(5) - THE COMMITTEE (5.1) - What do we know about the Committee? Its organization is hierarchial, with a series of concentric circles dictating who has power and who doesn't. The people in the center circle control the entire Committee, and the people in the outer circle do the work. Dr. Morgan was in the outer circle; Oliver Sampson is a few circles into the Committee leadership. (From a series of statements from Oliver Sampson during "5D.") "There are no answers when it comes to the Committee. You open a door, there's another one right behind it. The more you peel the onion, the more you sting your eyes." (said by Oliver Sampson, via Dave Kliman ) And a FOX press release , via Todd Palino , has this to say about the Committee: THE COMMITTEE Sometimes benevolent, sometimes nefarious, always mysterious, the Committee is an enigma to Sydney Bloom. She is unsure what the organization is or what it represents. The government is involved, big business is involved, but the Committee reports to neither. Was her father involved in the Committee? And, if he was, to what degree? Oliver Sampson tells her the Committee is an ancient secret society of intelligent men and women. They have been in existence for many years and have been strategically involved in crucial points of world history. They seek alternate solutions to social problems. The Committee is structured as a series of concentric circles. At the core is a small group which makes the decisions. Sydney learns that the Committee was and is very interested in VR research -- especially the work that Dr. Bloom as doing before the accident, as well as Sydney's own experimentation. What she also comes to find is that the Committee exerts measureless control over their agents. Once you're in, they don't let you out. This last bit seems to indicate that Sydney is, in effect, working for the Committee. She doesn't want to, and she tried to stop it (see the first section of "5D") but she is. She's getting assignments and working them out. "Control Freak" tells us some more information about the Committee: that the Committee was involved in some very scary activities; that its agents are completely dispensable; and that the Committee tried to kill Oliver Sampson. See section 5.5 for more speculation on the structure of the Committee. After watching "Reunion," wrote this: The references to knights, keepers, the Crusades and family ties and traditions brings to my mind the secret Order of the Knights Templar... a suggestion of the existence of the Committee in Medieval times. We also learned in "Reunion" that the Committee had strong generational ties. Abernathy -- Oliver's "keeper" (a sort of guardian/Committee contact) -- worked with Oliver's father and was apprenticed to Oliver's grandfather. Lisa Cunningham writes: I have always thought Trilateral Commission when I think of the Committee. Anyone else get this feeling or see the resemblance? (5.2) - Does Jackson Booth work for the Committee? Yes. Oliver Sampson said in "5D" that Booth had been employed by the Committee occasionally, but that to the best of his knowledge, Booth wasn't employed by the Committee when he killed Dr. Morgan. (5.3) - Does Dr. Joseph Bloom (Sydney's father) work for the Committee? Yes, according to Oliver Sampson in the final part of "Facing the Fire." Sydney comes to grips with this during the next episode, "Simon's Choice," in real life sequences and VR sequences. In "Reunion," we learned that if Samantha wasn't with Dr. Bloom, he would've probably killed himself. (5.4) - Does the Committee know about Duncan's ability to go into VR? It seemed that Duncan was the only one who knew. But folks on alt.tv.vr5 thought differently. Lokeria thinks that Duncan is actually a member of the Committee, and that would explain why Oliver Sampson hasn't realized that Duncan can go into VR.5. (She reasons that Sampson should have known that Duncan could go into VR.5 when Duncan arrived at the hospital in "Escape.") Ashley Majzels says that Sampson is ignoring or witholding his knowledge of Duncan's VR abilities because he wants a secret weapon against the other factions in the Committee. (See section 5.5.) Michael Lichter advanced some more questions and theories. He posted: The episode guide mentions that Duncan went into VR.5 in "Escape" and wonders whether or not Oliver knows about this. What puzzled me was that neither Duncan nor Sydney seemed to note Duncan's ventures into VR.5 as anything remarkable. It seemed like the writers wanted us to think that it was the hardware that did it, not Duncan himself. Another, more basic thing I don't understand is why the Committee would have waited until Sydney had her first VR.5 experience to pounce on her. If her father and sister were so important to them, you would think they would have imprisoned her, tested her abilities, and forced her to work for them way back when. Ditto for Duncan, who they seem to have no interest in at all. It certainly would seem reasonable to me to expect that if Sam had been exposed to the "VR field", so had her sister and possibly their constant companion. In "Reunion," we learned that Sydney also knew that Duncan was able to go into VR. (5.5) - Are there divisions within the Committee? During "Escape," we learn that there are, indeed, factions within the Committee itself. My impression was that Oliver Sampson said he wanted to protect Sydney, but that he kidnapped her because some people higher up wanted her kidnapped. Lisa Cunningham got a different impression: I thought he said that he kidnapped her back from the faction torturing her and that in teir escape, this faction ran her down with a car, sending her into a coma. I thought that he kidnapped her back from the kidnappers and took her to a safe zone, the hospital. In "Control Freak," we found that the Committee's agents may not agree with what the Committee does, but the Committee wins anyway. In "Reunion," Oliver had decided to put Sydney's welfare ahead of his own. Instead of blindly following orders, he warned Sydney that he'd been ordered to kill her, and tried to get her and Duncan on a plane. If there really are factions, it explains some of the puzzles we've been exposed to. For example, Sampson seemed genuinely surprised when (during "5D") he and Sydney found that Dr. Morgan was not in his casket. Perhaps another faction (without the knowledge of Sampson) took Morgan's body and put it in cryogenic suspension. Ashley Majzels wrote: His speech in the Asylum episode (my favorite to date) suggests that their may be a covert war within the Commitee... look at the assignments Syd's gotten lately.. The Prisoner episode, she had to determine an unwilling (he certainly wasn't cooperative) persons motivations in a highly emotional situation. The Air Force Pilot episode, she was able to call up repressed memories (and implant new ones, albiet acciendentally). So far, all her assignments could be construed as to making her into a perfect spy/sabatouer. Perhaps the Commitee has her sister also being trained elsewhere, perhaps by those elements of the Comitee that are "less desireable". Now there's a plot twist... a convert VR war waged by Syd versus Sam... Shane Huson added: This might indicate a governmental or military slant to the Committee. Up till now, I've assumed them to be an independent organization. In other words, a government, or the military of a particular nation, could be funding and controlling the Committee. John Dobbin added: There are a few things that we have learned about the Committee in the last weeks. The first is that the Committee is not a homogenous secret society. It encompasses many people in many fields. There seems to be various branches of the Committee. For example, there are political, corporate and scientific wings to the Committee. The Committee's scientific wing was comprised of Dr. Bloom and Dr. Morgan. This much we know. There work would appears to have been commissioned by the Commitee directly. Dr. Bloom's involvement with VR was kept secret but Sydney Bloom was able to find Dr. Morgan because of his reputation in the academic world for VR research. This suggests that the scientific wing of the Committee has legitimate careers for their operatives that are often linked to their area of expertise. The Committee's corporate wing has only recently been revealed. The businessman known as Patterson is a member of the corporate wing. He was also once a member of the political or governmental wing. His job as an FAA investigator is evidence of that. Lastly, the Committee's political or governmental wing has shown that it includes such diverse characters as Booth, the assassin and Oliver Sampson, the intelligence officer and possible federal agent. It has been shown that members of the Committee identify themselves with a ring that has their secret society emblem carved into it. The Committee's secrecy extends to the group as a whole. No one knows the inner circle including, it would appear, Sampson. For lower ranked operatives such as Dr. Morgan, there may have been only one or two links to the Committee. The rest of the Committee could have been, and most likely was, a mystery to him. For this reason, after Dr. Morgan's possible death, Sampson was brought into the game because of his wider knowledge of the Committee's aims and his abilty to protect Sydney. The most startling aspect about the Committee is that factions within it are possibly fighting a battle for control of the organization. The possible deaths of Dr. Bloom, Dr Morgan and a host of others disposed of by Booth suggests that there are elements of the Committee that will stop at nothing to get what they want. (Note that FAA means Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA is a U.S. government agency, part of the Department of Transportation, that regulates and promotes air transportation.) Lisa Cunningham says she thinks that the Committee is "an international secret organization, not controlled by a particular country or group but more along the lines of an independent consortium." In "Reunion," Oliver Sampson said straight out that a faction of the Committee wanted Sydney dead, and that the "mainstream" part of the Committee probably did not. The tall mysterious stranger also said that there were "fractures at the top," implying a weakness in the inner circle of the Committee. (5.6) - Does the Committee have a symbol? We first learned, in "Facing the Fire," that the Committee was represented by a symbol (a seal) with the encoded motto: "Enter the labyrinth." In "Control Freak," we learned that Committee members wear a ring with the Committee's symbol on it. And in "Reunion," when Sydney had to rescue Nora Bloom from her catatonic state, we saw her enter VR.7, fly through a labyrinth of "Wolfenstein 3D"-like passages, and realize that the labyrinth was actually the Committee's symbol. (5.7) - What's the Committee's history? Vikki Godwin speculated: > Do we know how long TC has been in existance? The only > reference I can remember to it would be in "Reunion" when > Oliver talks about his grandfather being in TC, which would > mean at least 75 years or so. I wouldn't doubt it if it has > been around for 200 years, but I'm curious if there's any other > proof anywhere. Somehow, I can imagine this thing crawling around for several hundred years. Who knows what even originally started it - although I just had a thought about that. Pure speculation (yeah, like that's stopped me before!) :) The Committee looks for "alternative solutions to problems," or something like that. A previous poster suggested that Abernathy's references to knights and Grail quests would be a possible hint to a medieval existence of the group. OK, let's combine these two bits of info, and propose a possible origin for the Committee either in the Middle Ages, or else slightly before then. In this case, the Committee would represent an attempt to preserve knowledge. Didn't Oliver even say that the Committee was a group of "intelligent men and women"? So, I imagine TC as preserving knowledge from the flames, encouraging learning and research where possible...except, over time, TC's original noble goals became the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, or for the sake of gaining and maintaining power: "The gaining of territories or weapons...or even minds," to paraphrase Abernathy. This eventually led to the formation of the faction that Abernathy was involved in. Well, that's my speculation, which is admittedly based, in part, on somebody else's speculation. Take it with a grain of salt...or maybe a whole salt lick! ;)