I think the ending is a failure on the authors' part, not so much of the story, but of the desire to simultaneously write in a genre and to be seen to have not written in that genre. This raises more questions than it answers. A lot of the ending - not to mention Ashes to Ashes, which I both long for and dread, would seem to make sense only if the 1973-world has some sort of reality outside Sam's brain or if he never physically woke up, and 2007 was another part of the dream (otherwise it's a rather sad story of a cancer patient suffering from post-operative depression who kills himself).
If Sam is dead, and the final scene is his final second of life stretching out to a subjective eternity: then how on earth can Ashes to Ashes feature the detective he sent his tape to in 2007 recognising the characters he describes? And if Sam is "in" A2A because it's all taking place in his imagination, as the BBC Wales site says, then how on earth is he dead? Some one suggested to me that in the final "eternal second" Sam could imagine the story of the sequel, but I think that's unlikely if 1973 really is just Sam's imagination. Sam could certainly be imagining her story in that last second - but we've already effectively been told Sam's in Heaven, so why is he imaging someone else he's never met meeting his dearest friends ten years down the line - and his friends are without him. It's a bit weird. It's not that I don't want to see more of Gene doing his magnificent monster act, but if he really has no existence except as part of Sam's unlikely perfect world, then what is he doing away from Sam?
I think the writer wants it both ways; to have a cool story about someone who gets the fantasy he wants - and it's real! He's in big-H Heaven! - and to be simultaneously too cool to have written something like that and throw in a dig about fans overanalysing something that's "just tv" (with the test card girl being a joke to - or on - the viewer along the lines of "we all know we've been only wacthing tv, now do something else, here, I'll turn the tv off for you").
>I think the ending is a failure on the authors' part, not so much of the story, but of the desire to simultaneously write in a genre and to be seen to have not written in that genre.
I don't think the genre was the problem here. They could have kept 1973 on exactly the same level of reality/unreality *and* even kept Sam there permanently, thus giving all the "OMG Sam can't leave Gene/Annie!!!!11" people the happy ending they wanted, with only a few minor changes to what they actually did. No outright sf stuff would have been needed. It could all still have been exactly what it seems to be now, a dream in between life and death or a version of the afterlife. All they would have needed to do was to have Sam die 'properly' (instead of by stupiditysuicide). See my suggestion for an alternative interpretation near the end of my rant. They could have achieved that without *any* changes to the storyline at all - they just would have needed to emphasise a few things slightly differently than they chose to do.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing! It certainly could all be imaginary - including the return to 2007, and that would be more consistent. In fact, John Simms believed that Sam never made it back to 2007 - I'm presuming that's why he played the suicide scene and the previous one as he did.
Where I see the disjunct is that the writer is disingenuous enough to praise simms acting in that scene, to mention his interpretation of "2007", and then to stress that Sam really did go back to 2007, but chose 1973. I think the writers want to hjave their cake and eat it; they've repeatedly gone on record as saying they wanted to make a police show like The Sweeney, and regretting that they couldn't do that, as such a sexist and racist show would never be aired today. Life on Mars is a self-referential and self-critical Sweeney - and it's brilliant, don't get me wrong, I love it. But it does depend on a fairly standard science-fiction cliche, and I think the writers are backing away from that in the final scene, for whatever reason. (And the reason I've most frequently seen in writers for backing away from science-fiction is so they can claim they were writing a more "acceptable" genre).
The final scene is different in feel, I think, to the other 1973 scenes. 1973 was always idealised in the other episodes - when Sam runs up against prejudices he sorts them out in some way: he usually manages to change at least some people's mind, or he gets to punch racist thugs, and so on. It's incredible sunny in a lot of episodes. Manchester is weirdly clean, for a city filled with industry and vehicles running on leaded petrol. Everyone smokes and nobody coughs. It's an idealised remembered child's-eye view of 1973, in a lot of ways. The final scene takes all of that and ramps it up - now apparently many of the division can be off-duty at the same time, drinking in the middle of the afternoon. Ray forgives Sam . . . Ray forgives Sam! Sam leaves the pub looking for Annie . . . and bumps into her almost immediately. No one seems to hold the "undercover from Hyde" thing against Sam - in fact, it seems to have been forgotten. The team's injuries are apparently no reason for them to take any time off work, and off they go, following a rainbow, on another mission, while the streets fill with innocent children in their wake.
That's different, I think, to what came before. That's the dying fantasy of a character with depression and possibly brain/neural injury following brain surgery. And I think the change in tone is - in part - a result of the cool 1970s cop show the writers wanted to do hinging on its sfnal elements, when they'd have preferred it done straight if they could. The writer even backs away from the ending by saying that while Sam is driving off into the afterlife, it's a subjective one that in reality lasts only a second. And then the wonderful final appearance of the test card girl, which makes the story more open ended and allows interpretive room for 1973 to possibly have a reality outside Sam's head - she's backed away from as well, with the explanation that she was just a joke for/on the viewers to stress that it was all just TV.
I wonder why the BBC originally objected to the suicide? Bad things can and do happen to major characters in British TV, after all.
I agree about the writers...hmpfApril 12 2007, 22:25:14 UTC
being very inconsistent and intellectually lazy about it all. Also, I agree with your dark interpretation of the ending, and I wish they would have put more hints in that this was actually what they *meant* to say, because that, depressing as it is, would have made some kind of sense. *sigh*
"It's not that I don't want to see more of Gene doing his magnificent monster act, but if he really has no existence except as part of Sam's unlikely perfect world, then what is he doing away from Sam"
Think Hyde (Jekyll and Hyde, that is) - Gene is Sam. He's the repressed part, buried until the controlled part steps aside.
If Sam is dead, and the final scene is his final second of life stretching out to a subjective eternity: then how on earth can Ashes to Ashes feature the detective he sent his tape to in 2007 recognising the characters he describes? And if Sam is "in" A2A because it's all taking place in his imagination, as the BBC Wales site says, then how on earth is he dead? Some one suggested to me that in the final "eternal second" Sam could imagine the story of the sequel, but I think that's unlikely if 1973 really is just Sam's imagination. Sam could certainly be imagining her story in that last second - but we've already effectively been told Sam's in Heaven, so why is he imaging someone else he's never met meeting his dearest friends ten years down the line - and his friends are without him. It's a bit weird. It's not that I don't want to see more of Gene doing his magnificent monster act, but if he really has no existence except as part of Sam's unlikely perfect world, then what is he doing away from Sam?
I think the writer wants it both ways; to have a cool story about someone who gets the fantasy he wants - and it's real! He's in big-H Heaven! - and to be simultaneously too cool to have written something like that and throw in a dig about fans overanalysing something that's "just tv" (with the test card girl being a joke to - or on - the viewer along the lines of "we all know we've been only wacthing tv, now do something else, here, I'll turn the tv off for you").
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I don't think the genre was the problem here. They could have kept 1973 on exactly the same level of reality/unreality *and* even kept Sam there permanently, thus giving all the "OMG Sam can't leave Gene/Annie!!!!11" people the happy ending they wanted, with only a few minor changes to what they actually did. No outright sf stuff would have been needed. It could all still have been exactly what it seems to be now, a dream in between life and death or a version of the afterlife. All they would have needed to do was to have Sam die 'properly' (instead of by stupiditysuicide). See my suggestion for an alternative interpretation near the end of my rant. They could have achieved that without *any* changes to the storyline at all - they just would have needed to emphasise a few things slightly differently than they chose to do.
Reply
Where I see the disjunct is that the writer is disingenuous enough to praise simms acting in that scene, to mention his interpretation of "2007", and then to stress that Sam really did go back to 2007, but chose 1973. I think the writers want to hjave their cake and eat it; they've repeatedly gone on record as saying they wanted to make a police show like The Sweeney, and regretting that they couldn't do that, as such a sexist and racist show would never be aired today. Life on Mars is a self-referential and self-critical Sweeney - and it's brilliant, don't get me wrong, I love it. But it does depend on a fairly standard science-fiction cliche, and I think the writers are backing away from that in the final scene, for whatever reason. (And the reason I've most frequently seen in writers for backing away from science-fiction is so they can claim they were writing a more "acceptable" genre).
The final scene is different in feel, I think, to the other 1973 scenes. 1973 was always idealised in the other episodes - when Sam runs up against prejudices he sorts them out in some way: he usually manages to change at least some people's mind, or he gets to punch racist thugs, and so on. It's incredible sunny in a lot of episodes. Manchester is weirdly clean, for a city filled with industry and vehicles running on leaded petrol. Everyone smokes and nobody coughs. It's an idealised remembered child's-eye view of 1973, in a lot of ways. The final scene takes all of that and ramps it up - now apparently many of the division can be off-duty at the same time, drinking in the middle of the afternoon. Ray forgives Sam . . . Ray forgives Sam! Sam leaves the pub looking for Annie . . . and bumps into her almost immediately. No one seems to hold the "undercover from Hyde" thing against Sam - in fact, it seems to have been forgotten. The team's injuries are apparently no reason for them to take any time off work, and off they go, following a rainbow, on another mission, while the streets fill with innocent children in their wake.
That's different, I think, to what came before. That's the dying fantasy of a character with depression and possibly brain/neural injury following brain surgery. And I think the change in tone is - in part - a result of the cool 1970s cop show the writers wanted to do hinging on its sfnal elements, when they'd have preferred it done straight if they could. The writer even backs away from the ending by saying that while Sam is driving off into the afterlife, it's a subjective one that in reality lasts only a second. And then the wonderful final appearance of the test card girl, which makes the story more open ended and allows interpretive room for 1973 to possibly have a reality outside Sam's head - she's backed away from as well, with the explanation that she was just a joke for/on the viewers to stress that it was all just TV.
I wonder why the BBC originally objected to the suicide? Bad things can and do happen to major characters in British TV, after all.
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Think Hyde (Jekyll and Hyde, that is) - Gene is Sam. He's the repressed part, buried until the controlled part steps aside.
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