Anyone watch LOST? Theories about the Island and the Monster

So I got an early Christmas present... the iPod with video. I downloaded the entire first season of LOST on the thing from iTunes, with the intention of watching it on a plane flight out west a couple of weeks ago... Incidentally, this is NOT recommended. Our flight was very turbulent, and with the first couple of episodes featuring very realistic and frightening plane crash sequences, the whole experience put my teeth on edge.

Anyway, great show. As I watched the series, I was really reminded of Shakespeares "The Tempest" in that everyone was stranded on an island and had lost some part of themselves.

The other thing that strikes me is the mysterious monster, security system, whatever you want to call it. They have depicted these plumes of smoke ripping through the woods in the season finale. In drawing the parallels to the Tempest, I remembered the movie "Forbidden Planet" with the creature of Id. The "creature" in that movie was a formless (initially) energy entity that turns out to have been created from the turbulence of the stranded professor's own mind, and given form by the technology buried under the planet.

I am wondering if Lost is taking inspiration from these sources in some way, as the parallels are striking.

I seem to remember the key to the mystery being the technology and the nut job professor that lived UNDERNEATH the ground... There is that whole thing in the show with the hatch, and the underground bunker thing, and the mysterious force trying to drag Locke underground...

I rented the first season DVD's and got hooked.

Your Tempest comparison is dead on.

And let me just say: Naveen Andrews is so danged HOT!

There were two (or actually 3) groups on different parts of the Island.... Prospero and his daughter, and then the nobles that gotten him deposed, and the witch's son, Calibann.. It's been years since I read the thing... But Prospero was essentially directing the spirits on the island.. The deposed duke gets back his power, the deformed treacherous son repents, etc etc etc. Similar themes of supernatural incidents, checkered pasts and evil intent, and utlimate redemption.