To keep us watching (Sept comp)
For suspense and to get us to tune in next week. I don’t think there was any other motive (when written and aired) than as a set piece to up the stakes as such. They are on an adventure to find the cockpit for the radio. Wow, pilot is alive, great, brilliant, oh crap weird smoke thing just grabbed him and ripped him to pieces. As AES said, for both the viewers and characters, how does that happen? It also provides an element of suspense rather than surprise over the smoke monster (when you know what could happen, all encounters are more suspensful). It changes the scene from an adventure to a thriller, and for the viewers, lets us know early on that this isn’t an ordinary ‘people crash landed on a deserted island’ story, something else is going on here and it’s weird, supernatural, mean and scary.
I think that later on as the story developed and other characters were introduced, the writers came back to Seth to add depth to the story, for eg. how do we connect Lapidus to the losties? what if he was meant to be there, how? lets make him the original pilot, it also helps to question Widmore’s fake.
They were going to kill someone in that episode before even the major characters and storylines were hashed out, Jack was an option which means that his character arc and massive importance to the ending wasn’t anywhere near thought of or developed. This is why I don’t think there was any pre awareness or meaning behind his death other than to get us to keep watching and to scare the losties, to give them some knowledge of what they were up against.
I know this theory has come from a bit of a different perspective as some of the others. I don’t feel I can see Lost as a piece that was complete when it was started, if that makes sense. I don’t think they had many of the details sorted out at all until they got there, so I’m looking at this from the what did it mean as they wrote it perspective, how did it progress the story then and there.
We don’t care why the writers did what they did. They don’t matter anymore. I don’t think this contest was to answer why the writers had the pilot killed. If the writers didn’t give us a direct answer in the show, then that leaves us to fill in the blanks. And we shouldn’t do so with them in mind at all.
But I do care why the writers did what they did. Lost is a constructed story, so for me to theorise by completely ignoring that is just writing fan fiction. I find looking back at the whole story and thinking about how and why things were written is interesting. If you don’t like my theory, fine, I was just wanting to write something from a different perspective as there are lots of interesting ideas, entries coming from a fill in the blanks angle. This is just something else to munch on.
What the writers were thinking when they wrote Lost is important, cos they wrote what we are all talking about, isn’t it?
Hello Tas…good thoughts here…and hello Penelopedean…
I can see both sides on this…Pen, I get your thoughts completely…the theories should be based moreso on the characters perspective, for more of a fictional feel to the ideas…but I think in this particular case, the producers were sort of transferring the logic in their minds towrds us, as the logic of MIBs mind as well, ripping the pilot from the cockpit with a blood splattering crunch, and then hanging him in the jungle for all to see…
That wasnt a run-on sentence was it?
Either way, we have similar thoughts, but on a more character based side, I still see there being more to it, possibly due to the pilots knowledge of location, as I said in my theory… or even simply because he was not Frank as some believe.
Im with you on the wow factor, but I think there is more to it…