Okay I just finished watching all three 2 hour episodes of “the lost room” from the scifi channel, and I am impressed. For those of you who don’t know about the series, the concept revolves around a “lost room” and all the objects from inside the room. Each object does “weird stuff” ranging from the useless (The radio makes you three inches taller if you turn it to the right station), to the dangerous (The pen will microwave anything the tip touches), to the downright weird (the pencil makes a penny appear from thin air if you tap it against a solid surface). There are objects that have undiscovered purposes (the tooth brush, the cigarettes), and certain objects can combine with other objects for different effects (the watch by itself will hard-boil any egg placed inside its band, but if you combine it with the knife, you get telepathy). One of the most powerful objects is the key, which will open any door as a portal into the lost room. From inside the room you can then open the door, and it will take you to any door in the world. A man called Joe Miller, a detective, finds the key on one of the people he arrests, and at first uses it to take short vacations, or watch football live. His daughter Anna Miller, discovers the room, and realizes that things tend to vanish in the room, whenever it “resets” putting the bed sheets back in order, and removing anything from in the room that wasn’t in it to start with. This happens whenever the door closes without the key inside. There is a scuffle with an “object collector” who wants the key and Anna disappears inside the room when it resets. Joe Miller proceeds to go on a hunt for a way to bring his daughter back.

WARNING: Spoilers and theories abound beyond this point.

The objects are all inherently indestructible, meaning the clothes can be used as a form of body armor. In fact Joe Miller has his life saved by the Coat when he is shot from behind with a shotgun. There are approximately 100 objects known to exist, roughly 73 of which appear on the show, 20 of which have their power described or depicted on the show, or on the website, none of which function inside the room. The “event” or “incident” is what caused the objects and the room itself to exhibit these weird tendencies, and occurred on May 4, 1961 at 1:20:45 pm (for the watch and the clock (turns manganese to from solid to gas & vice versa when wound) their hands are frozen at the time of the event). There are many theories expressed on the show about what caused this (god dieing and all the objects are pieces of him, or a fracture of reality), but while I have no idea what caused this, my idea regarding the room and the objects themselves is as follows:

When the event occurred, it took the room and all its contents out of this reality causing any record of them every existing to cease to exist as well, indeed the owners of the motel where the room came from believe the motel has only ever had 9 rooms while the key has a keychain with the words room 10 on it. The occupant of the room at the time of the event returned to his home town, though even his wife forgot his existence. When these objects were removed from reality, the door of the room still had the property to take the person who opened it anywhere in the world. The occupant left the room, and somewhere along the way to the mental institution where he ended up, lost the key to room 10. The motel owners found the key and ended up in room 10, where they removed some objects and realized they had special powers. Because the objects don’t work in the room, I think the object’s powers were the side effect of trying to fit a metaphysical round peg of the object, in the square hole of our universe. The objects were so far removed from this universe that they don’t belong here anymore, and there presence here deforms reality slightly, causing the powers exhibited by the objects. Theoretically, if you found all the objects and returned them to the motel room, it would revert the motel room back into reality, possibly at the point it left, in 1961. The only thing that would prevent this from happening is the occupant. The occupant himself is an object, the only sentient one. Being an object makes him indestructible, however he asked Joe to kill him inside the room, where apparently the objects are not indestructible. This apparently turned Joe into an object (law of conservation of objects), and allowed him to “survive” the reset of the room and return his daughter to reality.

Possibilities for a series: as it is the show is only a three part miniseries. However there is a strong possibility for a series of episodes of the lost room. The most obvious is at the very end of the 3^rd episode, when Joe throws the key into the room, shut the door, and opens it again as a normal door. Immediately after he walks away however, the camera zooms in on the door which opens to allow the camera to zoom in on the key on the floor. This is classic Hollywood “is-there-going-to-be-a-sequel?” fodder that shows up in a lot of movies, so this doesn’t prove much. However there is a character who declares himself to be a prophet of the objects as of just before the end of the series, so that plotline is probably going somewhere. Also of note is that the series never really explains what caused the Event, making it easy to have a main mystery, if they ever make a TV series, or another miniseries.

I think that’s enough about that.

Zettageek