On the other hand, with the involvement of Abrams, the show might never have gone full sci-fi. In that pitch document, the watch words aren't genre shows they sold Lost by invoking the likes of desert island movie Castaway, where Tom Hanks' FedEx product placement is stranded on a beach with only a volleyball for company, and desert island reality show Survivor, which was still a big hit then and everyone wanted in on its huge moneys. Our mandate is to give LOST the same treatment as a Michael Crichton novel. Every time we introduce an element of the fantastic, we approach it from a real place. If we do it right, the 'paranormal' will always be coupled with a logical explanation to remind the audience that this is the real world. Those are the exact words that follow the Castaway/Lost comparison. So if they had followed that initial line of thinking, Lost would've been a weird show but all that weirdness could've been explained away somehow. It would've been even more grounded than The X-Files, which offered rational explanations for aliens and stuff right up until the point it didn't. Lost might very well have been a conventional drama. A grown-up Gilligan's Island.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
