your attachment to a film project is much greater than in television. As a guest star in TV, you show up, you shoot your scene, then you go home. On a movie set, you work with the cast and crew for weeks, and during those weeks you are working really long hours, and you get to know one another at your best and worst. They become your family. Then there are the screenings, the premieres, and other promotional events that keep you involved with the project. It becomes a part of your life. It’s awesome. You are a lot more involved with the entire process. I still talk with the cast and crew from every project that I have worked on.

Is there any new work that you are currently involved with that you would like to tells us about, or any work that is currently in the pipeline?

I just finished a movie this past fall called “STORY”, produced by OMNI films, directed by Charles Kaufman (the nephew of Charlie Kaufman) about five different characters in Los Angeles. It’s a dark take on the Hollywood system. I play a character named “Spencer”, a cut-throat Talent Agent. We just wrapped production this past August, it should be getting out there sometime next year. (www.storythemovie.com)

I’ve see that you are working at both writing and producing, are these areas that interest you more that acting?
I would say that I’m interested in all parts of this industry. I like getting involved with great projects, and putting together talented, inspired people. So sometimes you are producing, sometimes you are writing, sometimes you are acting. That’s just the way it works. I like to be involved.

Please check out www.alexpetrovitch.com for more info and updates! Member of MySpace? Find me at www.myspace.com/alexpetrovitch

The Episode League Table - Week 5 Update

Here is the latest League Table from all the votes we've collected so far from visitors of the site. This table is updated weekly.

As you can see we have a new leader in the table as the fantastic The Constant is now the DarkUFO readers favourite episode since we started collecting your ratings at the start of season 3. It is also poised to become the most voted for episode as it already has 18,600+ votes in less than 36 hours since the episode aired and looks likely to surpass the 20,900 votes that were cast for the Season 4 Premiere, The Beginning of the End.

If you have not yet voted on any of the previous episodes, you can see all the previous polls here.

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Rebecca Mader Interview - Did they ask your question?

Thanks to my good friend The ODI who as we mentioned yesterday was able to secure the audio to the Rebecca Mader interview. Did they ask you question?

Note: There are some minor spoilers.

Source: WTKS