the lost room
For those of you who are not aware, Borges is my favorite writer. My favorite of his short stories is “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” I will likely refer to it frequently so if you haven’t already, please read it now.
About three years ago the Sci-Fi Channel produced and aired a miniseries starring Peter Krause called “The Lost Room.” I’m STILL bummed that there were only 6 episodes because I could’ve kept watching it every week until the end of time. The reason I’m so in love with this show is because it reminds me of “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.”
The basic plot is this: Detective Joe Miller (Peter Krause) stumbles upon the existence of a motel room which can transport you to any location in the world. The Room was once an unremarkable unit in a 1960’s motel along Route 66, until an “event” occurred which basically sent the Room to another dimension. Objects from the Room (such as the Key which leads Joe to the Room in the first place) find their way into “our” reality, each bringing with them a unique ability to manipulate space or time in its own way. In the first episode Joe’s daughter gets lost in the Room and Joe must track down various Objects in order to bring her back.
The parallels between this miniseries and my favorite ficcion lay not only in the presence of Objects–physical evidence of a reality outside of our own–but also in the various ideologies that spring up as a result.
In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” the people of Earth begin to study the history of Tlön as if it were their own. They speak the language of Tlön. They worship the objects of Tlön. Why? Because no one can account for where they came from, yet they’re here, people know about them, thus they are real. These artifacts from Tlön provide physical evidence of the unseen, of rumors, of metaphysical things people talk about and like to believe but cannot know for sure; in short, they make people feel as though they can touch divinity.
In “The Lost Room” the Objects also breed several cults of followers called “Cabals” :
I love it! Even the fact that the Collectors had a vault under a prison and the way Joe had to visualize it to find the door (even though he’d never been there) reminds me of the secondary objects or hronir of “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.”
It’s such a well thought-out series, yet they didn’t keep it going for nearly as long as they could. Its only downfall is when Peter Krause hooks up with Julianna Margulies, that was just sloppy writing, not even remotely plot-driven. I’m still holding out for someone to pick up where Joe left off and revive it, the ideology is there, they just need some new characters and a new subplot. In the meantime, at least we have Netflix. All of you, rent it now, generate lots of interest so it can come back! If Netflix isn’t your style just google “stream the lost room” and you can watch it online somewhere.
I have said that the men of this planet conceive the universe as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time.–Borges “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”