(...Continued from last post)
So, what am I doing now to fill the void left when the Island permanently relocated itself to television limbo (or perhaps I should say moved on into the light)?Without any new episodes to look forward to, I've decided to engage in a little archaeological digging into LOST's primordial past.
You see, even during LOST's first couple of seasons, I always felt the show bore a strong resemblance to other tv series I had come across as a youth (back in the days when Zenith consoles roamed the Earth). My suspicions became even more aroused as the series progressed.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing LOST of being derivative; It was a brilliant show. But when I break it down into its component parts I find that many of its plot elements have more than a passing resemblance to tv series long since passed.
So, below are the results of my paleolithic excavations, presented for your review. Are these, in fact, direct antecedents of our beloved time-twisted, monster island series? The show's creators seem rather tight-lipped about the whole subject so there will probably never be a way to tell for sure. For now just think of them as some antediluvian evolutionary branch from the show's family tree...a sort of television Australopithecus to Lost's Homo Sapiens.
The New People always struck me as having the most similarity to LOST. Both were broadcast on the ABC network, but The New People aired in 1970.
The plot: An airplane carrying 40 some-odd young, beautiful people crashes on a mysterious tropical island. The island was once part of a military nuclear bomb test site (Lost Season Five's Jughead?) and has a fully built village with modern buildings, vehicles, weapons, food and electricity (Otherville?) The people try and carve out a new civilization on the island and fight each other a lot.
Granted, I never saw this series, or I was too young to remember it. My only memory came from an old Dell comic book adaption I had when I was a kid in 1973. I lost the comic several years ago but I discovered another copy at a book store just last month. Below is a posting of it. Artwork is by Frank Springer:
Fantastic Journey was a short-lived sci-fi series that ran in the late 1970s. It starred Jared Marten, Ike Eisenmann, and Roddy McDowall.
The show centered around a small band of castaways shipwrecked on a mysterious island in the Bermuda Triangle. Different parts of the island occupied different time zones and dimensions and walking in any direction could land a cast member in a different time without notice (sound like LOST Season Five to you?). As the series progressed some characters would drop out and new ones would pop up.
Here are the opening credits:
You can view a snippet of the pilot episode by clicking this link.
This one might be a stretch, but Land of the Lost may have shared more than just 25% of its name with our island epic. This sci-fi series came out in 1974 and centered on a family stranded on a mysterious alien planet in an enclosed pocket universe. Creatures, humans and aliens from all different time periods would involuntarily drop in and become trapped. The planet was surrounded by a swirling time vortex and the only way to escape was through a carefully calibrated time portal. The planet was dotted with ruins, temples and cities from an ancient, yet advanced, civilization, and the family were often in conflict with the hostile, indigenous inhabitants of those ruins (much like the Others).
Many other similarities existed between shows. LOTL had strange mechanical pylons that each performed different functions on the planet (similar to LOST's Dharma hatches), Both the LOTL's planet and LOST's Island contained mysterious energy sources at their hearts that seemed to power everything around them. Well, you get the idea.
Below is an episode (albeit crudely truncated) from LOTL's second season. I always felt elements of this story paralleled LOST's fifth season story Dead is Dead.
...And the Rest:
These were shows that NOBODY ever heard of...unaired pilots that languished in the studio film archives until, perhaps, chanced upon by Carlton Cuse or Damon Lindelof trowling about for a dose of inspiration?
Lost Flight certainly looks the part, both in the title and the violence. Lloyd Bridges is looking very Frank Lapidus-like in many of those shots.
The Stranded clip shows a dog that could be a dead-ringer for Vincent
And the show with Meadowlark Lemon? Well, I'm willing to bet he survived the show to become this island's true guardian!
I welcome your observations.
Namaste.
