Is Lost's "black smoke" the new Rover?

This week's episode of Lost has a lot of people talking, what with Mr. Eko's backstory and all. The "black smoke" is getting plenty of attention too. Here's a screen-cap of Eko staring it down, courtesy of lost.cubit.net:If you go to the above link you'll find PLENTY more captures of the sequence, along with some commentary on what was being seen "inside" the smoke.

I'll admit to still being a relative newcomer to Lost, and I haven't kept up with the discussion boards but it turns out that my theory that the black smoke is a nano-machine cloud has been suggested already. Well, the guy running The Regularly Scheduled TV Show Blog has a great theory about what "Lostzilla" might actually be...

"I think Lostzilla isn't a killing machine but more of a machine to keep them on the island. Thus, it killed the pilot after he let them know there was no hope in waiting to get off the island, and didn't kill Locke or Eko since they've surrendered themselves to living on the island."

Do you know what this means if this turns out to be true? It means that the creators of Lost are getting some of their ideas from the 1970's TV show The Prisoner... in which case they're gonna really start screwing around with our heads. Lookahere...If iomegadrive's theory is spot-on, that means the "black smoke" is doing the exact same thing that the Rover (the homicidal weather balloon) did on The Prisoner!

I can see the final episode of Lost now: Hurley's holding Locke captive down in the hatch and screaming "Who is Number One?!", before ripping Locke's face clean off only to reveal that it's a mask and beneath it... a gorilla. All while the Beatle's "All You Need Is Love" is playing in the background.

Good theory about the black cloud. I like it a lot :-)