The Constant
"The Constant" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the American Broadcasting Company's serial drama television series Lost, and the 77th episode overall. It was broadcast on February 28, 2008, on ABC in the United States and on CTV in Canada. It was written by executive producer Carlton Cuse and co-creator/executive producer Damon Lindelof and directed by executive producer Jack Bender. "The Constant" was watched by 15 million American viewers and is regarded by some as Lost
In the episode, Desmond Hume and Sayid Jarrah are being flown by Frank Lapidus to the freighter where Lapidus' mission is set. After going through turbulence, Desmond's consciousness unexpectedly travels through time between 1996 and 2004. The helicopter reaches the freighter and Sayid and Desmond are introduced to communications officer George Minkowski, who is "unstuck in time" like Desmond. The writers took twice the time expected to develop the episode's script; the biggest concern was the avoidance of a temporal paradox when dealing with time travel.
Plot
Desmond, Sayid and Lapidus experience turbulence while flying the 80 miles distance from the island where they were stranded to Lapidus' team's freighter, the Kahana. Desmond's consciousness travels back eight years to 1996, when he is serving with the British Army's Royal Scots Regiment. Moments later, when his consciousness returns to the present day, he neither knows where he is nor recognizes his companions, and has no memory of his life since 1996. After the helicopter lands, Desmond continues to jump between 1996 and 2004. He is taken to the sick bay, where a man named Minkowski is strapped to a bed because he is experiencing similar problems. Minkowski explains that someone sabotaged the radio room two days earlier and that Desmond's ex-girlfriend Penny Widmore has been trying to contact the freighter. Sayid uses the satellite phone to contact Jack Shephard on the island and explains that Desmond appears to have amnesia. Daniel Faraday, a physicist from the freighter, asks Jack whether Desmond has recently been exposed to a high level of radiation or electromagnetism. Jack is unsure, and so Daniel speaks to Desmond and asks him about his situation. Desmond responds that he believes that he is in 1996 and is serving with the Royal Scots. Faraday understands and tells Desmond that when he returns to 1996, he needs to go to the physics department of The Queen's College, Oxford University in England to meet with Daniel's past self, and gives Desmond some mechanical settings to relay, along with an extra phrase that Daniel assures him will convince Daniel's past self that the story is legitimate.Desmond's flashbacks become more frequent and longer. In 1996, Desmond tracks down a younger Faraday at Oxford, who takes Desmond into his laboratory where he is experimenting with a time machine. Setting his electromagnetic device with the settings that Desmond has given him, Daniel places his laboratory rat, Eloise, in a maze and exposes her to electromagnetic energy. The rat appears to become comatose, then awakens and runs the maze. Daniel becomes excited because he had just built the maze and had not yet taught Eloise how to run it. Desmond realizes that, like the rat, he is caught in a time warp that is moving his consciousness between two different bodies at two different points in time and space. Eloise dies of a suspected brain aneurysm brought on by the exposure to the time lapse. Desmond becomes worried that he will die like Eloise, and Daniel instructs him to find something or someone—a constant—who is present in both times and can serve as an anchor for Desmond's mental stability. Desmond decides that Penny can be the constant; however, he must make contact with her in 2004. To find out where she lives, Desmond gets her address from her father Charles, who is at an auction buying a journal owned by Tovard Hanso written by a crew member of the 19th century ship called the Black Rock. Widmore is willing to give Desmond Penny’s address because he knows that Penny no longer wants to be with him.
In 1996, Desmond finds Penny, who is still distraught over their break-up and is not willing to see him. However, he gets her telephone number and tells her not to change it because he will call her on Christmas Eve 2004. In 2004, Sayid, Desmond, and Minkowski escape the sick bay and begin to repair the broken communications equipment. Meanwhile, Minkowski enters into another flashback, and dies. Showing signs of suffering the same fate as Minkowski, Desmond telephones Penny, who tells Desmond that she has been searching for him for the past three years and they reconcile before the power is cut off. Having made contact with his "constant", Desmond stops alternating between 1996 and 2004. Back on the island, Daniel flips through his journal and discovers a note that he had written, "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant."
Production
"The Constant" is the second Lost episode to deal directly with the concept of time travel after "Flashes Before Your Eyes" from the third season. While promoting that episode, Lindelof said that it uses the flashback device "in a way we never have before and never will again" and while promoting "The Constant", he said that it "upholds that pledge, unpledges it, then repledges it." Losts writer-producers enjoy science fiction themes such as time travel; however, they were careful not to create a paradox. The rules for time-travel in the series are outlined in "Flashes Before Your Eyes"—although, Lindelof has said that "The Constant" is a more important episode in terms of explaining time travel on the show—by Ms. Hawking, who explains that certain events are inevitable and the universe will eventually correct any errors. Had these rules not been established, the writers feared that viewers would lose interest because the stakes of the characters would be lessened. The writers hoped that "The Constant" would further establish that there are no parallel universes or alternate realities. Lindelof reminisced that "just breaking that episode was such a massive headache" and Cuse added that "it was definitely like doing the hardest New York Times crossword puzzle for the week".Cuse and Lindelof admitted they took some inspiration from the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "All Good Things...", where Captain Picard jumps between three time frames. The Lost writers compared Minkowski's role to Q, as "someone who is undergoing and understands the same events as our protagonist". Faraday, on the other hand, was the expert that always appears in time travel fiction—as Lindelof put it, "He's our Doc Brown here, who basically is gonna tell the protagonist to go and find him in the past". Whereas the average Lost episode took two weeks to plan and write, "The Constant" took five because the writers experienced difficulty when determining its effect on future stories. Popular Mechanics analyzed the possibility of time travel using Lost
Shooting occurred in the second half of October 2007. The scenes on the freighter in this and later episodes were filmed for several days on a freighter ten to fifteen minutes off the west coast of Oahu, Hawaii, where Lost is filmed. Instead of docking the ship and returning to the ocean each day, the actors and crew slept on the freighter in areas that were not being used for filming. The Oxford scenes were shot at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Honolulu. In 1996, Desmond has short hair and no facial hair and in 2004, Desmond sports long and untamed hair with a full beard. Cusick did not cut his hair; it was hidden underneath a short-haired wig by "really talented hair and makeup folks", according to Carlton Cuse. All freighter scenes were shot before Cusick shaved most of his beard for the 1996 scenes. A fake beard was glued onto Cusick for the episodes "Ji Yeon" and "Meet Kevin Johnson" while his beard grew back. The equations on Faraday's chalkboard were written by a physicist who was hired as a consultant by the producers. The way the transitions between the 1996 and 2004 scenes would take place was frequently discussed during production. The producers took the advice of editor Mark Goldman, who suggested sudden cuts with "no fancy effect, and in some cases, no sound cut", similar to the way "All Good Things..." was edited. The original ending would set up the following episode by having Charlotte drop a bag containing a gas mask at Faraday's feet. But the producers thought it did not work after the emotional scenes between Desmond and Penny, and decided to finish with Faraday reading his diary.
Jeremy Davies, who plays Daniel Faraday, said "I thought it was a remarkably well-written and brilliantly conceived story. I was quite knocked out by it on a lot of levels." He called it "remarkable storytelling."