The BBC have started running trailers for the Life on Mars Finale. Needless to say the trailer drops some tantalising hints, with DCI Frank Morgan (according to the Radio Times the part played by his namesake in the Wizard of Oz is significant) telling Sam that he is suffering from amnesia, and then a shot of a gravestone belonging to Sam Tyler, but one who died in the nineteenth century. All very confusing, and I’m sure we won’t know what’s really going on until next week.
Tag Archives: Life on Mars
Life on Mars Spins Another Twist
So tonight, the second and final series of Life on Mars kicked off, and in the closing scenes of the first episode spins a massive new twist, when one of the voices who Sam has been hearing, and who up to now have been taken for voices of his Doctors breaking in to his apparent coma, phones Sam up and has a conversation, where Sam is told that he can return home once he has completed his task. More than that, there is a phone number that in the second episode Sam phones back – gets the same person, and is told not to phone again. There are also hints that things Sam is doing in what we thought was a coma, might be having an effect. So is he in a coma, delusional, or is he really somehow back in 1973? It’s all up in the air now, with hints that there is some larger plan involved. Certainly it all seems to be up in the air again, but only a few more episodes before we find out!
Still on Mars
I guess we kind of knew he wasn’t going to wake up, the news that a second series of Life on Mars has been commissioned really meant that he couldn’t leave 1973.
Having said that, the final episode of the first series of Life on Mars was certainly a gripping hour, as Sam discovered the truth about his father, and also finally pieced together his flashbacks.
Following on from the arrest of the local gangland boss back in episode four, rival gangs are fighting for control, one being led by the Morton brothers. As part of the investigation the police find Sam’s father in a hotel room, and the whole episode is Sam trying to find explanations for his father’s behaviour, as more and more of the evidence points towards him being heavily mixed up in the gang. Sam believes that his father is the key to his coma – if only he can persuade his father to stay, then he will wake up.
The finale takes place at a family wedding, the wedding where Sam last saw his father, shortly before he vanished. As Sam follows his father as he walks away from the wedding, he realises that his flashbacks are this same walk, the walk he took as a child, and again, he sees his father beating up an undercover policewoman – Annie – but this time he intervenes. As he gets closer and closer to the truth, he starts to hear more and more of what is going on in 2006. However, he realises that he cannot win – there is no way that he can get his father to stay. If he leaves, the young Sam and his mother will be alone, but if he doesn’t leave, he will be arrested for his criminal activities.
Sam lets his father escape, and with his father, go the voices from 2006, and Sam is left in 1973.
All in all, it has been a superb series. On paper, a drama set in what seems to be someone’s coma based fantasy sounds a decidedly odd premise, however in practice it has worked well. On the one level you have the basic seventies police drama, but on another you get some decidedly subtle moments. These vary from the anachronisms, such as Sam always wearing a modern watch, to points where you don’t know whether the other characters in Sam’s universe are his subconscious, or whatever, but suddenly they seem to be talking to Sam out of time, knowing that he is in his own past. For example in tonight’s episode on a couple of occasions Sam talks to Gene, his DCI, and whilst Sam is talking about waking up from his coma, Gene is talking about his life in 1973 – or is he?
In some ways these scenes are very reminiscent of the conversations of another time-travelling Sam, Sam Beckett in the final episode of Quantum Leap, where Al the barman tells Sam that he is leaping because he wants to do so – in the same way Gene, and other characters have told Sam Tyler that he is staying because he wants to stay – because he has things he wants to do.
Certainly we’ve got no objection if he wants to stay – as we are really quite looking forward to seeing more of Sam and his life in 1973 when they are shown next year!
Life on Mars
Tonight the BBC kicked off probably one of the most eagerly awaited TV series so far this year, Life on Mars. The programme is another production of BBC Wales, the part of the BBC that returned Doctor Who to screens last year, and it is fair to say that Life on Mars might not have come to the screens with such publicity had it not been for the success in getting the new Doctor Who of the ground. Indeed the team behind the show first pitched it to the BBC seven years ago, before Channel 4 picked it up and then got cold feet. Two years ago it ended up back at the BBC and was given the green light.
The show is a strange mix of traditional police show, but with a good deal of weirdness thrown in. It starts with Sam Tyler, a policeman in 2006 involved in investigating a serial killer. He does things very much by the book, and when his girlfriend, also a policewoman decides to go off on her own to follow her hunch after he tries to take her off the case, and then gets taken by the killer, he is frustrated and upset, and narrowly avoids hitting a car driving back to the police station. He gets out of his SUV in shock, and with Life on Mars by David Bowie playing on his iPod, is hit by a car going the other way.
Here is where it starts getting weird, as when he wakes up, he is in exactly the same spot, but over thirty years in the past, in 1973. He’s still a policeman, but things are very different – or are they? As the episode goes on whilst the methods may be radically different, it transpires that the crime that the police in 1973 are investigating is very similar to his case in 2006, indeed it could be that the murderer is one and the same man, released from prison in his own time, and picking up where he left off.
But the big question is whether he really is in 1973, or whether he is actually stuck in a coma. At one point watching the Open University on TV he realises that the presenter has stopped talking about geometry, and is talking to him, trying to wake him up. However against that is the accuracy and detail of the apparent fantasy world he has created, and the fact that he is in an era where he was a child. Like many of the best fantasy dramas there are hints being dropped, and also a fair few red herrings I bet, but I guess we won’t find what is really going on until a lot later in the series.
Of course the great strength of the series seems to be that if you’re not keen on the sci-fi aspects, there is a good old police drama to get into too, plus being 1973, a good dose of nostalgia for those viewers who are old enough to remember the early seventies.
Certainly it was a strong first episode, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.