Lost Connections

Letting my mind wander and see where it takes me (and sometimes it takes me to some very surprising places), I was struck by some of the similarities between the popular ABC primetime series “Lost” and the Saturday morning children’s show of the mid-seventies “Land of the Lost.” And yes, it was the tenuous one word the two series share that brought me to this realization.

“Lost,” for what it’s worth, has been compared to series “The X-files” and other shows with an undercurrent of the supernatural. “Lost” also makes extensive use of tropes common to science fiction (or speculative fiction, if you must). The main plot of a bunch of castaways trying to eke out an existence on a remote (and usually) tropical island has been a staple in literature and film since Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.” In that regards, “Lost” doesn’t break new ground. But its combination of those themes and using them as a backdrop for intriguing character development and analysis has brought it no small measure of success.

To say “Lost” has been influenced, or more accurately, the creators and writers have been influenced, by thematically similar works is taken as granted. No doubt the writers themselves could produce a list detailing all their direct influences. However, there are more than a few odd similarities, some overlapping motifs, between “Lost” and “Land of the Lost;” so many, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder if the creators are trying to recreate that series for a current, adult audience.

As I was born the year the last season of LOTL aired, I had to catch it in reruns when I was a toddler. My memory is sketchy, but with some help from Wikipedia, the torrent of memories is released from the reservoir. LOTL is the story of the Marshall family (the father Rick, his son Will, and the daughter Holly) who, during an earthquake while they are rafting down a river in present-day (1970s) Earth find themselves transported to a mysterious lost land with nothing more than their raft, the meager supplies in said raft, and the clothes on their backs. This is a land that resembles prehistoric Earth, with all the large dinosaurs wandering about to prove it. No sooner is the family washed up in the LOTL, when they are attacked by a giant Tyrannosaurus rex, whom they dub “Grumpy,” and are forced to seek shelter in a cave halfway up a mountain. (I remember as a kid being scared during the opening credits when Grumpy would give up on the Marshall family and turn to the “camera” to devour the audience. He never got me, however, because I was watching this all in complete safety – from behind the sofa.) Without going into too much detail, the series focused on the Marshall family’s attempts to return to their own dimension while trying to understand the magic and mystery of the lost land.

Overall the plot doesn’t seem that similar to “Lost,” but it’s not exactly dissimilar either. You could argue, if you like, the plot of LOTL has as much in common with “King Kong” or “Survivor” and you wouldn’t be wrong, in my opinion. But the devil is in the details, and it is the particularities of LOTL that are analogous to parts of “Lost.”

I’ve already mentioned the T-Rex, Grumpy, and the cave in LOTL. In “Lost,” one of the continuing mysteries (much to the annoyance of many fans) is the truth behind the smoke monster. For many people, including myself, until we actually saw the smoke, we were led to believe it was some giant dinosaur, or at least hoped it would be, just because, well, dinosaurs are cool. LOTL has Grumpy and “Lost” has Smokey. At one point in season one of “Lost,” some of the characters decide they would be safer in the newly discovered caves instead of at the beach, just like the Marshalls decided they would be safer in the cave away from the river.

One of the things the Marshalls wanted to be safe from, aside from some bad stop-motion animation dinosaurs, was a race of beings known as the Sleestak. These humanoid lizard-like creatures were the antagonist aborigines of the lost land who wanted the Marshalls for some unknown but presumably nasty business. That business turned out to be ritual sacrifice to the Sleestak’ god who dwelled in a mist-covered pit. His diet consisted of any sacrifices the Sleestak brought (anyone the Sleestak didn’t like, and that was everyone), but no word how the god went to the bathroom in that pit are how he disposed of the remains. (Probably got a little, um, ripe down in there.) The Sleestak who made nothing but trouble for the Marshalll family, we later learn, are the descendants (in the truest sense of the word) of the Altrusians who built the Lost City and whose technology is scattered around the lost land. The Altrusians were a highly advanced race who, like many empires the world over, lost their exalted status through hubris, and the Sleestak were the primitive result of that.

One of the biggest mysteries in “Lost” is a group of apparently primitive people running around the island making an already tough life egregiously tough for the plane crash survivors. While they appear primitive (and in season three we learn it was a ruse, but that doesn’t destroy the LOTL connection; the creators just used it as a springboard for new ideas), they exhibit intimate knowledge of the island and use it to their advantage. They kidnapped multiple members from the survivors’ group to use them for things we can’t even imagine, as their purpose in doing so has yet to be revealed. We know they were probably not the first people to inhabit the island, as that honor goes to the scientists working for the Dharma Initiative. Those teams, while not much is known about them, we do know they were quite technologically advanced as compared to the Others in their Swiss Family Robinson guise (which is revealed to be just that in the third season of “Lost”). From certain information gleaned from the show, we might assume that the Dharma scientists were either wiped out by a mysterious disease and/or subsumed by the others. If the former, was the disease of their own making? We already know they did experiments on sharks and polar bears. Did their own science wipe them out as the technological advances of the Altrusians wiped them out? And what remnants survived, did they become part of the primitive Others as the Altrusians degenerated into Sleestak? As “Lost” progresses, those analogies may prove to be tenuous at best; but if you just look at the first two seasons of “Lost,” it’s hard not to see the parallels. (EDIT: In season three, episode thirteen Ben, the ostensible leader of the Others claims to have been born on the island. This raises the question of who was there first, the Dharma Initiative or the Others? LOTL enjoyed flip-flopping on the origin of the Sleestak, without ever giving a definitive answer. “Lost” enjoys teasing the audience in the same way with the Others.)

Dotted throughout the LOTL were mysterious structures left by the Altrusians called Pylons. These narrow, pyramid-like structures were more capacious inside with their “compressed space” than what their superficial structures presented. Inside some of these Pylons – if not all – was a stone table known as the “crystal matrix control table.” By rearranging the power crystals on the matrix table, the user could affect certain reactions in the LOTL including altering weather and time itself. The Marshalls were convinced these matrix tables inside the Pylons offered the key to returning to their own dimension. In “Lost,” the Dharma Initiative left behind many stations for pseudo-scientific research, as it would appear. The most famous of these stations was know as the Hatch, and inside was a computer that could be used to control a magnetic discharge on the island. As the Altrusians are to Dharma, so are the Pylons to Dharma’s stations, with the computer serving as the island’s version of the crystal matrix table. Now that the Hatch has imploded and the need for the computer obviated by Desmond’s actions at the end of the second season, it remains to be seen what role the magnetic discharge will play in future episodes and how many, if any, Dharma ruins remain to be found. (EDIT: In episode twelve of season three, a group of the crash survivors find a series of tall, derrick-like posts encircling the village of the Others. Sayid distinctly calls them “pylons.” If the village the Others live in turns out to have been built by Dharma, it would connect to the Lost City built by the Altrusians and inhabited by the Sleestak.)

And speaking of Desmond, what would “Lost” be without its version of Enik, the time-traveling Altrusian who learns that his race is doomed to degenerate into the Sleestak? As Enik is the last Altrusian representative in “present-day” LOTL, Desmond, as far as we know, is the last survivor of the Dharma Initiative. While Desmond was never a true member of the Dharma Initiative, he remains the last person to be revealed who had any connection to them. After the implosion of the Hatch, Desmond exhibited certain time-traveling abilities. Whether he physically moved through time or just mentally relived moments has yet to be answered. Desmond is now stuck on the island because his one means of transport – a sailboat – was lost to the Others by Sayid, Jin, and Sun. Enik also lost his primary means of time travel when Will Marshall destroyed it.

Desmond isn’t the only interesting character on the island when the plane crashes. A mysterious French woman named Danielle Rousseau pops up every now and then. According to her own story, she has been on the island for sixteen years when a ship she was on was stranded there after following a radio signal being sent from the island. She does indeed aid the survivors from time to time, but she prefers to live the life of recluse so as to avoid contact with the dreaded and despised Others. As with “Lost,” LOTL also had its own deranged recluse in Jefferson Davis Collie, a Confederate soldier who has been trapped in the LOTL for what appears to be decades. He spends most of his time mining the power crystals and using his cannon to keep the Sleestak at bay. He even helps the Marshalls attempt to escape the lost land, but decides to head back to his cave because he doesn’t want to encounter any dinosaurs along the way.

For me there are already enough similarities between “Lost” and LOTL to view former as homage to the latter. But there is one more point, perhaps not as germane as the others, but still intriguing nonetheless. When Sayid, Jin, and Sun are sailing around the island to rescue Jack and company, they spot the remains of what presumably was a gigantic statue. All that is left is two feet cut off above the ankles, and Sayid remarks that there are only four toes on each foot. At this point in “Lost,” nothing has been revealed as to the origin of those remains, but they might not be related to the Dharma Initiative or to the Others. LOTL also had a similar set of ruins of unknown origin called the Builder Temple. This temple was neither built by the Altrusians nor the Sleestak, but by some other humanoid race that never reveals itself. Unfortunately, this temple was not seen outside of a handful of episodes and the mysterious race was never explained nor fully introduced.

LOTL only lasted three seasons before it was cancelled. By the third season, the show’s budget was drastically reduced and the execs took over, not only diluting its contents, but also dumbing it down to insipid levels. The third season never quite lived up to the panache of its predecessors, and lacking many of the original creators, the quality of the show quickly declined. I hope that is one point where “Lost” can digress from its philosophical and inspirational forbearer.

As the “Lost” progresses, its connections to LOTL will more than likely disappear entirely. Indeed, events in the third season have shown that those connections really only hold for seasons one and two of “Lost.” As the series evolves, and more secrets are revealed (one hopes!), perhaps the series can have a satisfying conclusion that LOTL never had.

Miguel E. Corti (Contributor)