The Lost Room

Infobox Television
bgcolour = #DEDEE2
show_name = The Lost Room


caption =
format = Science fiction drama
creator = Christopher Leone, Laura Harkcom, Paul Workman
producer = Peter Chomsky, Bill Hill, Paul Kurta
executive_producer = Richard Hatem, Laura Harkcom, Christopher Leone, Paul Workman
starring = "see below"
country = flagicon| USA United States
language = English
network = Sci Fi Channel
runtime = approx. 90 minutes
first_aired = December 11, 2006
last_aired = December 13, 2006
num_episodes = 3
website = http://www.scifi.com/lostroom/
imdb_id = 0830361
tv_com_id =65382

"The Lost Room" is a science fiction television miniseries that aired on the Sci Fi Channel in the United States. The series revolves around the titular room and some of the hundred everyday items from that room that possess unusual powers. The show's protagonist, Joe Miller, is searching for these objects to rescue his daughter, Anna, who has disappeared inside the Room. Once a typical room at a 1960s motel along U.S. Route 66, the Lost Room now exists outside of normal time and space.

Character histories

* Detective Joe Miller (Peter Krause) — A Pittsburgh detective who stumbles upon the existence of the Room. When his daughter becomes lost inside the Room, Joe sets out to get her back by using the Key to track down other Objects.
* Anna Miller (Elle Fanning) — Joe's 8-year-oldcite episode | episodelink=The Comb and the Box | title=The Comb and the Box | series=The Lost Room] daughter. Her disappearance is seen by others as a probable family abduction by Joe in an ongoing child custody battle with his (unseen) ex-wife, Vanessa.
* Detective Lou Destefano (Chris Bauer) — Joe's partner, whose murder in the story is blamed on Joe.
* Detective Lee Bridgewater (April Grace) — Joe's friend at the police department. She is trying to clear Joe's name, and in so doing slowly discovers the powers held by the Room and its Objects.
* Dr. Martin Ruber (Dennis Christopher) — A forensic scientist who works with Joe and who becomes obsessed with the Objects, going as far as killing in an attempt to get the Key. Through his obsession, he learns of and joins the Order of the Reunification, a cabal that believes the Objects are pieces of God and will allow direct communication with God if reunited as they were at the time of the Event. By the end of the series, Ruber believes he has become the Prophet of the Objects after having a vision (possibly a hallucination caused by dehydration) while staring at the Polaroid Object.
* Jennifer Bloom (Julianna Margulies) — A member of the Legion, another cabal dedicated to finding all of the Objects and hiding them for the protection of humanity. Jennifer tries to warn Joe of the inherent danger of the Room and the Objects therein. Her brother, Drew, became obsessed with the Objects, and Jennifer believes that something in Room 9 of the Motel "destroyed" him.
* Karl Kreutzfeld (Kevin Pollak) — A wealthy ex-Legionnaire and collector of Objects. He owns a chain of dry-cleaning stores and a pawnshop that he uses to acquire Objects. Kreutzfeld claims to be searching for the Glass Eye to cure his son Isaac's leukemia. Alternately an ally and an enemy to Joe.
* Anthony (Jason Douglas) - The intimidating bodyguard, hitman, and head of Kreutzfeld's personal Secret Service-style security team.
* Wally Jabrowski (Peter Jacobson) — A man who has the Bus Ticket and is effectively a drifter. He has extensive knowledge about the Objects and their history.cite episode | episodelink=The Key and the Clock| title=The Key and the Clock | series=The Lost Room]
* Harold Stritzke (Ewen Bremner) — A voyeur who inherited the Comb from his aunt. He has become very paranoid after being pursued by the Order and others who want his Object for themselves.
* Howard "The Weasel" Montague (Roger Bart) — A former philosophy professor turned small-time criminal. He's an obsessed collector of Objects who charts the Objects' relations to one another and introduces the idea of the Prime Object.
* Milton Vrang (Chris McCarty) — A former member of a Cabal and only living burn victim of the Pen. He provides valuable and secret information to Dr. Martin Ruber on the mysterious and dangerous world of Objects and Object Seekers.
* Suzie Kang (Margaret Cho) — A tough, chain-smoking, independent operator who works as an Object locator, selling information about the locations of the Room's Objects. She never touches them, as she recognizes the dangers that the Objects carry. Suzie runs her Object-tracking business out of the back of her mother's dry-cleaning business. She charges a fortune for the information.
* The Sood (Jason Antoon) — A seedy, Las Vegas-based dealer of Object "Science" – pictures, videos, and artifacts relating to Objects – but never Objects themselves.
* Pumeet (Hugo Perez) — The Sood's ubiquitous manservant and bodyguard.
* The Occupant, formerly Eddie McCleister (Tim Guinee) — The Occupant was removed from time and space during The Event that made the Lost Room, leaving only his personal belongings as "Objects". Eddie no longer exists in time and there is no memory of his ever doing so, as even his wife has no recollection of him. He resides in a sanitarium under the name "John Doe" until found by Joe.

Major plot elements

The Room

The Room is the nonexistent Room 10 at the abandoned Sunshine Motel outside of Gallup, New Mexico. At 1:20:44 p.m. on May 4, 1961, something happened at the site of the Room that erased it and all its contents from history. This is referred to as "the Event" or "the Incident", and is thought to be the reason for the unusual properties of the Room and the Objects. At the time of the Event, the hotel was in quite serviceable condition, holding ten rooms.One of the Objects, the undeveloped Polaroid picture, allows the user to view this tenth room as it was just before the Event by standing in its currently vacant location at the Sunshine Motel ruins in the real world.

The Room can be accessed only by the holder of the Key. The Key will open any hinged door with a pin tumbler lock anywhere in the world, turning the door into a portal accessing the Room regardless of where that door would open normally. When exiting the Room, the door opens not to the original place of entry but to any room that the holder of the Key has in mind, or to a random room if the user doesn't focus. To reach a specific room, the user must have a clear picture of the room's own door and the area around it. The Room can thus serve as a way station for rapid travel between similar doors anywhere on Earth. Doors with types of locks other than a tumbler lock, or without a lock at all, cannot be used to access the Room; sliding doors are unusable for travel in either direction.

The holder of the Key can bring other people into the Room, but they must either leave together or the holder must let other people out of the room while remaining behind, because the Room "resets" whenever the door is opened from the outside using the key: everything is restored to the way it was originally, minus any Objects that are outside the Room. If something from outside the Room (including a person) is left in it when the holder of the Key leaves, it disappears. If Objects are left in the Room, they return to their original position when the Room resets. A benefit to this is that one can retrieve an Object from something within which it may be encased or hidden (such as a safe) by leaving whatever the Object is in inside the Room and resetting it. This can also let someone sort out a real Object from fakes, since the fakes disappear.

Objects lose their special abilities while in the Room, and can be destroyed. However, according to the Occupant, a new Object will take the destroyed Object's place, a fact he refers to as the Law of Conservation of Objects. The Occupant states that there are many Rooms; thus, any non-Object left in the Room hasn't actually disappeared, but is simply in a different instance of the Room. The reset, in turn, represents a confluence of these Rooms, allowing the Occupant (the only Object capable of consciously existing during a reset) to retrieve things lost during a reset provided they have a clear idea of what they wish to retrieve.

The Event

The Event is a shorthand term given to the moment in time that the Lost Room was created. It occurred at 1:20:44 p.m. on May 4, 1961, and erased the room and all of its contents from history. The reason behind this and the ultimate purpose of the Objects is yet unknown, though two primary theories have been postulated. Even the man occupying the room at the time of the event is unclear about what happened, so the truth remains a mystery. Both theories essentially lead to the same conclusion, but attribute the event to different causes.

One faction, the Order of the Reunification, operates under the belief that the Objects are pieces of God's mind or body (God having presumably died or been killed somehow) and that reuniting them will allow them to communicate with God. More extreme versions of this view hold that reuniting the Objects will turn one into God or at least give that person God-like powers. Martin Ruber purports that the Occupant confirmed this particular theory for him in a vision, making him the self-proclaimed "Prophet of the Objects", but his near-death state from dehydration and heat exhaustion at the time casts doubt on his claims. Additionally, the Occupant himself shows no knowledge of the circumstances behind the event. The Deck of Cards, which gives one who is exposed to it a vision of the events during the Collectors' failed attempt to use the objects on Room 9 of the hotel, may be the source of their beliefs, as it is used in their rituals.

Another (though not necessarily contradictory) view of the phenomenon suggests that reality was somehow shattered at the location of the Room, thus separating it and everything in it from time and giving its contents metaphysical abilities. Should the items be collected and returned to the room by an individual, that person would then have complete control over reality. This theory works under the assumption that the one gathering the objects has the knowledge to utilize them properly. Since the Objects are just considered tools, they would do no good if the user were unaware of their paranormal functions.

The Objects

The Objects are powerful artifacts and consist of roughly 100 everyday items one would expect to find in an occupied motel room in the 1960s. They are indestructible (except when inside the Room) and possess various other-worldly powers when taken outside the Lost Room, but do not work within the Room itself. When an object is destroyed within the room, another object takes its place. Whether the new object takes the former's properties partially or totally is unknown. Various characters repeatedly put forth the opinion that, over time, Objects lead to something akin to bad karma or bad luck for their owners. All of the items seem to have some attraction to one another, wanting to come together. It is stated various times that, with the exception of the Occupant, all objects eventually cross paths.

The Cabals

Many Object-seekers have organized themselves into groups, known as "cabals". Wars between cabals are mentioned in the series. There are at least three cabals:

; The Collectors : The original group of Object-seekers formed some time after the Event. Led by Arlene Conroy, the manager of the Sunshine Motel, most of the Collectors were killed or driven insane after the disaster in Room 9 in 1966. The survivors hid their most important Objects in a place called "The Collector's Vault", buried beneath an abandoned prison.; The Legion : A cabal dedicated to collecting the Objects and stopping them from causing more harm. They claim to follow an established set of rules, including that they never kill in order to acquire the Objects, although this rule is sometimes put to the test.; The Order of the Reunification : Also referred to as "The Order" or "The New Religion". They believe that the Objects are pieces of God's corpse and must be reunited. Once so restored, members of the Order would be able to communicate with God for the first time in human history. More extreme views hold that restoring the Objects will allow one to become God, or else achieve God-like power. Unlike the Legion, The Order have no qualms about killing.

Episodes

References

External links

* [http://www.scifi.com/lostroom/ "The Lost Room"] official website
* [http://www.runboard.com/bthecollectors "The Collectors"] fan forum
* [http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/darrenhf/lostroom.html Episode reviews on the Sci Fi Freak Site]
* [http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/11/13/the-lost-room-an-early-look/ "The Lost Room" – an early look] at TV Squad
* [http://www.tv.com/the-lost-room/show/65382/summary.html "The Lost Room"] at TV.com
* [http://www.nypost.com/seven/11302006/tv/check_out_time_tv_adam_buckman.htm "The Lost Room" review] from the "New York Post"
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/arts/television/11heff.html?ex=1323493200&en=429be279f591e9b8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss "The Lost Room" review] from the "New York Times"
* [http://www.ew.com/ew/article/review/tv/0,6115,1567741_3_0_,00.html "The Lost Room" review] from "Entertainment Weekly"