Is This The Real Life?

Life on Mars finished on Tuesday. It’s been a phenomenal unmissable tv moment for two whole series. But everyone seems to be moaning about the ending, although I can’t see why.

The premise for the show was that Sam Tyler, a detective from 2006, had an accident and woke up in 1973. The show captured all the fun of 1970s police shows like The Sweeney, but used Sam’s character to contrast them with modern attitudes. The big question throughout was whether Sam was in a coma and dreaming he was in 1973, had somehow travelled back in time to 1973 or if he was in 1973, but only thought he was from 2006.

If you’ve not seen the last episode, don’t read on, as there’s likely to be spoilers.

As well as the weird test card girl and people talking to Sam through his tv and radio, there was a recurring theme of the Wizard of Oz – Gene Hunt often referred to Sam as Dorothy, Sam often spoke of how he wanted to go home, Frank Morgan (the officer from Hyde) was also the name of the actor who played the Wizard in the 1939 film. These were highlighted by the use of Over The Rainbow on the soundtrack of the last episode. But what did these have to do with Sam and his getting home? As the episode was progressing I was following this thought more and more (associating characters – Annie was the Scarecrow, Dorothy’s best friend and clever without knowing it, Ray was the Tin Man and Chris the Cowardly Lion) it did seem like Sam would have to kill the wicked witch (Hunt) to get home. But then I thought that in the Wizard of Oz it isn’t the killing of the witch that gets Dorothy home, but her wanting to go. And so it was with Sam.

His discovery that he had been in a coma seemed to fit the Wizard of Oz theme. In the film Dorothy wakes up at home, thinking all her adventures have been a dream:

DOROTHY
But I did leave you, Uncle Henry — that’s just the trouble. And I tried to get back for days and days.

AUNT EM
There, there, lie quiet now. You just had a bad dream.

…

DOROTHY
No. But it wasn’t a dream — it was a place.

…

DOROTHY
No, Aunt Em — this was a real, truly live place. And I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice but most of it was beautiful. But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, I want to go home. And they sent me home.

But then came the real twist. Sam was unhappy with his modern life, so jumps off a roof and back into 1973 in time to save his friends, including Hunt. And he was left to live happily ever after in the 1970s (and presumably change policing for the better). But this doesn’t seem to have pleased a lot of people. They seem unhappy that the 1973 world was a fantasy, all dreamed up in the head of comatose Sam. But was it? It was unclear if this was the case, or if Sam had somehow managed to find a way to travel to this alternative time by leaving his current life.

I’ve been thinking more about the Wizard of Oz. In the books, it wasn’t all a dream, but a real place that Dorothy found by accident, and somewhere she was able to return to. So could it be that neither the present day nor the 1973 world were fantasy, but were both real in some sort of parallel existence, like Dorothy’s present day and Oz? Then there’s no let down, no cop out. And it leaves the door wide open for the spin-off series.