4/16/2007

Spoiling the ending of "Life On Mars"


Am I the only person left feeling disappointed by the final episode of the BBC's Life On Mars ? I skillfully avoided hearing how it ended for 5 days and finally caught up with it on my Sky+ box last night, and although gripping, it also left me feeling a bit let down.

I understand that he could have picked up his "modern" policing techniques from Hyde CID, but there were too many questions left unanswered. For example :

1) If he isn't Sam Tyler and is undercover from Hyde and suffering amnesia, won't his memory come back and he return to Hyde ?

2) If he imagined the future, how could he know all the technological advances (Virgin mobile phones, stingers, CD's, etc, etc ?

3) If he imagined the future, how could he know about future events (The Birmingham Six, Starsky and Hutch, Semtex, modern names for heroin, etc, etc)

To me it just seemed like the ending was tacked on as an after thought.

Shame, as it was a great series, just let down right at the very end.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suggest you take yourself off to The Railway Arms message board ...

Anthony said...

I understood it as the whole "undercover from Hyde" thing was just another thing his brain was up to whilst he was in a coma (there was no contradiction between him meeting his mum, dad and himself and seeing gravestones with their names on - his brain was making it up as it went along, rather like a dream).

But that when he went back he decided he preferred it in his 1973 coma, and killed himself

Anonymous said...

He never came out of the coma. The Hyde part and the phone number were on his room door. The re-visit to the present day were all in his head, and none of that was real. If you've been in a coma, do you think you can just put your jacket on and leave the hospital. His brain allowed him to compare the modern day sterile policing to what he had in 1973 and he decided to go back and help. He did not actually jump of the roof at the end, it was just an analogy for him deciding to go back to 1973 and stay there.

Nich Starling said...

I know all that. it does not, however, explain how he knoew about future events like those listed.

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