The wars are raging in the Lost fan world about whether the radio broadcast heard by Boone seconds before he fell says, “Hello/no we’re the survivors of Oceanic flight 815!” or “There were no survivors of Oceanic flight 815.”

When I originally watched the episode I thought it was the latter, but I read on the internet that it was the former. So I ripped the audio into Cool Edit and played around with it to attempt to make it understandable. I’m not the only one to do this, but previous versions have been accused of being “doctored”, so here’s a completely undoctored copy with a few frequency boosts to make it more audible. To me, it sounds like, “There were no survivors of Oceanic flight 815″ as the captions stated in the first place.

Here’s the audio: nosurvivors.mp3 (68kb).

Make your own decisions.

Update:
Interestingly, on the Official ABC Lost site in the “Video Gallery” (top left, under the menu) there is a recap for episode 1×19 “Deus Ex Machina” which includes the scene with Boone on the radio. Interestingly, the voice is obviously a completely different recording of the transmission to the one broadcast in the episode. This time it’s unmistakable. The voice says, “No, we’re the survivors of flight 815.”.

Here’s the audio: wearethesurvivors.mp3 (195kb).

Which one was intended for us to hear is unclear, as is whether the closed captioning on the episode, which reportedly said, “There were no survivors of Oceanic flight 815″, is right or wrong.

Possibly…
This could mean that there are another group of survivors on the island. Perhaps people from the tail section of the plane, who have also found a radio, and happened to be using it to broadcast on the exact frequency that the radio in the plane was tuned to at the exact time Boone was in the plane, are elsewhere on the island. It seems unlikely, but it sounds more plausible than some kind of alternate/parallel dimension theory.

Plus it’s good news for Rose. “My husband’s not dead…”

But as ever, we’re kept guessing. Which is it? Any ideas?

27 April 2005
“Lost: The Journey” (8/7c)

ABC invites new and avid “Lost” viewers to take a fresh look at one of this season’s most talked about shows. “Lost: The Journey” promises to explore the series in a way that will bring new viewers up to date — but which current viewers will also find illuminating. From the back stories of some of the most interesting characters on television to the mysteries of the island, “Lost: The Journey” will provide an insightful glimpse at the lives of some of the survivors of the doomed Oceanic Airlines flight 815. Narrated in a linear fashion and culminating from the pieces of the back stories told over multiple episodes in the series, “Lost: The Journey” focuses on the flashbacks of a core of characters, illustrating who they were and what they were doing before the crash. In addition, the island itself will be explored - culled from events that have taken place - which may reveal some of its secrets.

It’s not clear whether the episode contains any new mysteries or answers any existing questions, but hopefully it will provide some insight into what’s actually going on in this crazy place. We still know so very little about what’s going on on this island, or why anyone is there….

Update:
There’s a great article over at STLToday.com which explains more about what the 1 hour Lost special is going to tell us.

Lost? Join the club.

ABC’s “Lost,” one of the biggest hits of the current TV season, is also one of the most addictive. But at this point, if you actually claim to know what’s going on, you must be J.J. Abrams or Damon Lindelof, who created the thriller and swear they have its mythology firmly mapped out in their minds.

Our minds, meanwhile, are full of questions.

Is Boone really dead? Should we worry about Claire’s baby? What’s up with those mysterious, deadly lottery numbers? Will someone else really die in the season finale, and if so, who?

ABC won’t answer those questions in Wednesday night’s special, “Lost: The Journey” (7 p.m. on Channel 30). Still, the hour-long recap is, for once, not just a cheap way to stretch out a hit show. This time, it’s a public service.

Kate is the beautiful ‘amazon’ woman, played by Evangeline Lilly. At home in the jungle setting of the show, Evangline “has lived under a grass hut in the jungles of the Philippines with a missionary group” before landing her role as Kate. Outside of the show Evangline is fluent in French and loves ice skating, canoeing, kayaking, snowboarding and rock climbing.

On the show, Kate seems to be a very caring person, although flashbacks have revealed she has an unpleasant past as a bank robbing murderer. She also claims to have ‘killed the man I loved’, but we don’t know who that is, or how it happened. We do know that the model plane she so badly wanted from the mashall’s case has some kind of significance, as she robbed a bank to get it. Incidentally, the plane was in safety deposit box 815 in the bank, which is the same as the flight number (Oceanic 815) and is present in the sequence of mystery numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. What this means, we dont yet know.

Here are some more pictures of Evangeline Lilly as Kate on Lost:

There’s a great article on The LA Times, detailing Paul Brownfield’s trip to the set of ‘Lost’ where he dines with the cast on the set, obstructs Evangeline Lilly’s path in the food queue, and enjoy’s the stereotypical Hawaiian surfer lifestyle. The jungle isn’t as far from civilisation as it seems on the show. A very interesting read.

Then, like a mirage out of the foliage, I came upon a gravel clearing and a row of huge trucks. The second thing I saw was the cast of Lost. The actors were walking single file, at spaced intervals, to their trailers, led by the show’s star, Matthew Fox, who plays Jack, a heroic doctor with an unresolved relationship with his alcoholic doctor father.

In the buffet line, the radiant Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate, bumped into me and apologized; briefly, in the 2½ seconds it took to remember she’s an actress, I fell in love. Everybody seemed congenial. Finally, they all took a van to the location, maybe 800 meters from the base camp. I walked.

In the scene they were shooting, Jack ran at another cast member, screaming the profanity-laced question, “Where … were you, you … ?” and tackled him on the beach, at which point Jack was tackled by several other cast members. They did the scene; I thought it went well. Then they did the scene again. Because this is television, they did it still again. Equipment came and went. Between takes, somebody spritzed Fox’s face with a spray bottle. He paced, away from the others, and I admired his focus.

This sounds like the scene where Jack tackles Locke over his involvement in Boone’s death and demands to know what they were doing in the jungle. Locke wants to keep what he knows a secret, and thus sparks the conflict between Locke and Jack, which, it has been said, is a major part of the story for of the remainder of the season.

John Locke, mysteriously able to walk after the plane crash, but not before, is possibly the most interesting of all the characters on the show. Apparently leading a far from perfect life before the crash, working for a Box Company (Hurley’s?), paying to talk to his companion ‘Helen’ over the phone, and restricted to a wheelchair for the past 4 years.

Locke seemed tuned into the island ever since the early episode where he “saw into the eye of the island, and it was beautiful.” While we don’t know what the ‘eye of the island’ means, Locke seems to believe the island is telling him what to do.

After a preminition in the jungle Locke and Boone head off on an expedition which culminates in Boone being fatally injured.

Locke drops a dying Boone back at camp and then disappears… we later see him crying into the ‘hatch’ he’s kept a secret for so long, “Why are you doing this?!”. He hits the top of the hatch 4 times, and the light comes on….

What’s inside the hatch? Why does hitting it 4 times affect it? Are the numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) a combination of some kind? Locke also hits the roof of his car 4 times when he’s upset in episode 1×19, ‘Deus Ex Machina’. Does this mean anything?

“The Philosopher of Freedom.”

“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.” - John Locke

Digital Spy reports that the ABC Series ‘Lost’ will begin airing in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 from ‘early August’.

Apparently the show was supposed to air in January, but was postponsed due to the success of another ABC show, “Desperate Housewives“.

The terrestrial network plans to launch a full on marketting campaign to ensure that by August, “Everyone will know about it.”

There is endless speculation over the meaning behind the sequence of numbers that Hurley used to win the lottery in episode 1×18 ‘Numbers’. The numbers also appeared at the end of episode 1×19, ‘Deus Ex Machina’, on the outside of the ‘hatch’ that Locke and Boone discovered in the jungle.

Since the broadcast of these episodes, fans of the series have analysed the entire show for clues as to what the numbers mean and what significance they have with each of the characters on the island. A website with a list of every occurence of the numbers so far shows some interesting (and some not so interesting) connections involving these numbers.

There are numerous theories on messages boards across the internet where fans are examining the numbers and looking for patterns. There is even a website and discussion board dedicated to the topic at www.4815162342.com but so far no one knows exactly what they mean…. aside from 42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything.

We know that the numbers seem to have some significance to the past lives of the survivors. The question is how.. and why?