PILOT - PART 1

Or, How Kate Learns Not To Be Afraid

[Originally Aired September 22, 2004]

A dog awakens Jack. He pulls himself up from the jungle floor and stumbles to the beach. He looks around and finds himself in the midst of chaos. Wreckage of a plane crash. Flames, carnage, blood, survivors. Jack turns out the be a doctor and immediately gets all heroic saving lives. A pregnant woman is there. And a guy with big hair. And so is Merry Brandybuck. There's also a very weird guy who seems slightly bemused by everything. Dr. Jack then spends some quiet time with a woman named Kate after he gives her a pep talk and an impromptu lesson on stitches. Dr. Jack tells Kate he doesn't allow fear to control him. He allows himself five seconds of fear then switches it off. Flashback to the plane ride, moments before the crash. Merry scurries down the aisle pursued by an air hostess. Dr. Jack befriends a woman, someone he later would save (in an earlier scene.) There's turbulence; masks drop from the ceiling. Back on the beach, night falls, and things get weird. Noise, from inland. Big noise! Like giant monster big. For a moment I wonder if they crashed onto Jurassic Park. Something pounds and shrieks out there and the trees sway. In the morning Dr. Jack , Kate, and Merry (who is really named Charlie and is not a Hobbit but a rock star) head inland in search of the plane's cockpit and, hopefully, its transceiver. As they trundle through the jungle, toward smoke presumed from more wreckage, the dog watches. Was the dog on the plane too? Not likely, I think. The three find the fore section of the fuselage and another survivor. Capt. Exposition explains that they were 1000 miles off course at the time of the crash, and any rescue operations would be nowhere in the vicinity. Suddenly the noise begins again, and something very big is outside the cockpit. I'd almost swear it was a T. Rex. Or a Sasquatch. Except it's too big to be a Sasquatch. Unless it's an irradiated Sasquatch, like in those giant ant movies from the Fifties. Whatever it is, it snatches the pilot from the plane. There is a lot of blood. I guess he's not a series regular. Dr. Jack, Kate and Charlie flee, and along the way Charlie trips and falls. I don't think he was wearing high heels, by the way. Dr. Jack performs more heroics and saves Charlie. Kate finds herself alone and afraid. So she counts to five and pushes the fear aside. Once she's reunited with Dr. Jack and Charlie, they find the pilot. He looks as if he's been chewed up and spat out. "What could do that?" Charlie asks.