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Some will live, some will die ... some have died and are back again alive. Confusing, frustrating but rewarding: Lost

Imagine the scene.

A small room in Llandaff. Present: JJ Abrams, multi-award winning US producer and all-round TV messiah; and two unnamed BBC commissioners.

JJ: “…And then, when we get to the end of series seven, the Daleks finally appear.”

First commissioner: “I’m sorry?”

JJ (now looking Lost): “Err, when we get to the end of series seven, the Daleks finally appear.”

Second commissioner: “What happens in series one?”

JJ: “Well, you know, bit of scene setting. The doc has…”

First commissioner: “The DocTOR…”

JJ: “The Doctor, he ‘s been away for a while. People need to get used to him again. We need to build his character, help audiences understand the complexities of a 900-year-old super being, let that provide the catalyst for the drama.”

Second commissioner: “What about monsters?”

JJ: “Well, I was thinking of some red herrings, and lots of symbols. That the Doctor would chase around the galaxy, referring to a grand conspiracy, which would provide us with our central story arc across the series. But – and here’s the catch – every time they thought they’d hit a dead end, they were in fact proper clues, and everything would fit together, like a multi-dimensional super mystery, in the final series.”

(Uncomfortable silence)

First commissioner: “We want monsters.”

Second commissioner: “And we want Cardiff. Lots of Cardiff.”

First commissioner: “As much Cardiff as you can fit in.”

JJ, arms wide open: “Yes, but Doctor Who has the ability to move through different galaxies, different times in history. He could be responsible for the Pyramids – he could be responsible for the Pyramids, on the other side of the Universe, millions of years from now.”

First commissioner: “Hmmm…”

Second commissioner: “Will it end in Cardiff?”

(Doors slams as JJ departs for his private jet back to Hollywood.)

As a reboot, it got off to a good start, but what has happened with Dr Who over the past four series? Each episode involves turning up at a location (usually early 21st century Wales), finding an anomaly, discovering that it’s something else and solving the problem in double quick time. Then, at the end of the season, the Daleks turn up. Because they are behind everything. Dr Who’s started something of an arms race with itself over the Daleks – each incarnation has to be worst than the last. And there’s only so many times you can do that.

The show these days differs hardly at all from Quantum Leap, they made that in the 80s. That’s where our writing is. Despite the budget, and the acting talent, which often reads like a who’s who of Brit thespian royalty (Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and John Simm), it comes back to the writing and a paucity of vision.

If Abrams had rebooted it, he would have made the audiences hang on, and he would have rewarded them with something truly original. Hollywood is good at reboots. Battlestar Galactica went from being Star Wars’ chavvy, slightly embarrassing cousin to the last word in space grit, dealing with issues like suicide bombing, religion, the treatment of the military, becoming the template for much of the science fiction that has followed. What is Doctor Who a metaphor for? How does it reflect the uncertainty of our times?

Abrams himself took on Star Trek, to universal acclaim. But it was an a Brit – Chris Nolan – who provided the greatest reboot of them all with the Batman series, films that fanboys and critics alike can gush over. By contrast, Dr Who is sold as a masterpiece, and the establishment here indulges and reinforces this notion. Maybe it’s because it’s too big to fail for BBC Wales, soaking up as it does a huge slice of its drama budget.

So we have a time-travelling 900-year-old survivor of a massive temporal war in search of a home. I think I have found one. In fact, there may be two of them, and they may be a lot older. For those Lost fans, ahead of the start of the final series tonight on Sky, here’s Duncan’s theory:

Jacob and the other guy we saw at the end of the last series are in fact castaways themselves, extraterrestrials marooned on Earth for possibly thousands of years (hence all the ancient statues and interest from the Dharma Initiative in more recent times). The island’s strange magnetic properties, which made Oceanic 815 crash there in the first place, and its ability to move, are as a result of the remains of the ship they arrived in, which they are unable to repair. The black smoke monster has something to do with the ship, too. Perhaps a guard dog function.

Jacob involves himself in the matter of humans, which hugely irritates his co-pilot, who regards them as little better than insects. Like two guys stuck together on a desert island, the other one has become throughly sick of Jacob and contrived to have him killed just at the moment that Juliet sets off the nuclear bomb and says: “They are coming.” Possibly, she and the others have created some kind of signal for Jacob’s kind to come find him and the other guy who’s just had him murdered.

How it will end up, however, is anyone’s guess. Anyone do any better?