Thursday, July 3, 2008

"Captain Gault or Captain Gutless?"

So what gives with Captain Wishy-Washy?
Someone posted this in the Doc Ray theory section of Lostpedia, which is pretty funny: "Ray mentions that the captain is "not a man to cross" shortly after we see the cut on his face...You know, back when the captain was still presented as an unseen character who was supposedly really intimidating, instead of when we actually met him and discovered that he's a trembling wuss who can't stand up to Keamy."

This is exactly what I was thinking after the deadly confrontation between Gault and Keamy on the deck. It seemed like a big difference from the ominous "Don't trust the captain" persona that we were led to worry about previously. What the heck happened to Captain No-Nonsense before that night on deck? One episode he's barking orders at the deckhands to let the crazy people go ahead and kill themselves, and later he's kowtowing to Keamy. Most likely we'll never know, unless they give someone a flashback of which Gault happens to be a part. I find this seeming inconsistency rather odd, but maybe everyone was just as terrified of "Mr. Keamy" as Frank was, regardless of their station on the ship. Or, was Gault beginning to catch the Freaky Freighter Fever as well?

6 comments:

memphish said...

I think Keamy not Gault was the true leader of this expedition. While there was the double system with the keys for protecting The Secondary Protocol that required Gault, I would not have been surprised to see the end of a successful mission of the Kahana being everyone on board dead and Keamy and Ben in a Zodiac hooking up with a 2nd Widmore ship or heading into Fiji.

As for the don't trust the Captain, you have to remember that this probably came from Michael, not the sharpest tack out there. After all he's already made one deal with the Others and now he's working for Ben again. I think he just made a bad guess about who was really running things around there.

The other thing that stands out to me about our brief time with Gault is his claim to have the Black Box of 815. I'm not sure if this proves Widmore or Ben staged the freckage, but really, what good is a FDR going to do you without the equipment to listen to it or recover data from it. I think it was just part of Widmore's cover story for Gault and shows that Gault was NOT trusted with the whole truth by those who hired him.

I also find it odd that everyone on the Kahana seemed to know that Widmore was their boss. Why hire Abaddon to put together a team but also tell them your name? Find815 referenced a shell company of heritage site raiders I think. It seems like this would have been the case with this mission as well, but I guess if the end game is everyone dies, it's a precaution you don't really have to take.

Capcom said...

LOL on what you said about Mike! :-D I'd have to agree.

It's possible that the entire voyage was a one way trip, and all were expendable to the employer and didn't know it. Could be that even Naomi was not expected to survive the trip, and maybe Wid or Abaddon didn't even care, as long as the mission -- whatever that was ultimately -- got accomplished.

That whole blackbox thing is weird to me, and seemed like a waste of time. Even if they were "supposed" to take it back for reading, or to hide it from the accident investigaters, or it was a fake with the purpose of fooling someone, it's pretty much a non-issue as far as I can see now. What was the point?

Abaddon could just be the guy in charge of the mission personnel hiring for Wid, but he could still be someone who was a plant to infiltrate Wid's dirty work. ???

lost2010 said...

I'm still not sure Naomi and her team had the same mission as Keamy's group. Naomi said all that about not being able to protect them alone. If she and Keamy are playing for the same team, she's not going to have to protect them alone. Was Naomi supposed to get her little team in and out before Keamy and Co. ever even came to the island? None of that ever cleared up for me - or it hasn't yet. . .

Capcom said...

Good thoughts. I was wondering that about Naomi's mission as well. Barring the point that all of the frieghers would need protection from any hostiles on the island, it did seem as if Abaddon's team was there under other pretenses unknown to Keamy possibly. I'd like to know if Keamy knew that Dan knew about Protocol#2 also. That could have been info given to Dan by Abaddon via Naomi, for their mission. And maybe the F-4s were inserted first, like you said, to take care of the details (disarming the Tempest, etc.) to clear the way for the mercs.

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

I hadn't thought that Abaddon's group informed Faraday about The Orchid, but it makes sense. If he'd actually bookmark his damn jornal, we'd knowwhich entries were most recent, because it seems he has pages of equations after the drawing of The Orchid. In regards to "don't trust the Captain", I think that goes to the idea of him having the black box. I think Mike wrote the note, it was legible and he is an artist, and I think that ruled out Walt and Regina (who was already going crazy). And Mike likely hadn't been told at the time that Gault knew the wreckage was staged; as Ben's spy, he had to believe that everyone was in on it. Nice post, Capcom.

Capcom said...

Thanks Wayne! :-) Yeah, if only Danny had dates on the pages of his notebook! Scientists usually do get into the habit of doing that, if only just to make notation of when they first got a new idea or theory, etc.

It feels now like the whole thing of making us fear the captain was just a bunch of hooey to throw us off and make the freighter action seem more interesting until something actually happened there. Although I really liked Gault after we found out that he was kind of nice, but then he got killed too soon. :-(