Nerding Out

I loved LOST from the outset, the opening scenes of the pilot caught my imagination and I've been hooked ever since. The whole pilot episode, aptly titled 'Pilot', with monsters in the jungle (a bit like the Guardian from The Boy From Andromeda from my childhood), hatches buried in the ground (reminiscent of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers), mysterious radio transmissions saying 'it' killed them all... How could I not love it?

My interest did wane a little with the whole pushing the button thing, but everytime we get to see the Black Rock, the sonic barrier fence, the Monster, Otherville or some other such mystery (... yes, even that stupid four-toed statue) I get addicted all over again. I have to say, I mostly watch it for the Others, though. LOST's Juliet is the most interesting character on TV. She's so complicated, so completely unreadable. I love that Sawyer recognises she'd kill in a heartbeat, and yet she seems genuinely moved when revealing that Sun's motherhood will mean her death. I love her tense relationships with Kate, Jack and Ben. Juliet rocks!

Thinking more on my LOST addiction, I have come to realise something about myself, and after all, that's essentially what I hope to do with this blog, to explore my feelings and understand patterns of behaviour. I have realised that it's not just the content of the show that has captured my interest, the survivors stranded on an island, having to forge bonds and work together to survive while they wait for rescue, but the storytelling. I'm not watching it for the character development, in fact, aside from the few true originals like Hurley, Juliet and Locke I don't really care about the character's back-stories, least of all Desmond's, even though his is important to the story. The episodes that dwell excessively on characterisation usually just piss me off, I like the plot-driven stuff much better.

And that's where we get down to the nitty-gritty of it. LOST is a mystery story, a puzzle, and a wonderfully complex one at that. It has ensnared me, caught my imagination, as have other mysteries in the past. I love Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer novels, when I pick one up I can't put it down. Harry Potter, much to my embarrassment, has had a hold on me since I first read the Prisoner of Azkaban in 2004. I got hooked on The Pretender, wondering just how Jared knew so much about Miss Parker, and I always used to read the Famous Five and other kids mystery books. Even Ecco the Dolphin has a strong Mystery Genre thread through it. There are clues to uncover, hidden agendas and things going on behind the scenes. This sort of addiction has happened for me before, it's going to happen again with something else. There will always be a LOST for me, in one form or another, and it looks like I'm not the only one so fanatically obsessed with it. There are hundreds of LOST fansites on the Internet.

This gets my social psychological machinery starting up. This obsessive devotion - where does it come from? Why do books like Harry Potter and shows such as LOST and Star Trek generate such fanaticism? I think it is because we delight in having the rug pulled out from under us in the safety of our own living rooms or reading chairs. They keep us guessing. That's the crucial point - they KEEP us guessing. Star Trek's been going over 40 years now, there's always been Trek on TV or in the movies, and with such a long run it's generated a Bible's worth of intricate plotting, scheming and technology/character development.

You can completely lose yourself in the Trek universe, it's ever expanding. It gave an interesting premise, and has been constantly elaborating that premise, it's become so complex that a resolution or conclusion is now impossible, there are too many loose ends to tie up, so it can never really finish. It may fizzle somewhat, once they finish producing TV episodes and feature films, but the fans have been able to become involved in the story, and so they will continue it, with fanfiction, artwork and debate, for quite some time yet. Star Trek has been a success.

Harry Potter, after it's inital, quite brilliant first installment, has led readers on a twisted, convoluted chase through Rowling's bizarre world, introducing villains and heroes, promising answers then snatching them away as we think we have them, balancing mysteries within each installment with those that span the length of the greater story. Rowling is a genius mystery writer, and her books generate almost hysterical fervour among fans, old and young alike. But I wonder what will become of Potter fandom, when this last installment is released in July, and the series wraps up? If she is clever, and I think she is, she will leave a number of questions unanswered, not the main ones, but those that are perhaps tertiary, and this will ensure that people continue to buy her books and argue about them for years to come.

Which brings me back to LOST. It is the fact that the story is unfinished, that there is much that we cannot know or guess at, that is at the heart of its success. It asks questions, doesn't give answers immediately, and introduces new questions when answering old ones, and so we're kept guessing, and we as fans can live vicariously through the characters, as if we ourselves were in danger, having to exercise our wits to survive, all in the comfort of our armchairs.

When the story comes to a close in 2010, what will become of LOST fandom? Will there still be questions left to answer? I think there will be, as in the case of the Potter franchise they won't be the main questions, but there'll be some fodder for the obsessive, and perhaps there will be ongoing podcasts from the producers, occasionally throwing fans a bone to reignite debate. It's TV, it's all about the money. Or maybe it's leading up to a big movie finish... who knows? Given that the actors will be nearly ten years older in 2010 than when the series began, and that they're supposed to have been on the island less than a year, I think that's unlikely, but I expect there will be some ongoing fan involvement.

And then the next thing will come along, and we'll all become ensnared again...

Ecco

I would like to devote a few words to my most enduring obsession.


Ecco the Dolphin was the Sega game that I just had to have. I saw it on the telly in a commercial, way back in '92 (15 years ago, Oh MY God!!) and as I have loved whales and sharks since before I can remember, I was instantly smitten. I nagged my mum, I went so far as to sit in front of the TV with one of those disposable cameras after school every day for a week, waiting for the commercial to come on, and when it did I snapped away like crazy(we didn't have a VCR at that point). The pictures turned out a little weird, I have to say. Because I was by no means an accomplished photographer, as a twelve year old, the shots were a crazy mix of shadows and reflections of our seventies-decor living room with a little blue dolphin swimming through it. Eventually my mum caved in and bought a Sega Mega Drive for christmas, with a copy of Sonic 2 for my little brother, Apache Strikeforce or something similar for my older brother, and Ecco for me. I was in heaven.


Though I'd had to wait five months to get it, I was not disappointed. Every opportunity I got, I was on that Mega Drive exploring deep-sea caves with Ecco. The game is beautiful, even in its first incarnation as a side-scrolling underwater puzzle/adventure. The graphics are fluid and the sprites well rendered, the textures are rich, the colours deep and lush. And it's fast. Ecco twists and leaps, dives and rolls with all the grace and agility of a real dolphin, albeit in 2D.


But the beauty of Ecco the Dolphin is in more than just what it looks like, the game is a symphony of rich sound. The music is complex and evocative, at times thrilling, at other times chilling. The sound effects really do echo, conveying a sense of the awesome vastness of the ocean, and Ecco's squeaks and whistles manage to convey an awful lot of emotion. I could lose myself in that game for hours at a time, loving it with every fibre of my being, despite how amazingly frustrating it sometimes was.


It was a hard game. It wasn't especially violent, in fact, compared to the games my brothers enjoyed it was practically tree-hugging, being mostly concerned with the solving of puzzles. Maybe that's why it got a reputation for being gay or girlie. The thing is, though, it's one of Sega's most unique releases, and by all accounts one of its most memorable. I've only recently come to understand from trolling through the Internet that my obsession is not so perverse after all, the game actually has something of a cult following. I was thrilled when I found a number of the story-clips from the Ecco titles recently on YouTube. I also found websites devoted exclusively to the games.


Ecco means a lot to me. I am profoundly moved by the hero's quest, for at its heart, Ecco the Dolphin is a story about loneliness. I won't go into the plot details here, but suffice it to say that as a kid who never found many friends, who didn't ever really fit in, I felt to some extent it was my story that was being told in that game. It's a story about loss, about bravery and determination, about fighting for what is yours even when there is no one on your side, about beauty and horror, despair and terror, mystery and myth.


I don't have many burning ambitions in life, but the one thing for which I deeply, desperately yearn is to see a film made of the first Ecco story, whether composed of cunningly edited live footage of whales, dolphins and sharks, or of photorealistic CGI. It would have to be an art film, more about the experience of the vast cold ocean than about adrenaline. Definitely not a popcorn movie. I often fantasise about how I would do it if I had the money, what it would look like, how it would sound...