The Dharma Initiative have featured quite prominently in TV’s LOST, but what were they really about?
Through them we have some history of the strange island our characters find themselves on. But what were the Dharma Initiative really doing there? They claimed that they trying to save the human race, but is that really what they were doing there?
When John Locke discovered, then opened the hidden hatch early on in LOST, he inadvertently opened Pandora’s box.
The strange orientation films that lay scattered around the different stations told of experiments that they were doing, to benefit mankind. The Dharma Initiative were a very secretive society that chose to hide away from the world in order to do their experiments.
The first hatch that our characters found was ‘The Swan’, and inside Desmond was pushing a button every 108 minutes. The introduction film here told us that this station was to do with experiments in electromagnetism. Soon after this, Locke discovered that there were many more similar stations dotted around the island, with research into animal studies, while the ‘Orchid’ station was for the study of manipulation of space and time.
The discovery of ‘The Pearl’ led us to believe that all the other stations are being closely monitored and recorded by this central station. This was later shown to be false, as this station itself was also just an experiment and was probably monitored by somebody else.
The Dharma Initiative seems to be some sort of front for this all this scientific research. They often recruited people for its work under the false pretense of creating the perfect utopian society. Many of these people were brought to the island to perform basic workman duties, such as building, cleaning, and general maintenance.
Recruits such as cleaners, builders, engineers and teachers were all brought to the island in order to support them. Only the top people in the Initiative would have know the truth about what was really going on.
It is possible that the Dharma Initiative did had the ultimate goal of a perfect utopian society, however, the Island is an anomaly, and this goal may have been corrupted because of the power that the island holds. The Initiative did not hold the proper respect for the island, and this is the reason for the purge that eventually wiped them all out.
The Initiative were featured through most of the last season of LOST, but will we get anymore insight into this strange society? Have we learnt most of what there is to know about the Dharma Initiative? Or will we get more answers as the final season of LOST begins shortly?
An eye opens in a sudden, in the teaser for ‘Lost’ season 6 which will be the final round for the whole island’s mystery.