Back in early 2003 Lieber wrote a TV pilot based around the survivors of a plane crash, it was title ‘Nowhere’. To story, as far as I know, is that ABC didn’t really like the concept that he had put together and subsequently gave him the boot. The idea, and presumably Lieber’s original script, were handed over to JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof who, with a few key changes turned it into the ‘Lost’ that we know and love.

I’ve had a copy of the ‘Nowhere’ script (download at the bottom of the post) sitting on my desktop for a couple of months, I can’t remember exactly where it came from, but I think it was posted on DarkUFO’s blog. A couple of nights ago I actually sat down and read it. Immediately it feels like your reading a missing ‘Lost’ episode, but at the same time somethings just not the same.

In fairness ‘Lost’ didn’t drop the WTF moments right from the beginning (not counting the fact that a bunch of people could have actually survived the crash), but there is a distinct lack of mystery throughout the ‘Nowhere’ script. Lieber has said that ‘Lord of the Flies’ and ‘Cast Away’ were his influences, and it does show. I haven’t actually seen ‘Cast Away’, but isn’t it just Tom Hanks trying to survive while stuck on an island? That’s a bit what ‘Nowhere’ felt like, except there was a bunch of them trying to survive.

The differences? To start with the plane is flying TO Sydney, not FROM Sydney. There are still the pre-crash scenes inside the plane, but the circumstances of the crash and how they end up on the island is quite different. The characters, while not a direct person-for-person match, share a lot of similarities with the Losties. Although Lieber clearly had a thing for ‘odd’ names. There is an Australian character name ‘Xander Britzke’. Not sure Lieber actually knows where Australia is… cause that name sounds more Austrian, than Australian. Just Saying. There’s also a family and the daughter’s name is Tyke Sykes. The choice of that name is probably the biggest WTF moment in the whole script.

There are some close similarities, like the Jack substitute, Truman, who’s flying to Australia to collect his deceased father. also following the crash Truman has the same injury that Jack suffered (large cut on the back). A seemingly important character is killed of relatively quickly, which was apparently the original plan for Jack’s character in ‘Lost’ as well. Glad they changed that.

There’s a doctor, but its not the Truman, and they’re only really a med student, not a spinal surgeon. There’s a somewhat shifty guy with a drug dependancy. There’s a criminal who’s being escorted by a marshall, and the marshall also dies after the crash. There’s a woman who survived, she can’t find her husband, but she’s convinced that he’s definitely alive (aka. Rose and Bernard). The list goes on.

What is missing though, like I said, is the mystery. No weird noises in the bushes, no polar bears, no cripples who can now walk (or none that were revealed in this pilot anyway). I think its safe to say the Lieber’s concept was definitely swayed more toward the drama genre, and maybe thats what ABC didn’t like.

All that aside, I actually enjoyed reading the script, probably because of my slight addiction to ‘Lost’ and craving for anything related (that’s NOT a spoiler). If I had no knowledge of ‘Lost’ I probably would have enjoyed it even more for what it was, instead of constantly comparing and contrasting the two. While in all honesty isn’t fair when one has been going for 5 season and one was a single pilot script. but still, its extremely hard not to compare them.

Whatever ABC’s decision was for dumping Lieber and handing it over to Abrams and Lindelof, I’m glad they went the way they did, because otherwise we wouldn’t have had ‘Lost’ to watch for the past 5+ years. Just a real shame that it all comes to an end after this season.

Download the script below (at least until someone asks me to remove it) and have a read for yourself. I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Download ‘Nowhere’ Pilot Script (6.5MB)

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/netmen2009/3763600381/

Comparing the poster and the font cover of the album, you have the living characters surrounded by numerous deceased characters in the poster, and the Beatles surrounded by numerous deceased personalities. But when you look at the back cover of the album, you’ll see that Paul McCartney is facing away from you, just like Locke/Fake-Locke is in the poster. The image of Paul on the Beatles album fueled the conspiracy that he was in fact dead, despite that not really being the case (as far as we know…), so is the backward facing Locke image trying to tell us something similar… I’ll let you decide.

Its likely they’ll have a ‘special guest’ with them, last year it was Matthew Fox, the year before it was Harold Perrineau. Rumours have been circulating that it could even be Dominic Monaghan, that would be cool, we all miss Charlie, but I personally don’t think its likely. But then again we don’t really know what the 6th season is going to be about, remember that appears that they’ve just detonated a nuclear bomb on the island.

In the first couple of day of Comic Con a few Lost related things have popped up on the abc website. The first was the ‘Lost University’ site which I linked to here a couple of days back. It appears that it could be part of a new ARG to fill in the months until season 6, but no-one seems overly sure just yet. Lostpedia has compiled all the info off the site in one easy to read page, so I won’t bother duplicating it all here, but you can find out more about Lost University here.

Now another video has popped up, and it looks like its the first in a series of five videos to be released over the coming months. Titled ‘Mysteries of the Universe’, its been compiled to look like a 1970’s conspiracy documentary about secret societies. This first video doesn’t give too much away (you can watch it above), but any drip fed Lost info is a good thing. One thing to keep in mind though is that even if the content is ‘cool and interesting’ it doesn’t necessarily mean than the info is canon.

Hopefully we get teased with something cool at the last-ever Lost panel at SDCC.

It’s Jacob!

When does this opening sequence take place? Mid to late 1800’s presumably since that is when the Black Rock apparently went missing. What’s more interesting though is the suggestion that Jacob in fact brought the ship to the island, if that’s the case did he play more of a part in bringing Oceanic 815, the Nigerian drug plan and Henry Gale’s hot air balloon to the island as well?

Who is Jacob’s enemy?

Jacob wasn’t alone in the open sequence, there was a second, unnamed, character on the beach with him. Who was he? There is some suggestion that he could be Esau, the biblical brother of Jacob. Also interesting to note that his clothing is black/dark and the complete opposite to Jacob’s white/light clothing.

It only ends once, everything that happens before that is just progress

Interesting quote form Jacob, hinting that here is some ultimate end-game that we are on the path too, and perhaps we haven’t even seen any indication what this end game may be yet.

What is the statue?

It has been confirmed by ABC that the statue is of Taweret, the Egyptian goddess of birth, rebirth and the northern sky. Still no real idea how old it is, only that it was there in the 1800’s and mostly demolished by 1974.

Why did Jacob visit the losties, when did he visit them.

These moments served as Jacob’s flashbacks for this episode. Interesting that some were pre crash and some post crash.

He visits Kate (and her friend Tom - the one with the toy plane) as a kid after she tried to steal a lunchbox. He asks her to promise not to steal anymore.

He visits James at his parents funeral, and provides him with a replacement pen which he uses to write his letter to the real Sawyer.

He stops Sayid in LA (after returning from the island). Sayid is with Nadia, who steps out onto the street and is hit by a car. By Jacob stopping Sayid he quite possibly saved him from a similar fate.

He sitting outside the building that Anthony Cooper pushes Locke from. After Locke falls Jacob goes over and squeezes his shoulder. Did he just do it to wake him up, or did he use his magic powers to revive him?

He is at Sun and Jin’s wedding.

He meets Jack after that first major surgery where he stuffed things up and did his whole count to 5 thing.

He meets Hurley in a taxi outside the jail. Hurley is the only one to which he specially mentions anything to do with the island. Its possible that Jacob also bailed Hurley out.

Eloise is pregnant

Well, there goes my (highly unlikely) theory that there was an infant Dan hiding somewhere on the island.

The swan station was Radzinsky’s experiment

I kind of got the impression that Pierre Chang wasn’t too pleased about this, and that the two of them aren’t exactly friends.

Alpert says that its because of Jacob that he doesn’t age

After Alpert tells Locke that he’s never seen anyone come back from the dead on the island, Locke retorts with “I’ve never seen a man that doesn’t age”, Alpert explains that this is thanks to Jacob. So could Alpert have been around at the same time the opening sequence took place? If not how old is he?

What/who is the candidate?

Bram and Ilana mention that they should keep Frank because he might be the candidate even though he didn’t know the answer to their question. But a candidate for what? Jacob’s replacement?

Horrace’s Dharamville house leads to the tunnels

Given that Horrace was the leader, and so was Ben, is this the house that would have been Ben’s in 2004? Given Ben’s affiliation with the Others its highly likely that he knew about the tunnels.

Ben’s dad shoots Sayid

Revenge I guess.

So that’s where they went…

Sawyer, Kate and Juliet arrive back on the island (after busting out of the sub) and find that Rose and Bernard have been living in peace in the jungle for three years - with Vincent.

Jacob’s cabin

The Ajira folk arrive at Jacob’s cabin to find he isn’t there, it looks like someone else has been using it, Christian Shepherd? Ilana finds a piece of Jacob’s tapestry that indicates he’s at the statue.

I’m not going to kill him you are

Locke tells Ben that he will actually be the one that will kill Jacob, and when Ben asks why Locke is happy to oblige with several perfectly good reasons, easily convincing Ben. Those reason were, despite his loyal service and the powers of the island he still got cancer, he had to watch Alex die, he followed blind orders and yet was still banished, and not once did he ever meet Jacob. Locke suggests Ben should be asking why wouldn’t he want to kill him.

Driveshaft

On their way to the Statue Locke, Sun and the others come across their old beach camp. Sun finds Aaron’s crib and finds the ring that Charlie left for him before he set of to meet his doom in the looking glass station.

What is done is done

Sawyer gives Jack the “what is done is done” speech. Explaining how both his parents died when he was a kid, and that relative to them (in 1977) it happened a couple of years ago, and that if he believe that he could have actually prevented it (ie. been able to change the past) that he would have left the island when he had the chance.

Black and white

During his meetings with all the losties off the island, is it just me or is Jacob wearing dark clothing in most cases? Does this mean anything, was this really Jacob? Or was it Jacob’s enemy doing everything he could to get the path of time to lead to the point where he would find his loophole and be able to kill Jacob…

“see you in Los Angeles”

Jack was very confident that the bomb theory was going to work, big change from when he used to butt heads with Locke of the whole science vs. faith argument.

Miles - saying what we’re all thinking

“Has it occurred to your that your friend (Jack) is going to cause the thing that he’s trying to prevent…” - exactly.

Wheres the kaboom, there was supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom

Jack dropped bomb and… nothing happened, Sawyer joked that “this doesn’t look like LAX”. And then the incident started, metallic objects flying all of over the place, Chang’s hand got crushed, Phil got skewered with a bunch of metal rods (yay), and Juliet got caught in a chain and dragged down the shaft.

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

Ilana and the Ajira folk arrive looking for ‘Ricardos’ (Richard), she asks him “what lies in the shadow of the statue?”, with out a second of hesitation he answers “Ille qui nos omnes servabit”, which means “he who will save (or protect) us all”. Which “he” is this referring to? Is Richard the “he”, or is Jacob, or is Jacob’s enemy (unlikely) or is the one who will save them all the “candidate” that they were referring to earlier? Then they tell him they have something to show him, they open the crate they’ve been carrying around and tip something out. What is it? It’s Locke’s dead body, that’s what it is. Meaning that the Locke that’s gone in to see Jacob isn’t Locke at all. Uh oh.

What is the loophole?

Jacob says that his enemy has finally found his loophole, meaning he’s probably aware at this point that his about to get killed, but what is the loophole? Is it something simple like Jacob’s enemy could be the one to actually do the killing, and had to convince someone else (Ben to do it for him)?

How did Jacob know that Locke wasn’t actually Locke?

He seemed to know instantly that it was his enemy and not the real Locke. Could this have been because he knew that Locke had been killed by Ben and that there really was no way possible that Locke himself could have been alive, or did he just have some weird 6th sense thing happening?

“You have no idea what I’ve gone through to be here. ”

See my comment above, is it possible that it was Jacob’s enemy that was visiting the losties to return them to the island for the purpose of finding the loophole he need to get rid of Jacob?

Ben meets Jacob. Finally

He asks him why, no matter how much he followed order, or how many time she asked, he was never able to meet him before now, he says “what about me?”. Jacob’s reply? “what about you?”. That was enough for Ben, he then got all up close and stabby.

They’re coming.

Jacob’s dying words to his enemy, “they’re coming”. Who are ‘they’, is he just referring to Ilana, Bram and the others or is there another group we don’t know about. After this Jacob’s enemy kick Jacob into the fire to finish him off.

Out with a bang

The final scene we travel down the shaft of the swan station, at the bottom we see Juliet, suddenly her eyes open. She either did really well to survive the fall… or she was being reanimated by the island/Jacob. Juliet sees the bomb and picks up a rock ad starts bashing the bomb with it. After exactly 8 hits. Bang. White. LOST.

Now we just have to endure several months of waiting to find out what the hell happened. Did the bomb go off as planned after Juliet hit it? If it did, what did it do? Are they going to be in LA as though the plane never crashed on the island? Will they still be in 1977? Will they all be dead as previously foretold by Alpert? Will they be back in 2004 at a time prior to them leaving the island? Who knows, they’ve left it pretty open. I can’t wait.