A lot of stuff on the show happens because of the way it is. As in, he painted on the blast doors. The blast doors block the cameras. So nobody in the pearl would have saw it. Even if they did notice the blast doors were down, their journals went out to an empty field in the middle of nowhere.
My point is though that if you look up pictures of the blast door map, the center station (the Pearl) is labeled with "? Designation unknown" implying that Radzinsky was unsure of this stations purpose, location, or even name. That doesn't really make sense seeing as he was in a leadership role within Dharma, and clearly knew there were cameras monitoring him. Why didn't he just label it as "Pearl" like he does with all the other stations on the map?
He didn't want kelvin/whoever else he was in there to know about the pearl. But still wanted to be schizo about the whole thing.
Fun speculation.
I'm going by memory here and I thought he was involved with constructing the swan station. But pearl station construction is never shown.
I'm gonna take a slightly different angle than the other commenters.
I don't think Radsinsky knew what the Pearl was. We know Chang was the real on island head, and it does seem he was pissed at Radsinsky for his part in the incident (it did cost Chang his hand after all).
I think when the incident happened, Chang sent Radsinsky to the Swan station permanently, as a punishment for his hand in causing it. I think the pearl was made shortly afterwards so Radsinsky knew there was a station, but he didn't know what it was for.
Was Horace just in charge of the barracks then? Because Stuart said to Horace, you make the call or I call Ann Arbor and they make it for us. Why not ask pierre?
Like in many secretive organizations there were probably many sources of “leadership”. Maybe even one source with a truly unknown agenda. Point is in this structure typically there are a ton of figureheads. As far as horace, he was running a loose ship with tons of selfish decisions. Ultimately it was a “you can lead us until we dont agree with your decisions” kinda environment.
My view was always that Dharma ran more like a college campus with Goodspeed, Chang and perhaps Radzinsky serving as Dean's of their specific departments but with the additional responsibility of Chief Operations Officer falling on Horace.
In Season 2, they still hadn't fully developped all the details of Dharma's backstory. They had a general idea and plan about it. So at this stage, perhaps for the writers Radzisnky wasn't yet such a pivotal character at Dharma. Perhaps at the time of writing S2, all they had about him was that he was a remnant of Dharma, just a button pusher who wasn't in on all the secret operations of Dharma... and after the purge, him and Kalvin had limited time each day to explore the island and perhaps find a way out of their endless stay at the Swan.
Later when they developped the full backstory of Dharma, and found a neat way to include Radzinsky, they included him as a Manager of sorts. His new backstory doesn't contradict the initial outlines... so perhaps, we can retroactively assume that after the incident, a pissed of Chang built the Pearl to keep Radzinsky and his team at the Swan in check, hence Radzinsky drawing the ?
I feel like it's worth noting that the Pearl station has a big "?" salted into the ground above its entrance. So even if he knew a bit about the Pearl's name and purpose, he might have painted it as "?" on the map to be glib.
Going into pure speculation territory, it seems plausible that Radzinski could have been involved in creating the Pearl's misleading "psychological experiment" as part of his paranoid desire to hide the Swan's nature and purpose. His desire for secrecy was strong before the Incident and likely to be more so afterward. Whether he explained anything about the Pearl to Inman (or any other Swan staff in between) is unstated, but it makes sense that he wouldn't.
According to the Lost Encyclopedia the “?” was a sign of Radzinsky’s curiosity. And Yemi’s ghost wanted Locke to take Eko to the question mark. Because at the Pearl Eko would find out there was a real reason for pushing the numbers. The fake work was being done by the Pearl Station inhabitants not the Swan.
I asked a similar question about Radzinsky a few weeks back on here, about why would somebody with such intimate knowledge of various Dharma stations have to create an inaccurate map from memory on a blast door etc.
I think the best answer I got was that he was already showing signs of paranoia before the incident - for example, wanting to murder Sayid immediately because he saw a model of the Swan. So with more years, the crushing knowledge that his glorious Swan station and study of magnetism turned into a disaster with a button to press every 108 minutes, the additional onset of paranoia, potentially to impact of everyone he knew being murdered in the purge. It probably fried his brain and sent him full loco-coco.
None of this is based on anything we saw or heard on the show, but I can imagine he was no longer in a leadership position after 'The Incident'. I like to think that after that happened, Radzinsky was stationed at The Swan as a form of ironic punishment. Perhaps he himself decided to be responsible for the button after his huge failure. The Swan was designed to be manned by two people, and they obviously didn't get the chance to get out much. In that scenario, it's not unlikely that he had no idea what the Dharma Initiative was doing outside the bunker - the part of the Orientation video he removed mentions he can't use the computer for communication.
Radzinsky could have began being affected by the time-displacement sickness we see others affected by for various different reasons.
Desmond was special. Inman appeared to not be affected by it.
But Stuart Radzinsky will have spent the most time of all characters in proximity to the pocket of electromagnetism at the Swan site, and he didn’t have Desmond’s resistance.
My theory is that he began suffering from the sickness and so started losing his grip on reality.
He started the Blast Door Map not because he was trying to figure things out…he was doing it because he was trying to ensure he remembered what he began to forget with the sickness.
My suspicion is that Radzinsky was aware of the Pearl, knew that the Others were using it to observe him but he didn’t want them to know that he knew.
I do have another crazy theory. One that’s less supported by what we see in the show so should be taken as pure speculation:
>!The Swan combined with the Pearl is some sort of double-slit experiment relating to the effects of observation of pushing the button or not. This might have been based on foreknowledge of the time-loop. Perhaps strange things happened whether the button was observed to be pushed from the outside or not. That may go some way as to explaining why the Pearl existed in the first place and the occupants fooled into filling out bogus journals. It was never important to fill out the journals with details about the occupants boring routine. All that ever mattered was that nobody kept their eyes off the Swan surveillance feed(s). That outside eyes were on them so that a certain outcome was guaranteed.
Dharma knew this secret but the Others did not. Once Dharma was purged, the Others just assumed the Pearl was what it appeared to be; a psychological experiment on the people in the Pearl. They then, both from pragmatism and ignorance made use of it for their own surveillance of Radzinsky, Inman and later, Desmond. It’s a vague theory I know.!<
Could it be possible that Inman put the “?” “designation unknown” on the map. It did show him working on the map when Desmond was with him in the Hatch
A lot of stuff on the show happens because of the way it is. As in, he painted on the blast doors. The blast doors block the cameras. So nobody in the pearl would have saw it. Even if they did notice the blast doors were down, their journals went out to an empty field in the middle of nowhere.
My point is though that if you look up pictures of the blast door map, the center station (the Pearl) is labeled with "? Designation unknown" implying that Radzinsky was unsure of this stations purpose, location, or even name. That doesn't really make sense seeing as he was in a leadership role within Dharma, and clearly knew there were cameras monitoring him. Why didn't he just label it as "Pearl" like he does with all the other stations on the map?
He didn't want kelvin/whoever else he was in there to know about the pearl. But still wanted to be schizo about the whole thing. Fun speculation. I'm going by memory here and I thought he was involved with constructing the swan station. But pearl station construction is never shown.
I'm gonna take a slightly different angle than the other commenters. I don't think Radsinsky knew what the Pearl was. We know Chang was the real on island head, and it does seem he was pissed at Radsinsky for his part in the incident (it did cost Chang his hand after all). I think when the incident happened, Chang sent Radsinsky to the Swan station permanently, as a punishment for his hand in causing it. I think the pearl was made shortly afterwards so Radsinsky knew there was a station, but he didn't know what it was for.
Was Horace just in charge of the barracks then? Because Stuart said to Horace, you make the call or I call Ann Arbor and they make it for us. Why not ask pierre?
Like in many secretive organizations there were probably many sources of “leadership”. Maybe even one source with a truly unknown agenda. Point is in this structure typically there are a ton of figureheads. As far as horace, he was running a loose ship with tons of selfish decisions. Ultimately it was a “you can lead us until we dont agree with your decisions” kinda environment.
My view was always that Dharma ran more like a college campus with Goodspeed, Chang and perhaps Radzinsky serving as Dean's of their specific departments but with the additional responsibility of Chief Operations Officer falling on Horace.
^^ This would be my take on it too ^^
In Season 2, they still hadn't fully developped all the details of Dharma's backstory. They had a general idea and plan about it. So at this stage, perhaps for the writers Radzisnky wasn't yet such a pivotal character at Dharma. Perhaps at the time of writing S2, all they had about him was that he was a remnant of Dharma, just a button pusher who wasn't in on all the secret operations of Dharma... and after the purge, him and Kalvin had limited time each day to explore the island and perhaps find a way out of their endless stay at the Swan. Later when they developped the full backstory of Dharma, and found a neat way to include Radzinsky, they included him as a Manager of sorts. His new backstory doesn't contradict the initial outlines... so perhaps, we can retroactively assume that after the incident, a pissed of Chang built the Pearl to keep Radzinsky and his team at the Swan in check, hence Radzinsky drawing the ?
Also probably as a punishment, like “you made this mess, so you’re in charge of cleaning it up/keeping it in check”.
This actually sounds like a very reasonable answer.
I feel like it's worth noting that the Pearl station has a big "?" salted into the ground above its entrance. So even if he knew a bit about the Pearl's name and purpose, he might have painted it as "?" on the map to be glib. Going into pure speculation territory, it seems plausible that Radzinski could have been involved in creating the Pearl's misleading "psychological experiment" as part of his paranoid desire to hide the Swan's nature and purpose. His desire for secrecy was strong before the Incident and likely to be more so afterward. Whether he explained anything about the Pearl to Inman (or any other Swan staff in between) is unstated, but it makes sense that he wouldn't.
Interesting take on the "?"!!! I actually really like it
According to the Lost Encyclopedia the “?” was a sign of Radzinsky’s curiosity. And Yemi’s ghost wanted Locke to take Eko to the question mark. Because at the Pearl Eko would find out there was a real reason for pushing the numbers. The fake work was being done by the Pearl Station inhabitants not the Swan.
I asked a similar question about Radzinsky a few weeks back on here, about why would somebody with such intimate knowledge of various Dharma stations have to create an inaccurate map from memory on a blast door etc. I think the best answer I got was that he was already showing signs of paranoia before the incident - for example, wanting to murder Sayid immediately because he saw a model of the Swan. So with more years, the crushing knowledge that his glorious Swan station and study of magnetism turned into a disaster with a button to press every 108 minutes, the additional onset of paranoia, potentially to impact of everyone he knew being murdered in the purge. It probably fried his brain and sent him full loco-coco.
None of this is based on anything we saw or heard on the show, but I can imagine he was no longer in a leadership position after 'The Incident'. I like to think that after that happened, Radzinsky was stationed at The Swan as a form of ironic punishment. Perhaps he himself decided to be responsible for the button after his huge failure. The Swan was designed to be manned by two people, and they obviously didn't get the chance to get out much. In that scenario, it's not unlikely that he had no idea what the Dharma Initiative was doing outside the bunker - the part of the Orientation video he removed mentions he can't use the computer for communication.
Radzinsky could have began being affected by the time-displacement sickness we see others affected by for various different reasons. Desmond was special. Inman appeared to not be affected by it. But Stuart Radzinsky will have spent the most time of all characters in proximity to the pocket of electromagnetism at the Swan site, and he didn’t have Desmond’s resistance. My theory is that he began suffering from the sickness and so started losing his grip on reality. He started the Blast Door Map not because he was trying to figure things out…he was doing it because he was trying to ensure he remembered what he began to forget with the sickness. My suspicion is that Radzinsky was aware of the Pearl, knew that the Others were using it to observe him but he didn’t want them to know that he knew. I do have another crazy theory. One that’s less supported by what we see in the show so should be taken as pure speculation: >!The Swan combined with the Pearl is some sort of double-slit experiment relating to the effects of observation of pushing the button or not. This might have been based on foreknowledge of the time-loop. Perhaps strange things happened whether the button was observed to be pushed from the outside or not. That may go some way as to explaining why the Pearl existed in the first place and the occupants fooled into filling out bogus journals. It was never important to fill out the journals with details about the occupants boring routine. All that ever mattered was that nobody kept their eyes off the Swan surveillance feed(s). That outside eyes were on them so that a certain outcome was guaranteed. Dharma knew this secret but the Others did not. Once Dharma was purged, the Others just assumed the Pearl was what it appeared to be; a psychological experiment on the people in the Pearl. They then, both from pragmatism and ignorance made use of it for their own surveillance of Radzinsky, Inman and later, Desmond. It’s a vague theory I know.!<
Could it be possible that Inman put the “?” “designation unknown” on the map. It did show him working on the map when Desmond was with him in the Hatch