Episode 2 - To Keep Us Safe
Following the plane incident, the president's men scramble to figure out what happened;Sterling has Sophia taken into custody; and the conspiracy's web snares an FBI agent Collier, and a mercenary called Carter.
In other events, a shadowy man named Thomas (Clifton Collins Jr.) comes forth with information about the detainees.
Come and join us while watching the episode and afterwards to discuss the events in The Event episode 2.
108 comments:
First.
I was looking for this post then decided to look at the UK page. And here it is. :)
Looking forward to tonight's episode.
Hello all, I'll be watching as soon as I can download.
Hope it lives up to the promise of the pilot.
I'm here! OMG, looked like the Ajira landing!
You were right about Michael, Maven.
Now that's the kind of start I like.
Is Vicky the female half of drunk island couple?
Mel
Yes
Electromagnetic radiation, hmmmmm
Aliens? Man, this show just gets crazier!
Aliens hmmm Didln't think they'd go that way.
Yeah, is it Lost or 24 this show is supposed to be like.. LOL, the runway for the aliens. That was just a joke, though,
I've recently started to play URU, a game by Cyan and a sequel to Myst. For some reason this show is reminding me of that.
Electromagnetic radiation from the wormhole. Kind of what I was hoping for with LOST. I like time travel even short trips. :)
LOL, enjoy the ride then, Tess!
So Greg is innocent. Dead, but innocent.
lol I will.
Swan - how is Uru? I got it awhile ago and have never gotten around to playing it.
So someone knew where the plane would show up-wonder if that is the bad guys or someone else.
I feel like this show is picking up every discarded Lost theory - in a good way, so far.
Mel, I love URU. It's a really difficult game, but with help from others and cheats I'm getting thru it and really having fun. There is much of the story-line that is Lost-like, IMO.
I've played the first 3 or 4 Myst games - I should finish up the series.
Watching this show tonight makes me think of URU even more than Lost does, Mel. So, you know Myst and that will make it easier. This time it's about Atrus' and Chatherine's daughter Yeesha. A nice message behind the whole thing.
JT
I think the aliens on the outside sent them to the desert then went to pick them up.
Not sure if they are all bad. I'm assuming the one's who kidnapped Leila are aliens.
Tess -- Extraterrestrial, but not exactly aliens. They share a common evolutionary ancestor with humans. That's one of the things I thought we'd see (from Sophia's convo w/ POTUS in the pilot).
Funny but a few of my guesses have turned out to be correct (Inostranka detainees being related to humans, Vicki's involvement in Leila's kidnapping, Greg not being involved) not that I was in any way the only one to think of these ideas by any means.
I didn't think the kidnappers were aliens- thought maybe they were CIA types?
This poor guy runs an awful lot in this show.
Your feed must be a little ahead of mine Tess- didn't know what you meant for a second!
LOL, SG. I'm really liking Jason Ritter in this. I feel sorry for the 'poor guy' too.
Sounds good, Swan - I'll have to check it out. I think I have Myst 5 or something, too.
If not aliens, then would you guess experiments of science? These 'people' have been hidden for over 60 years (they live longer than we do) and they just want to be freed, right?
I'm sure area 51 is involved, LOL
JT
I guess sit could be CIA that kidnapped Leila. Maybe impatient
aliens.
JT -- I think it's a faction within the government/CIA that kidnapped Leila and her sister, killed Val, and killed Greg.
I also think that Michael Buchanan is one of Sophia's "people" or a sympathizer, and that's why he was forced to hijack Avias 514.
And this is a wild guess, but I wonder if Simon Lee is also one of Sophia's "people" (would have been a child when their ship crashed). I think he is Thomas and Sophia's son!
Simon's an alien. Cool I like it. I like his character.
Bwahahaha! And just as I posted that comment about Simon...look what they show us.
OK, Simon called Thomas brother so maybe not Thomas' son.
I thought it was clear from Simon's conversation with Sophia last week that he was in cahoots with her.
Hydra Island style pile-o-dead-bodies.
:(
Another case of "who killed the survivors of the plane crash?" Takes me right back to Ajira.
Well, that's an impatient alien.
Yep, I thought of Ajira right from the beginning of this episode. The hour went really fast, similar to watching Lost. I like this show. I need to look online more between episodes and get caught up on that. I don't even have their names all figured out yet and that makes it hard for me to talk about it here.
Mel, if you start URU let me know if you need any help. I think you've got my e-mail.
Thanks, Swan - will do!
I'm liking this show, too. I don't know if I'm 100% hooked yet, but I'm getting there.
I don't see how killing lots of people is going to help the- what shall we call them?
OK, Melissa. :)
ObFuSc8 said...
"I think it's a faction within the government/CIA that kidnapped Leila and her sister, killed Val, and killed Greg."
It seems like we'll get deeper layers than just the good guys vs. the bad guys with this show, similar to V and Lost, in the fact that some of each faction will have different ideas of what is moral or the right thing to do. We'll get complexities of the human condition (and almost human, LOL). The story telling technique of flashing around in time is to keep us guessing.
I'm loving Hawaii 5-0.. the banter between the two main characters is so great and DDK does a great job in this, too. Just to see Hawaii again on a regular basis soothes my soul, LOL.
I've been calling them "Inostrankans" which is a bit long. I can't remember which blog it was but back when in August when I was checking out The Event someone had said Inostranka means strange foreigner or alien in Russian. I also read it was feminine.
I also heard that the backwards E in math means "there exist" or they exist.
I don't know if any of that is significant.
Black Swan- I like 5-0 too. We actually get to see a lot of Hawaii in it- with name tags no less! DDK is great- he is on Letterman tonight looks like.
Hmm, a name. They aren't all at Inostranka- so that may not be quite right. Maybe the Forty-Fouriegners, 44's for short.
If Thomas was going to kill everyone on the plane anyway, and he controlled its disappearance, why didn't he just let the fighters shoot it down?
He showed that he didn't care what Sophia thinks in killing them, and it would have kept the evidence of 44's at large secret still.
Watching now and playing catch-up:
Thanks, BS! And I knew Samantha and Leila were both his daughters.
Electromagnetic radiation! Aliens that look like us that have an agenda ("V" anyone?)!
Now why would they be setting up Sean as a murderer? Would "they" be the CIA or aliens integrated in our society?
I knew Simon was an alien infiltrator!!! Fake vein for the blood test was cool. Also seems like there are factions within the aliens...the good guys and the others! LOL
Don't know why the passengers were all killed. They would have made great hostages!
Definitely need a cute name for the 97 and the rest of them! Maybe the 99%ers...for the 99% of our DNA they have?
Truthseeker5314 has posted some dossier photos from the Secret Prison.
JT -- I think the posts you read were at the NBC Event boards.
The root "иностран" (Inostran) literally translates to foreign in Russian. I think Inostransi/Inostrantsev are plural forms meaning foreigners. Inostranets is the singular masculine form. But there are so many forms of Russian nouns (depending on how they are used in a sentence) that I can't be sure if Inostranka is simply the female form of the noun, or has other significance.
∃and ∃! are both mathematical logic symbols where
- ∃ means there exists/ there is/ there are
- ∃! means there exists exactly one (specifies uniqueness)
JT, maven -- what to should call Sophia's people is a good question.
I don't want to be overly picky, but I don't see Sophia's people as "aliens".
The word "alien" can mean any of the following:
-anyone who does not belong in the environment in which they are found
-a person who comes from a foreign country; someone who does not owe allegiance to your country
-a form of life assumed to exist outside the Earth or its atmosphere
But too often, especially when there is even a hint of sci-fi or conspiracy theory, the word "alien" causes people to jump to the conclusion of extraterrestrial beings.
For this show, for The Event this is far too simplistic an interpretation and overlooks the key fact that Sophia's people are closely related to humans.
(Continued in my next post.)
I think the writers chose the word "Inostranka" / foreigner carefully. If they had wanted to use "alien" or "stranger" there are other Russian words they could have used.
This is why, last week, I was talking about them being "like us, but also not like us, different".
Remember the point I made about POTUS (discussing the Inostranka detainees) saying, "This is about HUMAN rights. Now these people may not be AMERICANS, but we are."
Building on this, in tonight's Ep, from flashback convo b/n POTUS, Sterling, VP & Simon Lee from tonight's Ep we learn that while these survivors may look like us there are differences:
1. Small variations in their circulatory systems and blood composition
2. They age MUCH more slowly
3. DNA variation from the human genome of slightly less than 1%
There is really only one conclusion: Sophia's people are either a "new" subspecies of Homo sapiens, or more likely a "new" species within the genus Homo. I put "new" in quotes because in this context I mean "new to us" (who knows how long whatever species Sophia's people represent has existed.)
Scientifically/taxanomically Homo inostrantsi or Homo alius (alius=other) are possibilities. Unfortunately neither of these is shorter than anything we're using now.
So how could a separate species so like out own exist? More in my next post.
How could a separate species so like our own have come to exist?
In tonight's Ep, Simon Lee brings up the possibility of "a common ancestor or even a parallel evolutionary process." However "slightly less than 1%" genetic variation from the human genome is a key point, since that COULD NOT have happened without some common ancestor. What I am saying is that even if life happened to evolve elsewhere in our universe, and even if it happened to be humanoid, there would be significant differences and certainly more than 1% difference in DNA variation.
So at some point, one of our evolutionary ancestors had to be separated from us (humans) and then evolve separately, but still under similar evolutionary pressures to humans. This separation could have occurred as "far back" as one of the Homo sapiens "cousins" (H. heidelbergensis or H. erectus for example), or as "recently" as a early modern humans (or a subspecies) within the last 20,000 years (or even our future). But the stated DNA differences of just less than 1% make it more likely that this separation was recent.
How would this separation have occurred?
1. Some place on Earth, possibly within the Earth itself. (If that's the case, the environment would have to be very similar not to have brought about more significant evolutionary changes)
2. Off of the Earth -- but this would mean a planet/moon that again provided environmental pressures similar to the Earth. (It would also probably mean that a truly alien life form took these ancestor off of Earth.)
3. A parallel universe or ALT-verse (there are a couple different possibilities here)
4. The future (this may overlap with #3)
Since genetic mutations happen at a predictable rate, comparing the mutations in the mtDNA of Sophia's people to the human genome should give an indication of how long ago the common ancestor existed. If Sophia's people came from the future (ours or an ALTverse) I'd expect to find a higher incidence of mutations than expected.
And just as an FYI -- The example Sterling gives about chimpanzee/human DNA is somewhat inaccurate.
Sterling: A chimpanzee's DNA differs from ours by 2%, for example.
The difference between the human and chimpanzee genomes is around 1.6-2% when the comparison is restricted ONLY to a particular type of difference (SNP's). But if you includecude insertions and deletions the differenece is closer to 5%.
Good morning
Thanks for the link maven. I try to check Truth Seeker off and on during the day.
I wonder if that site will/is giving us any useful information?
Good thoughts all.
I've managed to download and watch in record time, the downloading being the record not the watching :-)
ObFuSc8 - I'm with theory number 4, they came back from the future to try and prevent "The Event".
Hopefully it is a little more involved than that, but that's my working theory so far.
I also think that a faction in the government already knows about the Inostrankans / 44's being at large and have either teamed up with them already or are already working against them.
I was sure that they would have kidnapped all the people on the plane and held them as hostages so I'm a little confused by the dead bodies.
Ob 8- don't know if we should get TOO scientifically accurate with the show- unless they are writing it that way. But about evolution- maybe the rate of mutation would be slower in a population that ages more slowly than us and perhaps reproduces less?
Not sure what you meant about reading board posts-the Simon conversation with Sophia in the pilot? No, that idea was from the show, I haven't read posts yet. Just looked again- and the way they talk about presidents not helping them and Simon reasoning with "our people"- it's clear they are "the same". Interesting that Simon wants to "warn them". I thought he meant warn his people on the outside- but now it seems like he means the warn rest of us.
What do you think Zort- does 44's flow trippingly off the tongue? :)
The outside group, the sleeper cell, the 44ers (where'd that number come from btw)? must move around alot or someone would notice they don't age normally. I'm surprised no one has noticed Simon hasn't changed much in ten years. It doesn't surprise me that the people are all dead (if they truly are) Thomas wanted to fight from the begininhg. I think that's why Sophia was surprised that they saved them.
Tess- probably 10 years wouldn't be too long? But yes, someone would notice over 60 years time for sure that they didn't age.
44- I was thinking of the year they appeared (Forty Foureigners- OK, it's a stretch!)
Was just comparing Sean saving Vicki to Sean meeting Leila by teaching her to swim in the pool.
Maybe something fishy (!) there-she meets him while he is possibly "hacking" things at MIT? More to Leila than we know- not an accident her being helpless in the pool?
Thanks for the science lesson on mutations, etc., ObFuSc8. I was wondering how they can be so like us yet not like us. Coming from another planet seems a little out there for me. Did we ever get a good look at their "spaceship" that crashed? I like the idea that you have, Zort...coming from the future to warn us about something. Especially since they seem to know wormhole/time and place transportation (with the plane) technology.
I also feel that there are some factions among the 44ers. Some like Thomas don't want to help us and some like Sophia/Simon want to.
JT
Maybe not ten years, if you're around him on a daily basis I guess. :)
Oh ok 1944 I get it now. :)
Loved that episode and the comments thoughts from you guys. ObFuSc8, always gets me thinking after reading your comprehensive thoughts.
I am hooked. No question.
Did anyone find it funny that it seemed like Sean ran around in the desert for hours- and in the end you could see the plane from the road?
That made me smile a bit- I know he had no idea where anything was, but still.
Just Thinking said...
I can't remember which blog it was but back when in August when I was checking out The Event someone had said Inostranka means strange foreigner or alien in Russian. I also read it was feminine.
I also heard that the backwards E in math means "there exist" or they exist.
JT -- Sorry, I was responding to this comment when I mentioned those board posts. I was referring to the fan discussion board on the NBC site (not anything the writers/producers posted) but I've seen the same comments about ∃ and Inostranka a bunch of places.
No worries Ob 8- but that wasn't me, that was Tess's comments.
I'm not criticizing your analysis by the way- I just think you are probably smarter than the writers. Sometimes you can spend six years thinking up a great scientific explanation for a power source, and then have the writers call it a magic "light".
One other thought- I wish Event had a great dark humor character like Ben-got any milk-Linus. Doesn't do to take your show too seriously all the time.
Just Thinking said...
But about evolution- maybe the rate of mutation would be slower in a population that ages more slowly than us and perhaps reproduces less?
Mutation rate in evolutionary biology/genetics refers to a population of organisms over time, not any single organism. But you're right JT, we can only speculate what would happen with Sophia's people since they age so slowly and we have a very limited population size to assess. It would be easiest for the writers to not bring this up at all, or just have a character state that this type of comparison has been inconclusive.
Hahaha, JT, so sorry attributing Tess's comments to you.
Thanks for thinking I'm might be smarter than the writers, I rather doubt that I am. I'm just trying to follow the bread crumbs they're leaving for us.
I totally agree that The Event needs humor, dark or otherwise whether it's Linus-style humor, or Miles/Hurley/Charlie provided levity.
Ob 8- I was thinking of the whole of Sophia's species and how it would evolve after it broke off from our common ancestor-that as not being comparable to our evolution perhaps.
Anyway- all is speculation.
ChrisL, maven, zort, JT -- thank you all for your gracious comments.
Zort, maven -- I'm hoping for a some type of combo future/parallel universe tie in too. Just having Sophia's ppl come from the future may be a little bit too much like The 4400.
Here are some screencaps of the 44's crash site.
This first one really looks more like a crash crater to me than their aircraft. Crash Crater
You can make out small pieces of wreckage in these, but not much:
Wreckage 1
Wreckage 2
Wreckage 3
Thanks for those pics of the wreckage, Ob. I seemed to feel that we really couldn't tell what made that crater...the parts strewn around seems like any plane wreckage. Nothing other worldly stands out to me. They landed in earthly clothes, they have "normal" names, they speak English. Nothing "alien" about them.
Thanks for posting the links to those, I didn't include any on the main page, apart from the one of Sohpia, because there was nothing out of the ordinary.
As you say Maven nothing odd or out of place, apart from the fact that there is a bunch of people from a crash in the middle of Alaska.
Actually looking at the pics of Sophia I think they are practically the same, which is quite a coincidence.
I enhanced the one on this site so it is lighter, but no hidden detail was revealed.
Sorry, lots of thoughts this morning, but if they are from the future or a parallel universe, and they purposfully came to visit then I would assume that they wouldn't bring back any future technology so they didn't pollute us with anything that would materially affect the future.
I assume that they are capable of building the technology they need or possibly it is some sort of mental power that needs lots of them to harness.
I'm hoping for something along the lines of your theory Zort. I'd much rather the sci fi aspect of the story be about time travel or a parallel univrses than aliens. I seen alot of people on boards suggesting that before the show started and thought that was too obvious and that they wouldn't go that direction. I still don't think they have. I'm not sure what the 44/97ers are yet but I don't think they're "aliens".
uggg universes
We still don't know if the Event is something that needs to be stopped or something that they need to ensure happens right?
I gathered that maybe the Inostrankan crash survivors may be divided on that issue. . .
Interesting. . .creepy that they saved them all and then killed them anyway.
Interesting worded blog post by Nick Wauters.
Here
I think Nick Wauters was reading the sites discussing The Event...he just tweeted this:
Thx everyone for all your support, messages/feedback. I promise you we delve deeper into each character in upcoming episodes. #theevent
Ob, thanks for bringing the science to the discussion. You really broke down and organized a lot of the same thoughts I had about the genetic difference mentioned.
I think it's key to understanding who these folks are.
Based on pretty much nothing at all, I believe the Event (if it really will turn out to be a singular Event rather than multiples) is something that caused a split in the Universe, creating...2 timelines? 2 Universes? 2 Destinies? Whatever you want to call it. And the Inostrankans are humans who developed slighly differently from us in their own Destiny. Or MAYBE, *our* world (the TV viewers) is where the Inostrankans are from - they are US.
Some of the many puzzles:
When they revealed the Inostrankans in 1944 immediately after the 'crash', did they seem to be wearing 1940's era clothing? If they came from elsewhere, were they 'planning' to arrive in the 1940's and dressed appropriately? Or what?
And if their arrival in 1944 was planned, why did some of them die and get injured in the crash?
Cosmically Yours
Oh, and why kill the plane passengers after they land? Why not just crash their plane after moving it to Arizona? Or let the fighter jets shoot it down? Or transmogrify the plane into someplace almost as hot as Arizona, like the Sun?
I think those bodies in the desert are not the real passengers, and they're not really dead (yet).
I like the idea of them somehow becoming the Inostrankans. Just trying to get back home.
KI
i'm not sure the plane passengers are dead either, biut if they are it may be to send a message that they are tired of waiting for whatever it is they're waiting for and are willing to kill for it. Thomas wanted to fight from the begining. You'd think he'd realize though that the government would try to cover it up.
Maybe it's just the governments attention he's try to get and not the rest of the world, yet.
KI-"almost as hot as Arizona"-lol. Feel bad for you guys- but our fall "hot" is 75 degrees with changing leaves.
I don't get the strategy of what they did with the plane/passengers. I don't see how tipping their hand about their capabilities and making he government totally against them- even the president-is helpful.
Seems like wasting an advantage-they could have announced themselves in a way that was more useful to their goal- and I assume it is not just to freak out the government.
One would think that this faction of the 44ers would want to use the passengers as hostages to get the release of the 97 Inostrankans.
Zort: Thanks so much for the artwork for mugs!!! Hopefully, Lisa is feeling well enough to print them up for us. Lisa?
Vistaprint.com will do 1 mug for $9.99.
Thanks Zort for the mug image. You know I have to have one to go with my Lost ARG one. :)
That vistaprint.com price is for one side of mug printing. If you want the "wraparound" it's a bit more expensive ($14.99).
Glad you like it, I had a moment free, which is amazing at the moment.
Maybe they aren't dead - maybe they've been converted into Inostrankans and since the circulatory systems are different, when you take the pulse of an Inostrankan, they appear dead at the normal human pulse points. After all, the CIA cutie had to have a fake vein and they made a point about the circulatory system being different.
OR. . .maybe the plane was filled with Inostrankans to begin with. . .
I thought they faked the vein to give a "human" blood sample, as they made the point about the DNA being different.
Well, yes, but they also mentioned that the circulatory system was different. But it's always good cheesy fun to have someone you think is dead sit up. . .especially in October.
ha ha, K, The Event isn't going to wait 7 years for the zombie season! Going to get this out of the way first.
Well, I was thinking vampires what with the blood being different and all, but zombies work too I guess. ;)
Won't be able to watch the epi tonight! Probably not until Wed. :( Will be tough to stay spoiler-free. Don't know if I can watch it on a small tv in the hotel room!
Will miss you Maven.
@K- yes, maybe we will be able to tell the 44''s apart easily by a different pulse- or- Dr. Who style- two hearts!
I might not get to watch the episode until Wednesday either, but for a different reason.
Work really gets in the way of life sometimes !
So tonight I leave you in the capable hands of Melissa Lossa for your next episode discussion post.
Hey peeps!
I wanted to get back here to post earlier, and probably shouldn't have spent what free time I had on Saturday thinking about those LOST stamp collage clues.
Zort, Maven -- we will miss you both until Wednesday.
K -- interesting thought about differences in pulse points between between humans & Inostrankans. The thing is, Simon Lee said "they were only able to detect small changes in their circulatory systems" and differences in pulse points would actually be a huge change.
I'm not bringing this up to be overly critical, but because I think the absence of pulse may be a clue to something else.
More in the next comment.
Thinking about that, what Thomas/Simon's convo and screencaps from the scenes at the end of Ep2 makes me wonder if those passengers are actually dead.
------------------------------------------
Thomas:I decided that since we had the passengers, we might as well use them. The plane's in Arizona. Here are the coordinates. You'll understand when you find it.
Simon:What does that mean?
As JT and TKI have already asked, why would Thomas/free Inostrankans save the Avias 514 passengers only to kill them a few minutes later?
-----------------------------------------
Now take a look at screencaps of the "dead" Avias passengers from the end of Ep2.
Many of the passengers look as if they were running, and a few have their arms around the person next to them.
But what really strikes me as odd is that there is nothing to indicate how the passengers were killed -- no gunshot wounds, burns, arcing, etc.
It's possible that Thomas & co. had initially planned to hold the passengers to use as a trade, but that something unforeseen happened, but I don't think that's the case.
Thomas knew that once they "took the plane" they would not only reveal that Free Inostrankans did indeed exist, but that they have tech capabilities far beyond those of humans.
I wonder if the Avias passengers were somehow put in a state like suspended animation. I'm not sure how that would allow Thomas to "use them", unless the intent is to revive the Avias passengers in exchange for releasing the Inostrankan detainees.
I guess there are methods that could have killed those passengers that wouldn't leave any outward signs -- like using a focused EMP to cause fatal arrythmias. That would be a much more menacing message -- that the Free Inostrankans could kill quickly, efficiently, from a distance and without leaving much evidence. I just don't think that will be the way the writers take things. And I don't think Thomas is ready to blatantly disregard Sophia's wishes, yet.
Either way, it seems Simon will know what's been done to the passengers when he sees them, so I think we'll find out today.
I thought I posted this in the discussion of Ep1, but looking back I think blogger ate those comments.
Here's a screencap of the President on TV From Ep1.
The crawling text at the bottom of the screen mentions, "more cases of an unidentified strain of influenza."
Sean Walker's bio on the NBC site mentions he's a big Stephen King fan and has read The Stand 7 times. The Stand was the book Sean was reading on the beach in Antigua too.
I think we will probably be seeing an engineered strain of Influenza come into play within the next few episodes. At this point I'm thinking the Inostrankans will help to create a vaccine, but it's possible that a faction among them actually engineered the strain of Influenza.
-------------------------------------------------------
Here's another screencap from Ep1 of the people that killed Val Buchanan/kidnapped Samantha & Michael etc.
It's just the backs of their heads, but is a woman with brown hair and a man. The woman seems to tall to be the Agent that came to get Sean in Yuma, and couldn't be Vicki since she was in Antigua at that point.
Has anyone found screencaps of those peoples faces, maybe in reflections in the windows?
I'm also curious to see what "resources" Thomas was referring to. Whether he meant tech resources, being able to more efficiently harness solar power for example. That could also explain why the plane went to Yuma (sunniest place in the US). Or it could be possible that the Inostrankans can use their collective psychic energy.
New post for episode 3!
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