LOST Retrospective – Season 1: Plane Crash

"This show is about people who are metaphorically lost in their lives, who get on an airplane, and crash on an island, and become physically lost on the planet Earth. And once they are able to metaphorically find themselves in their lives again, they will be able to physically find themselves in the world again." 

– Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost

 

When I think about the first season of Lost, I often think of it as a season of superlatives. It has the best pilot episode in TV history. It's the best debut season of any show in TV history. It is, at least in my estimation, the single best season of television ever produced. Although I hated much of what the series eventually became, it's on the foundational strength of its first season that I still consider Lost my favorite TV show of all time.

I had watched the first season of Lost in full three times: once by myself, twice with friends. On September 22, 2024, twenty years to the day since the original series premiere, I started watching it for the fourth time.

 

It is still the best season of television ever produced.

 

 

Episode Tier List

S-tier

• Pilot
• Walkabout
• White Rabbit
• Deus Ex Machina
• Exodus

 

A-tier

• Tabula Rasa
• House of the Rising Sun
• The Moth
• Confidence Man
• Solitary
• Raised by Another
• All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
• Special
• Outlaws
• ...In Translation
• Numbers
• Do No Harm
• The Greater Good

 

B-tier

• Whatever the Case May Be
• Hearts and Minds
• Homecoming
• Born to Run 

 

Notes

* In addition to the above superlatives, I'll also point to "Walkabout," the first John Locke episode, as the single greatest episode of TV ever made, with its last five minutes the greatest scene in TV history, but those are competitive categories.

 

* In terms of story continuity, Season 1 is fairly tight and I could almost believe that it was planned out from the start, despite being aware of how in real life most of the long-term mysteries and mythology weren't introduced until after ABC picked up the show for a full season and the writers had to come up with something to fill another 20 hours. But one thing in this season that's always stuck out to me as a pretty weak retcon is the revelation that Locke was the one who knocked out Sayid and destroyed his transceiver in "The Moth." 

 

LOCKE: The first week after the crash there was a cave in. Jack was trapped. Do you remember that?  

 

SAYID: Of course.  

 

LOCKE: You, Kate and Sawyer went out into the jungle to try and triangulate a signal.  

 

SAYID: Yes.  

 

LOCKE: You were hit from behind—knocked unconscious? When you woke up your transceiver, your equipment was destroyed. That was me.  

 

SAYID: This is one time you'd better not be telling the truth.

 

LOCKE: I did what was in everyone's best interest.

 

SAYID: You ruined my chance to find the source.

 

LOCKE: The source of a distress call that kept saying they're dead, it killed them all, over and over? Is that a place you really want to lead people to?

 

SAYID: Why wait all this time? Why not tell me then?

 

LOCKE: Because back then you wouldn't have engaged in reasonable debate, and nobody else would have. You were all so focused on getting off the Island that you weren't seeing things clearly. 

 

This exchange where Locke makes his confession in "The Greater Good," an otherwise strong episode, feels distractingly weak, like the writer got handed the assignment to work an explanation into his episode for this lingering mystery left over from the beginning of the season and just wanted to get past it as quickly as possible. "It's me, Austin! It was me all along, Austin! I kept it a secret for fourteen episodes but I'm telling you now for no reason!" Earlier in "The Greater Good," Sayid tells Locke that he knows when he's being lied to. Yet Sayid questioned Locke about the incident back in "Confidence Man" and had no clue that Locke was giving him the runaround. Not that Sayid should be a superhuman lie detector (he's not Emma Swan after all), but the discrepancy is noticeable enough to make this scene feel half-assed and unplanned. It smacks of the terrible and lazy writing habits the writers would develop in later seasons, either making up completely nonsensical bullshit excuses to avoid answering questions or answering them in the most perfunctory and resentful way possible.

 

* The only other story element in Season 1 that feels similarly desultory is the saga of Kate's stupid toy airplane. "Whatever the Case May Be" has a decently fun on-island story, with Kate, Jack, and Sawyer competing with one another to obtain the U.S. Marshal's Halliburton case and find a way to open it, but it's made one of the weaker episodes of the season by its pointless flashback story, which is completely wasted on building up the mystery of this pointless toy plane. The payoff, such as it is, comes in "Born to Run," where we learn that Kate cares so much about the plane because it's a keepsake of her childhood friend who was later killed due to Kate's thoughtlessness. You can see how that might have seemed like an okay idea at the time, but aside from an awkward scene in the season finale where the Marshal essentially just monologues to the camera for five minutes to explain the convoluted back story of the plane and why it mattered enough to have wasted so much time on it, neither the plane nor Kate's friend is ever seen or mentioned again for the rest of the show. So in retrospect it sticks out like a sore thumb. They had two decent ideas for Kate-centric stories in Season 1, but because Evangeline Lilly was so hot they stretched that second story across two episodes. As a result, "Whatever the Case May Be" and "Born to Run" both ended up feeling weaker than they might otherwise have been. Lose the lame bank robbery flashback.

 

* "White Rabbit" is my second favorite episode of the season after "Walkabout"; sometimes I think they're equally good. But it's kind of a bummer hearing Charlie desperately yell "I don't swim! I don't swim!" as he's searching for someone to save the woman drowning right in front of him. In the Season 3 episode "Greatest Hits," Charlie reveals, "I was junior swim champion in Northern England. I can hold my breath for four minutes." The plot of that episode actually hinges on Charlie's swimming ability. Did they just forget about what he said in Season 1? "Greatest Hits" is a great episode but it could have played out nearly the same without explicitly contradicting another great episode. People will try to justify this plot hole by saying that Charlie couldn't save Joanna because he was strung out on heroin at the time so he lied about not knowing how to swim. Um...

 

 

* "Homecoming," the season's second Charlie episode, features a mostly unnecessary flashback. The rematch against Ethan is tense and exciting, but it's somewhat anticlimactic how easily Jack beats him despite getting his ass thrashed last time. This episode would have been better off keeping the deleted scene of Locke stabbing Ethan prior to his fight with Jack, explaining his defeat. Unfortunately, aside from this one promotional still, no footage from this scene has ever been released. 

 

 

* I feel comfortable putting "Hearts and Minds," the season's Boone-centric episode, as a B-tier episode because its on-island story feels undercut by essentially being all a dream/bad trip. Despite the important character development, it ends up feeling like filler because the most exciting things that happened didn't actually happen. I wish they had found a way to write it that felt like less of a cheat. But I still feel a little bad because I think the flashback is great and it has one of the most memorable scene transitions in the entire series. The soundtrack grows more urgent as Shannon and Boone fall into bed together and then all the sound cuts out and it hard-cuts to Boone sitting hunched over, naked and pale, at the bottom of an otherwise black frame, out of focus so you can't even tell what you're looking at at first. Shannon says his name in the dark, then clicks on the lamp and is revealed sitting on the other side of the room fully clothed.

 

SHANNON: When we get back to LA, you should just tell your mom that you rescued me—again, just like you always do. And then we'll just go back.  

 

BOONE: To what?  

 

SHANNON: To what it was.  

 

BOONE: Like it's all up to you.  

 

SHANNON: [contemptuously] Get dressed. 

 

I can't say enough good things about the editing, framing, blocking, and acting in this scene, and how it reveals so much about the characters. You almost don't even need the dialogue, but I've often found myself hearing Boone's hollow "Like it's all up to you," in particular situations, for the last twenty years.

 

Yeah I've had this drug-induced fantasy before.

The Planet That Ate Everyone

Galaxy of Fear #1: Eaten Alive

Author: John Whitman

Medium: Junior novel

Publication date: January 1997

Timeline placement: 0 ABY

 

Back Tagline: A new evil lurks: Star Wars Galaxy of Fear. Terror is everywhere . . .

Interior Tagline: Welcome to the dark side of the galaxy . . .

 

Official Book Description:

Vanished?

D'vouran seems like a normal enough planet. The friendly locals welcome Tash, Zak, and their uncle Hoole with open arms.

But Tash has a bad feeling about this place.

There's a madman running around the streets shouting that people are disappearing. He's saying they've just vanished into thin air.

Tash knows that's impossible. But something is really wrong on D'vouran. Will she find the courage to trust her gut instincts . . . before it's too late?

Brief Synopsis:

Six months after the Battle of Yavin, thirteen-year-old Tash Arranda and her brother, twelve-year-old Zak, are living in the care of their Uncle Hoole, a shapeshifting Shi'ido anthropologist. Natives of Alderaan, Tash and Zak were off-world on a school field trip when the Death Star destroyed their planet, killing their entire family. Their only surviving relative is their aunt's alien husband, who takes them in due to his species' custom of treating all family like immediate family. Aunt Beryl herself never appears in the series. Did she also die on Alderaan? Hoole gives no sign of being broken up over the death of his wife if so. Did she die previously from other causes? Is she still alive somewhere and just wants nothing to do with her remaining family? Is she away on a business trip? Pick your headcanon explanation now, because she won't be mentioned again after this book.

 

Hoole and the Arrandas, along with their droid DV-9, who is just Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, are currently bound for the planet D'vouran aboard Hoole's ship, the Lightrunner. Hoole's work as an anthropologist takes him all around the galaxy; his current mission is to investigate this recently discovered planet that, according to the existing star charts of this region, shouldn't exist.

 

Despite his willingness to take in the children, Uncle Hoole remains a cold and distant figure who never talks about himself or his work. He keeps to himself while thrusting his charges off on DV-9, or "Deevee," an advanced scientific research droid who is in a deep depression about having to give up his career to babysit and tutor a couple of middle-schoolers. Zak, who has become a thrill-seeking daredevil as a trauma response to their parents' death, decides to sneak into Hoole's quarters and find out what he's working on. He is immediately caught, of course, because Hoole is still in his room at the time, but before his uncle can finish reprimanding him, everything is thrown into chaos when the Lightrunner drops out of hyperspace prematurely.

 

On the bridge, Tash had been pretending to pilot the ship at the time of the disaster. Hoole immediately blames her for disrupting the autopilot, even though she hadn't touched any of the controls. More introverted than her brother, Tash has only withdrawn further into herself since the destruction of Alderaan, and doesn't really miss anyone who perished there besides her parents. She was always an outcast among her peers due to her uncanny prescience. Using her leet haxorz skills, she uncovered restricted information about the Jedi Knights on the dark web and now dreams of being trained by one of them in the ways of the Force. Unfortunately, as we all know, there are no Jedi left.

 

Damaged by its premature deceleration, the Lightrunner sets down on D'vouran, where Hoole and the Arrandas are greeted by the ever-smiling Chood, one of the native Enzeen (pictured on the book cover). Chood explains that D'vouran was recently discovered by the Empire when a cargo ship, the Misanthrope, crashed on the planet after similarly being yanked out of hyperspace by an unexpected mass shadow. The sole survivor was the Misanthrope's captain, Kevreb Bebo. Here he comes now, being bodily thrown out of the local cantina.

 

I was genuinely surprised by how kind and compassionate Tash is in this scene. She immediately runs over to this crazy drunk and tries to help him, but he just raves about people disappearing. What a loon! Anyway, Hoole and the Arrandas enter the cantina, where they are immediately accosted by Gank mercenaries in the employ of Smada the Hutt, an old acquaintance of Hoole's. Smada wants wants Hoole to come work for him so he can use Hoole's shapeshifting abilities to assassinate his enemies or something. Hoole says no, but Smada vows that he will employ Hoole one day whether he likes it or not.

 

Fortunately for our heroes, however, also in the cantina are Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO, and they step in and force the Hutt to back down. Tash recognizes Princess Leia because I guess the Force tells her who she is. Everyone treats this like some big scandal even though the Arrandas lived on Alderaan so why wouldn't they recognize their planet's royalty? It turns out that the Millennium Falcon also experienced an unusual departure from hyperspace in the proximity of D'vouran and is currently undergoing repairs. Luke talks to Tash about the Force while C-3PO annoys Deevee.

 

Hoole arranges for Zak and Tash to stay with Chood, this complete stranger they've just met, while he goes about his mysterious work in the middle of the night. Tash is awakened by a mysterious slurping sound, which turns out to be for the best as she finds Whatsamatta the Hutt's goons trying to kidnap her. She kicks the nearest Gank in the balls and runs out of the house with Zak, who is still half asleep. They run into town screaming with the Ganks in hot pursuit, but when the townsfolk turn out to investigate, the kids' attackers are nowhere to be found. 

Tash once again encounters local wildman Bebo, who is wandering around crying about his friend Lonni Anderson vanishing. Chood explains that Bebo is just a crazy old lunatic but Tash takes pity on him and asks him about his friend. She intelligently follows him into the nearby forest, where he shows her a hole in the ground hidden beneath the roots of a tree. Suddenly aware that she's made a huge mistake, Tash tries to leave, only to be pushed into the hole by Bebo. 

They find themselves in the abandoned ruins of an Imperial science laboratory. Bebo explains the true history of the Misanthrope crash, how the crew actually survived only to start vanishing one by one, until only he and Lonni were left here in the lab, the one protected place on the planet. Bebo gives Tash a special pendant he always wears for protection, a miniaturized force field generator developed by the long-gone Imperial scientists. Tash takes it and goes to warn her family, then Smeagol the Hutt's minions appear and shoot Bebo.

 

Back on the surface, Smada makes another attempt at kidnapping the children to force the conspicuously absent Hoole to do his bidding, but all three are captured by Chood and the Enzeen, who are revealed to be essentially giant intelligent fleas that feed off of the planet by sticking their tongues into the ground. D'vouran itself is a living organism, either brought to life or wholly created by the Empire's mad scientists. It presents itself as a paradise world to lure in settlers, then—shhhluuuuuuuurrrrpp—sucks them into the ground and digests them. It now does exactly that to every non-Enzeen on the planet, except for the Arrandas, who are protected by Tash's pendant, and Smada, who is suspended on a hoversled.

 

The Enzeen drag their prisoners back to the Imperial laboratory, where they plan to throw them into a pit called the Heart of D'vouran. But just when all hope seems lost, one of the Enzeen turns on the others, revealing himself to be Uncle Hoole in shapeshifted disguise! Smada falls into the pit due to his own selfishness, and during the battle the pendant falls into the pit as well, clutched in the hand of a screaming Chood. Unable to digest the protective force field, D'vouran gets bad acid reflux and the whole planet starts coming apart.

 

Tash, Zak, Hoole, and Deevee make it back to the Lightrunner, but are unable to take off as the ship is seized by tendrils of molten earth. But suddenly the Millennium Falcon appears in the sky. As the Heroes of Yavin were on their way to their next adventure, Luke had a Force vision of the Arrandas' peril and made Han go back for them. Everyone makes it onto the Falcon, but D'vouran gives chase, following the starship across the system under the propulsion of I guess magic, or something. But eventually D'vouran's heartburn gets so bad that it digests itself and collapses into nothingness.

 

Later, after things have calmed down, the Galaxy of Fear heroes share everything they learned with the Rebels. "Someone is using science to create mutants," Hoole declares, vowing to put a stop to these shenanigans. Tash remembers Smada the Hutt's warning about how little the kids know about their uncle and wonders what he's really up to. But for now, at least this experiment is over, and no one else will ever be Eaten Alive.

 

But the twist is...

Elsewhere in space, a ship is prematurely pulled out of lightspeed by a mysterious planet that doesn't appear on any star charts. Somehow, D'vouran returned.

 

 

the Platonic Boy-Girl Relationship:

Zak Arranda and his sister Tash, who disappears down a hole in the ground halfway through the book.

 

Questionable Uncling:

After Tash narrowly escapes being kidnapped by Smegma the Hutt's goons in the middle of the night and is chased through town while screaming for help only for her attackers to vanish into thin air, Hoole tries to gaslight her into thinking that she was just sleepwalking and it was all a dream.

 

Early 90s Cultural References:

The Internet, IRC chat, Stranger Danger, Goosebumps

 

Memorable Cliffhanger Chapter Ending:

Ch. 3/4:

Something cold and slimy grabs Tash by the neck. It's... a flower necklace.

 

Genuine Scare Alert:

"If you thought your friends and allies on the surface suffered, you were wrong. Their deaths were quick and merciful—most of them suffocated when they were pulled under D'vouran's surface."

 

I remember reading this as a child and finding the idea of being buried alive and suffocated by dirt much more viscerally horrifying than whatever made-up nonsense it was being favorably compared to. Quick and merciful suffocation, sounds great!

 

Title Drop Alert:

"I am going to take you to the Heart of D'vouran. There you will meet a death that makes these other deaths seem like a gift. In the Heart of D'vouran, every last nutrient from your body can be carefully digested. You will be eaten very slowly. Eaten alive."

 

"Aaiiiiii!" the Gank screamed. "It's hurting me! It's hurting me!" His eyes were alive with terror. "I'm being eaten alive!"

 

Yes, it happened twice! 

Cameo Alert:

Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Darth Vader

 

Conclusions:  

Galaxy of Fear was one of the earliest EU series I ever read, along with Jedi Prince, Junior Jedi Knights, and Young Jedi Knights. I didn't find it particularly scary even as a child, but I loved the characters and the interesting new worlds they would visit and the strange creatures they would encounter. I read several Goosebumps books but was never a huge fan—Star Wars and Animorphs were more my jam at the Scholastic Book Fair—but any slim volume with colorful cover art is like a shot of nostalgia. Starting to read Galaxy of Fear again felt like coming home.

I've hyped these books up for years as one of the most underrated series in the EU, but really Eaten Alive is just all right. It's a lot of fun, never boring, and a quick read, but a grown adult reading it for the first time in 2025 probably won't get much out of it. Rereading it for the first time in 25 years is a real trip, but despite one or two (admittedly well-handled) emotional scenes, Eaten Alive isn't really aiming for any meaningful measure of depth or complexity. And that's fine! It's a better written, more interesting Goosebumps, and I'm looking forward to reading more.