To answer your original question, yes they are technically the same. Ben came to the island with the Dharma Initiative as a kid, and the DI was often attacked (or so they say) by "hostiles" or "natives" of the island. When Ben grew up he joined sides with the hostiles and helped kill off the DI people. Ben and his new friends recruited some off island people to join their little community and they collectively became known as "the others." We still don't know who made up the hostiles/natives before Ben came along and recruited people. We know that they were led by Richard Alpert, but we know very little else about them. They could be people from the Black Rock, they could have lived there for thousands of years, or they could be time-travelling space monkeys. Except for Richard of course. No, Richard too. And then of course you have the Losties, and the Tailies (some of which joined The Others and some of which are now part of the Losties), the Freighties (or whatever you want to call them), and Jacob, and the dead people that keep showing up...oh and then the people from Danielle's group, who knows what happened to them. And then there's Adam and Eve, and Desmond who shipwrecked onto the island as well... My god there are a lot of people on this island.
I've actually watched the entire series, almost, a lot of eps in season 4 i haven't seen, and most of the episodes I've skipped through, like skipping through a lot of the flashbacks. So I know most of the main plots, but of course many things I don't. I am now sitting down and watching each episode all the way through without skipping through it. Last night I watched episodes 1-3 of season 1 all the way through. I know enough of what happened though to be able to watch the new episodes each week, I already watched the season 5 eps so far.
Also, wasn't it in reference to the theories about them being in purgatory or on an alien spaceship? It's definately a sci-fi show at this point with the time-travel, but even that's relatively tame compared to the theories people were coming up with at the beginning. I kind of miss the old clues they used to have in the show (the Dharma logo on the shark, etc), but sometime in Season 2 it seemed that they were relying way too much on stuff like that instead of the actual storyline. Like the map on the door of the bunker, yeah, it was cool to freeze-frame it and study it and all, but the fact that the show was in a creative slump was more important. Luckily, while they've toned down the visual clues, the show got back on track in the middle of Season 3 and has been great ever since.
Real pseudoscience seems to be a huge blanket copout though, but oh well. Don't get me wrong, after I got over my initial anger - I've long since stopped believing that they have any sort of detailed plan ala JMS and B5 - I can enjoy the show on a basic, plot level now. The move from Fringe-like science (heh) to straight out SF is another one of those things that would have bugged me two years ago but I'm fine with now.
Wrap you head around this: The snowglobe scene in the final scene of the series finale of Saint Elsewhere. -Shawn
As seen in this great video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MxEKhSCdwI Brent, welcome aboard! Great to have you with us.