The Lost Room

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The Lost Room
Genre	Science fiction drama
Creator(s)	Christopher Leone, Laura Harkcom, Paul Workman
Starring	see below
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of episodes	3
Production
Producer(s)	Peter Chomsky, Bill Hill, Paul Kurta
Executive producer(s)	Richard Hatem, Laura Harkcom, Christopher Leone, Paul Workman
Running time	approx. 90 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Sci Fi Channel
Original run	December 11 – December 13, 2006
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Lost Room is an American science fiction television miniseries that aired on the Sci Fi Channel. The series revolves around the titular room and roughly one-hundred everyday items from that room that possess unusual powers, such as a bus ticket that can instantaneously transport a person to a particular location or a comb that can temporarily freeze time around a person. The show's protagonist, Joe Miller, is searching for these Objects to use as tools in rescuing his daughter, Anna, who disappears inside the Room. Once a typical rental unit at a 1960s motel along Route 66, the Room now exists outside of normal time and space.

Contents 1 Characters 2 The Room 3 The Event 4 The Objects 5 The Cabals 6 Episodes 7 DVD Release 8 International broadcasters 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Characters

• 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-old^[1] 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.
• 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 destroying 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.^[1]
• 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.^[1]
• 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.^[2]
• 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.^[1]
• The Sood (Jason Antoon) — A seedy, Las Vegas-based dealer of Object "Science" – pictures, videos, and artifacts relating to Objects – but never Objects themselves.
• 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.

[edit] The Room

The Room is the nonexistent Room 10 at the abandoned Sunshine Motel outside of Gallup, New Mexico. At 1:20:45 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 and had a tenth room. 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 entry door but to any door that the holder of the Key has in mind, or to a random door if the user doesn't focus. To reach a specific door, the user must have a clear picture of the 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 leave together, 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 a safe or from within something it may be encased or hidden in (such as cement or clothing) by leaving whatever the Object is in inside the Room and resetting it.

Objects lose their special abilities while in the Room. They can also be destroyed while in the Room. 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 gone anywhere, 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.

[edit] The Event

The Event is the nickname given to the moment in time that the Lost Room was created. It occurred at 1:20:45 p.m. on May 4, 1961, and erased the room and all its contents from history. The reason behind this and the ultimate purpose of the Objects is left ambiguous, though the characters postulate two main theories to explain it. 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, works under the belief that the Objects are pieces of God's mind or body (God having presumably died or been killed somehow) and 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 a prophet of sorts, but his near-death state from dehydration at the time throws this into question. Additionally, the Occupant himself shows no knowledge of the circumstances behind the event. The Deck of Playing 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 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 the room and everything in it from time and giving its contents abilities that realistically should be impossible. 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 how they function.

[edit] The Objects

Main article: Objects from The Lost Room

The Objects are powerful artifacts that serve as plot coupons to motivate the characters. The set consists of roughly 100 everyday items one would expect to find in an occupied motel room in the 1960s. They are indestructible and possess various other-worldly powers when taken outside the Lost Room, but do not work within the Room itself. 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. This is stated various times, with the exception of the Prime Object, also known as the Occupant, all objects eventually cross paths at one time or another.

[edit] 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 valuable Objects in a home-made "vault" beneath a 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 regrets towards killing.

[edit] Episodes

Screencap	Title	Airdate	#
	"The Key and the Clock"	December 11, 2006	01
	Joe Miller learns about the Key and the other Objects.
	"The Comb and the Box"	December 12, 2006	02
	Having lost his daughter during a reset of the Room, Joe begins to search for the Prime Object, which can supposedly bring her back.
	"The Eye and the Prime Object"	December 13, 2006	03
	Having learned of the Occupant of the Room, Joe searches for him in the hopes of learning more.

[edit] DVD Release

DVD Name	Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
The Lost Room - Mini Series	Apr 3, 2007	TBA	TBA

[edit] International broadcasters

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Lost Room official website
• The Lost Room – an early look at TV Squad
• The Lost Room review from the New York Post
• The Lost Room review from the New York Times
• The Lost Room review from Entertainment Weekly

Country	TV network(s)	Series premiere	End Date
United States	Sci Fi Channel	December 11, 2006
Canada	Space: The Imagination Station	December 11, 2006
United Kingdom	Sky One	January 24, 2007
Spain	Cuatro TV	2007
Hungary	AXN	2007
Turkey	MyMax	March 24, 2007	April 8, 2007
Poland	AXN	March 25, 2007
Bulgaria	AXN	March 25, 2007
Romania	AXN	March 25, 2007
Czech Republic	AXN	March 25, 2007
Israel	YES - channel 2	April 5 to 8,2007