The Looking Glass

From Lostpedia

The Looking Glass

[[{{{Video}}}|Orientation Video]]

First Appearance

Last Appearance

"Greatest Hits"

"Through the Looking Glass"

Constructed by

{{{Constructed}}}

Controlled by

{{{Controlled}}}

Connection

{{{Connection}}}

Number

Unknown

Purpose

Jamming radio signals, underwater submarine dock

Status

Abandoned, partially flooded

Discovered by

Charlie and Desmond (Day 90)

DHARMA Initiative Stations
The Arrow • The Staff • The Swan
The Flame • The Pearl • The Orchid
The Hydra • The Tempest
The Looking Glass

The Looking Glass is an underwater DHARMA Initiative station at the south end of the Island. It is offshore of the beach where Sayid found the cable. Its apparent purpose was to guide vessels (eg. submarines) towards the Island, although more recently it has been used to jam any signals being broadcast to or from the Island.

The Others

The Others presumably gained control of the station after the Purge.

While many of the Others knew of the station, a number of them had been told by Ben that the station was flooded and inaccessible due to an accident. The station was considered by Ben to be an important component in maintaining the security of the Island. Juliet was aware of the station's role in jamming communications. Mikhail seemed less aware of the exact nature of the station or just assumed that it blocked all signals off of the island besides the Flame's.

A security team consisting of the Others Greta and Bonnie were posted to the station by Ben. The rest of the Others were told that they were sent on a mission to Canada. The team had the ability to communicate with Ben but was under orders from him to maintain radio silence under normal circumstances.

The station

The round shape of the station in the schematic found by Sayid in the Flame

The station sits offshore from the Island. It sits elevated from the ocean bottom on a series of supports. The station is at an unknown depth; the schematic of the Looking Glass suggests that it is 70 meters (220 feet) below sea level, but it is visible from the surface of the water. Although it seems to be at a great depth, it was reached without any scuba gear by both Charlie and Desmond, so it must be fairly shallow. It has facilities for docking a submarine via a moon pool.

The station seen from above water

The station had equipment that could be used to jam transmissions coming to or leaving the Island. This equipment was designed to be able to continue operating even if the station was flooded and was also immune to the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) associated with the discharge. The jamming equipment could be disabled by entering a numeric code sequence on a keypad. Along with the jamming equipment, the station had a two-way video communications terminal for contact with the outside world when the jamming equipment was turned off. The station also housed the sonar beacon used to guide submarines to the Island.

A cable connects the station to the Island. The exact function of the cable is unknown.

Moon pool

Because of the moon pool (through which Charlie, Desmond, and Mikhail entered the station) the air pressure in the station would have to match the water pressure at the surface of the moon pool (otherwise the moon pool water would just rise into the station). This means that above the level of the moon pool (ie: at shallower depths), the pressure inside the station would be higher than the sea pressure outside, and portholes would be resisting outward pressure from the air, rather than inward pressure from the water.

Thus, losing a porthole would actually result in station air being lost outward through the porthole, while water rose proportionately (by volume) into the station through the moon pool (see explanation of moon pool hydrostatic pressure). The writers invoked the inappropriate but powerful popular image of water rushing in through the open porthole at high pressure, based on wide exposure of submarine-like submersibles where the inside pressure is maintained much lower than surrounding sea pressure through a strong shell holding out the sea. (Submarines do not have moon pools open to the interior living areas).

Furthermore, the Looking Glass cannot be flooded higher than the top of the broken porthole. The air pocket trapped above this level has nowhere to go and will prevent any more water entering. The ceiling is four to six feet above the porthole in the control room, and much more than this, perhaps twelve feet, in the submarine port, and this is how much breathable air will be left after flooding. If only Charlie had not closed the control room door and had joined Desmond in the submarine port, they would both have been quite safe, able to stand with heads above the water in the half-flooded chamber with plenty of air above.

What would actually happen

When the porthole breaks, air will start to rush out into the sea, with some violence and a good deal of noise. The air pressure exceeds the water pressure at the porthole by an amount proportional to the height of the porthole above the moon pool water surface. This appears to be about 2.4 m (8 ft) and the overpressure will be 0.24 atmospheres (about 3.5 PSI). Even though Charlie has already closed the control room door, the air in the control room retains this overpressure until the porthole breaks. The air then rushes out into the sea and within a couple of seconds, its pressure reduces to match the water pressure at the porthole. The air will now escape more slowly in great big bubbles, and gulps of water will slosh in between bubbles, just as happens when you push an open empty bottle horizontally into a sink full of water. It will take more than just a few seconds for the room to fill up with water, but it can't fill above the top of the porthole. Charlie can stand on tip-toe or float up with the rising water and breathe the large pocket of air above it, which will last him maybe an hour, while Desmond works out how to get him out of there, assuming Charlie's not quite skinny enough to swim out through the broken porthole.

It would seem intuitive that the weight of water in the control room would force the control room door open if Charlie undoes the latches on the inside. But the air pressure in the submarine port holding the door shut will still be greater than the pressure of the water on the inside, because the former is created by a greater total depth of water (i.e. depth of the moon pool surface below sea level). The pressure difference on either side of the door is proportional to the difference in height between the moon pool surface and the mid-point of the door, probably about 2 m (6 ft). It's equal to a 2 m / 6 ft head of water, which is quite a lot, and the two of them couldn't push and pull it open against that much pressure, which produces 2000 kg-force on the door if it's 1 square metre in area. If Charlie ducks underwater and undoes the latches and if Desmond can find something like a long length of strong steel pipe to use as lever, he may be able to lever open the door just a crack. A better solution is to use one of the firearms to shoot a hole in the door's porthole. Air will rush into the control room increasing the size of Charlie's air bubble up near the ceiling, then it will start bubbling out of the broken porthole again. The moon pool level will rise up and when it reaches half-way up the control room door, the pressure on either side of it balances and the door can swing open. Again, the water level in the main chamber can't rise higher than the top of the broken porthole. They have about a 12 foot space in the submarine port above this to breathe and prepare for the ascent. They need to get the diving gear, not only to assist with breathing on the swim out and the ascent, but because the Looking Glass is deep enough that, like divers, they ought to stop every 10 m on the ascent to clear nitrogen from the blood, or they risk suffering the bends.

Station-related events

Ben had secretly stationed two guards, Greta and Bonnie, in the Looking Glass. The rest of the Others -- including high-level members such as Mikhail -- were led to believe the station was flooded and inoperable. Juliet later informed Jack and Sayid of its existence.("Greatest Hits")  ("Through the Looking Glass")

Inside the "Looking Glass", in the submarine port, with the hatch to the control room in the centre background, half hidden

Meanwhile, Desmond told Charlie that he had a vision that Charlie would enter the station underwater, "flick a switch" to stop the signal interference and then drown in the flooded room. Charlie dived down to the station and through the underwater opening of the moon pool came up into a large chamber, the submarine port, which is pressurized by the water pressure at that depth, and which was not flooded. He was quickly confronted by two armed women, Greta and Bonnie, after they heard him shout with happiness about surviving. ("Greatest Hits")

Charlie uses the equipment inside the control room of the station

The two women tied Charlie to a chair to interrogate him as to how he got to the station and what his purpose is. They gave Ben this information over walkie-talkies, who sent Mikhail to investigate. Desmond (who was in the boat with Charlie) was chased into the station by Mikhail when he arrived, but managed to hide in a storage locker while the women were in the control room.

Once Mikhail arrived, he killed Greta and fatally wounded Bonnie at Ben's command before being shot by Desmond with a speargun. Charlie convinced the quickly dying Bonnie to tell him the code in revenge for Ben's ordering of their murder. With the code from Bonnie, Charlie deactivated the transmission block, and received a transmission from Penny. Without Charlie or Desmond noticing, Mikhail escaped and appeared underwater outside the control room porthole with a grenade. Charlie shut and locked the control room door to protect Desmond in the submarine port, Mikahil set off the grenade which broke the porthole, and Charlie drowned due to the room filling with water. ("Through the Looking Glass")

Name

• The name of the station is a reference to the book Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll.
• In Through the Looking Glass, Alice has two kittens that are black and white. Both kittens are descended from Dinah, Alice's cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice blames her black cat for all the mischief caused in the book, but the white kitten is deemed completely innocent.
• The Looking Glass is a 1943 novel by William March, a continuation of his "Pearl County" series of novels and short stories. The novel is a mosaic of multiple character stories and histories, interwoven in a non-linear fashion.

Logo

The logo on the schematic

• The logo for this station is a rabbit, as seen on the Looking Glass schematic, on the top and in the interior of the station itself. The schematic and exterior logos differ in that their outer portions are color inverses of one another. Also, the schematic version features a black 'hole' on the rabbit's neck that on closer inspection appears to be a clock/watchface with the hands set at 8:15.
• The station insignia (a white rabbit and watch) is a reference to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, also by Lewis Carroll. In that book, when Alice first sees the White Rabbit, she is struck by the fact that he is checking his watch: "...suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her... when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it..." [Emphasis in original].

Notable Visitors

Picture	Name	Status	Reason for Visit
	Bonnie	Dead	Lived in this station for an unknown length of time until Charlie swam down and entered the station on Day 90.
	Greta	Dead	Lived in this station for an unknown length of time until Charlie swam down and entered the station on Day 90.
	Mikhail	Dead	Visited this station on Day 91 and discovered that it was in fact not flooded and that Bonnie and Greta weren't on an assignment in Canada.
	Charlie	Dead	Discovered this station on Day 90 when he swam down underwater to turn off the switch which blocked all radio signals off the island then drowned in the comms room.
	Desmond	Alive	Swam down to this station when he was being shot at by Mikhail from the beach on Day 91.

Trivia

Schematics of The Looking Glass, labeled: GVS-199288472982

The exterior of the Looking Glass - Bunny logo is visible.

• In "The Long Con", Sayid and Hurley use a radio found in The Arrow to pick up signals, which were supposedly being blocked by the station, indicating it is spotty in its jamming. They picked up WXR radio.
• In the book Through the Looking Glass, one could look through the mirror but could not be seen by those on the other side.
• While the station itself is an allusion to the book Through the Looking Glass, the station's logo refers to the white rabbit, which Alice chases down a rabbit hole in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• In the movie Short Circuit 2, a character also has to play a Beach Boys song on a keypad (in this case, Help Me Rhonda).
• A looking glass is a Victorian term for a mirror.
  • Just before Charlie dies, he makes the sign of the cross. However, he does it with his left hand, and touches his near-shoulder first (i.e. same side as the hand he's using) before reaching across to his far shoulder, as Orthodox Christian and Eastern Rite Catholics do, so that to the viewer it appears identically as it would appear in a mirror, or "looking glass" if he were Eastern Rite or Orthodox.
• The Looking Glass schematic gives a formula for what appears to be a periodic signal. This is a sum of a single continuous periodic signal and a Z term, which is likely noise. A nearby graph and formula show another periodic signal, which is a sum of a constant term and several cosine terms, each with a distinct amplitude, frequency, and phase. None of the parameters are given numerically.
• Radio waves are extremely poor at propagating through water, let alone crossing over to the air, due to a huge mismatch in the transmission medium impedance.
• Sayid's document from the DHARMA Initiative has the word “hatch” on it – the only occurrence thus far of a DHARMA source using the word “hatch”.
  • This has been confirmed as a prop error by Gregg Nations; the schematic should have read "The Looking Glass Station".
• The schematic of the Looking Glass suggests that it is 70 meters (220 feet) below the water and 10 meters (30 feet) above the sea ground. There is a also reference to a sonar/observation room. Many items on the schematic seem inconsistent with the actual station.
• "Looking Glass" was the code name for an airborne command post that the U.S. military employed from 1961 to 1990. Formally known as the Airborne Nuclear Command Post, it was designed to survive a nuclear attack that wiped out ground-based command posts. The code name was a reference to the fact that the ABNCP duplicated (or "mirrored") command facilities on the ground. It was also said to be a reference to the fact that the ABNCP was actually a series of identical airplanes, at least one of which was always in the air.
• The code GVS-199288472982 is visible on the Looking Glass schematic.
  • The DHARMA cabling map also has a GVS-199288472982 code on it
    

    

    GVS-199288472
    .
• All but one of the known visitors of the station have died while in or near the Looking Glass.

Security code

• The code to disable the jamming is the musical note sequence to "Good Vibrations". The incomplete numerical sequence of sixteen numbers dictated by Bonnie is 5-4-5-8-7-7-5-5-4-3-7-7-6-1-1-3.
• Bonnie mentions that the code was programmed by a musician.
• The video of the scene does not match with the audio, nor does the video match the code as given by Bonnie. For example in the audio, the second and third notes are different, yet the video shows Charlie pressing the same note (5).

• Along a C-Major scale, the full nineteen-note code as played by Charlie is: A G A C C D D F G G G F A A G F C D C.
  • The changes in these notes of the actual melody in the audio track do not correspond to the sequence of changes given by Bonnie, assuming that each key only plays one note.
• The security keypad contains sixteen numbered keys, along with four function keys along the bottom row.
  • A 19-note code would therefore have 16¹⁹, or 7.55578637 × 10²² possible combinations.

Producers' commentary

Comic Con 2006

The existence of an underwater DHARMA station was hinted at during the 2006 Comic Con in San Diego, approximately a year before the station appeared in an actual episode. This Lost panel discussion was also rebroadcast as The Official Lost Podcast on July 31, 2006.

Lost: The Complete Third Season (DVD) Commentary

• The Looking Glass Station is a communications station. Its role is to emit the ping that guides the submarine to the Island.

Unanswered questions

For fan theories about these unanswered questions, see: The Looking Glass/Theories

• How does the jamming station work?
• What is the significance of the name?
• If the Looking Glass is a radio jamming station, why construct it underwater, as radio waves do not penetrate water?
• Why does the schematic appear inconsistent with the actual appearance of the station?
• How does the station get air?
• Was the discharge a convenient cover for Ben to activate the station, (After all, EMP's disable electronics only temporarily) as no signals were jammed before the Discharge?
• Why are there different versions of the station logo?
• Who is the musician that programmed "Good Vibrations" into the keypad?
• For what purpose did the DHARMA Initiative construct the Looking Glass Station?
• Why would DHARMA create the Flame which is for communication, and also create the Looking Glass which is for blocking communication?
• If the Looking Glass blocks all radio communication to/from the island, why does it not affect communication on the island, e.g. between the walkie-talkies or from the radio tower to Sayid's radio?