What If Lost Started With Dharma Alive?

[Mr Light]

Watching these recent episodes where they live with Dharma in the 70s, it got me wondering. What would the show have been like if rather than starring plane crash survivors, it starred the Dharma people?

You could A) set the show in the 70s and show Dharma arriving on the Island for the first time and exploring it, never involving a plane crash.

You could B) set the show in the 70s and star Dharma people, but also have mysterious time travelers from a future plane crash appear in the second season or so.

You could C) set the show in present day as Dharma discovers the Island for the first time.

But would the show lose an essential part of itself if your characters intentionally came to the Island rather than get dragged there by random fate? You could still have random/fate reasons for why they decided to join Dharma. Some could be press-ganged to come to the Island for their expertise.

Just think, rather than the characters just sitting around a beach not doing anything for 2-3 years, they could be constructing the stations, living in houses, exploring the Island, encountering the Hostiles...

Do you think this would have made for a more interesting show? I've always found Dharma to be the most "fun" part of the series. I love the thought of this vast scientist conspiracy group working on the miracle Island.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I actually don't care as much for the Dharma aspect of the show. I don't hate it and I'm glad it's in there, but I find that the episodes that focus on Dharma or the Others are the most boring for me. The episodes that focus entirely on the Losties (on the island and off) are much more exciting to me. So while a Dharma based show could be interesting, I probably wouldn't have watched it.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I like the notion of having a bunch of people who are just as clueless as the audience when it all starts. Then as they make their discoveries, so do we. We gain a certain comfort level by seeing the story through the eyes of the main characters who we grow to like and love, so that as things become increasingly insane, we aren't scared off (well some of us have been, but that's always going to happen).

 

[Mr Light]

^^ My theory is, the starring characters in this scenario don't know anything about the Island. Dharma found the Island but knows next to nothing about it... and the regular rank and file (our main characters) are told almost next nothing, just like Juliet was told nothing when she was brought to the Island. Then when they get to the Island they start exploring it and discovering new things, and learning the Dharma leadership was a) hiding how dangerous the Island was from them and b) didn't really know much anything themselves. So it's still the same sense of mystery and exploration, they just have houses and guns and bulldozers

 

[Nardpuncher]

That B) one sounds the most like soemthing the producers and writers would do. The time-travelers from the island's future sounds right up their alley!

 

[Mr Light]

Lying in bed this morning I dreamed up the opening scene:

We open on the bow of an ocean liner chugging through the sea thick with fog. Our male lead, one of the scientists, is leaning on the railing looking forward with a mixture apprehension and boredom. We listen to the waves crashing for a few moments... then the crow's nest shouts "LAND HO!" and screaming sirens set off. Armed soldiers rush forward, crowding away the confused and bewildered man. They take aim forward as the mists part and we see... THE ISLAND.

A small scale Normandy landing takes place as a dozen ships and landing craft scream towards the shore, all bristling with armed men. The scientists are alarmed and ask why this is necessary, but the command staff tell them nothing. The soldiers quickly land on the beach and fan out into the jungle, aiming their weapons everywhere. The support crew begin hurriedly unloading equipment from the ships. The male lead watches in confusion as a woman in handcuffs is lead out from one of the ships under armed guard.

Once they get her on land, they uncuff her and the soldiers ignore her and leave. The male lead walks up to her asking who she is and why she was a prisoner. "They offered you a job here, right?" she says. "The chance of a lifetime?" "Yeah," the man says. She smiles ruefully. "I said no." "Do you know where we are?" he asks. She looks at the grim commanders barking orders as the equipment is unloaded. "I don't think THEY know where we are."

Just then we hear a strange clicking sound in the jungle. The soldiers shout something in alarm... then we hear AWOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Weapons fire cracks out, drowned out by the deafening stomping noises of some invisible creature. The people on the beach panic and flee for the boats. LOST!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

My opening:

2 billion years in the past, Earth is still a roiling volcanic inferno, spewing sulfurous clouds into the atmosphere in a veritable Dante-esque scene of hellish devastation and despair.

Suddenly a light appears in the heavens! It grows ever larger, and with a thunderous roar, smashes right into what someday will be the general vicinity of Bora-Bora or maybe Papua New Guineau. Hard to say for sure (damn continental drift).

Water burbles up from the crater and spreads over the surface of the slowly-cooling land. Soon (give or take a few hundred million years), slime molds emerge and spread out across the surface of the formerly dead planet. An ocean develops and gently laps at the shore of a newly-formed island.

The slime molds, having inherited the cosmic consciousness of the rogue asteroid that spawned them, are (slightly) intelligent. Okay, not all that intelligent. But still, they have a Plan...

Perhaps BSG has warped my tiny widdle mind just a bit.

 

[Mr Light]

^^ That sounds like the opening of a nature documentary Are we gonna see little CGI green puss bags crawling around the ground?