I just have a question maybe someone can help answer or correct me if I'm wrong. I'm reading all these threads that are making it seem like the island has been jumping through time in past seasons. I see it as that this started happening when Ben turned the wheel. Before that it wasn't moving anywhere, it was hidden but not actually traveling through time like it is now. So these threads about this explaining the whispers or Locke being accepted as others leader don't make any sense. Daniel's explanation was to picture a record skipping and when Ben turned the wheel he dislodged us, meaning that they were staying in one place but now they are jumping around. Maybe I misunderstood?
I agree with you more or less about the whispers - perhaps some of them are attributable to time travel - but not all of them.
However, I think Locke's importance to the Others may indeed be linked to this time traveling. That is - if what Daniel said is true - if it didn't happen before, then it can't happen. With this logic - if we had access to the entire timeline - past, present and future - then the left behinds' time travel should be happening, has always happened, and therefore influenced the present and future as we know it in the show. The compass is part of what convinces me -- it gained a whole new meaning with Locke's exchange with Alpert in The Lie when compared to Cabin Fever.
The island skips from 2005 forward and backward through time. So the effects can be felt ANY time, including previously when the island wasn't skipping.
Thanks for the responses. That makes sense but I feel like alot of people are getting confused that this time traveling of the island is what has been happening and what was keeping the island undetected...and thats not the case. NOW it is, this is a new problem that is now giving them only a 70 hr window to try and get back. I see Daniel's explaination as a way of the writers of this show telling us that everything we've seen up to Ben turning that wheel happened and thats that. The past cannot be changed but events in the future can now be because of what is happening.
The podcast said that they were moving in space (i.e. different points on the globe) and through time. If you look at Mrs. Hawking's computer there was a world map with different points on the globe highlighted which seemed to me to indicate that the island is moving around to different points on the globe. It could be that while the island is moving to different points on the globe the people on it are moving through time. I also think that from Daniel's street analogy the possibility exists for the left behinders to journey to the future.
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