Life on Mars - explained (more Spoilers)


It's interesting what a night's sleep will do. It's natural of course to want to post immediately after the end of a show like LoM but a few hours brings greater clarity.

By the time I woke up this morning I felt pretty convinced there are two possible explanations that work. Both start with Sam in a coma in 2006, imagining 1973 (no real time travel). The options diverge in the train tunnel moment.

1. Sam really does wake up in 2006, but the present doesn't seem the same any more. He really does commit suicide, but continues on in 1973 in the afterlife (or at least in the moment before he dies).

2. Sam never woke up. His return to 2006 was just another layer under his 1973 delusion. He dreamed within the dream that he could return to 2006 - but he rejected that option and chose to stay in the 1973 dream - i.e. never to leave the coma.

Pan's Labyrinth and Brazil are both in evidence here of course. (In Pan, we see Ofelia's final thoughts; the film ends just as presumably her life ends).

I think there are specific hints that can support either interpretation. As others have noted, the test card follows the end of the programmes. The test card girl switching off at the end could be Sam hitting the ground in option 1 - he made his choice for those few seconds.

The second interpretation arose from reflecting on what actually happened after Sam woke up - I realised that the 2006 scenes seemed very dreamlike. Sam wakes up after a traumatic extended coma, puts a suit on and goes straight back to work? I don't think so! The jumps from the hospital to work and meetings felt just like a dream - separate scenes without connections between them. And the comment about only feeling things in reality is a classic comment about dreams vs. reality (pinch yourself!).

In fact I really liked this interpretation in terms of a way to fit the evidence, but it's apparent that it isn't the correct one as the writers have now revealed all. (Thanks to surliminal for pointing this link out). And it's the first interpretation that is the truth.

This leaves me with two final thoughts.

Firstly, thinking of Ashes to Ashes (the sequel). The BBC article says that "Aside from Eighties’ fashions, Gene will also have to cope with a sexy new female sidekick, DCI Alex Drake ... After an accident in 2008, the no-nonsense detective finds herself back in time, interacting with characters she’d previously read about in reports logged by a certain Sam Tyler." Since Sam's resolution implies that the 1973 people only existed in his imagination, it's interesting that Alex will meet the same ones. This makes his recording of the tape at the end of the episode critical as it seems Alex's imagination when she has an equivalent accident.

Secondly, though, I really related to the writer's comment "We had to be strong and stay true to the line that we always intended. For me, it was much more important that there was a strong emotional closure to the story. That was more important than a massive twist, although I still think we managed to try and pull the rug out from under the audience a little bit."

I find myself with a very positive feeling about the ending of the series despite the explanation and despite my comments of a week ago that a resolution where it was all just a dream (i.e. where all the actions of the series didn't touch the real world) would seem like a cop out. At the end of the day the emotional closure was so strong for Sam - even making suicide a positive choice for him as an individual - that the show satisfied and that is a great testament to it.