SPOILER WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN EPISODE 7  OF SEASON 2 OF ASHES TO ASHES AND INFORMATION FROM THE EPISODE 8 TRAILER AND PRESS RELEASE

So my poor pet officer continues to harangue me. He wants no part of all this. He is weak. But I hope still useful to me.

But it is hard. God, it is.

Alex dug deeper just as I thought (hoped?) She would. She found the young me. The callow youth. The earnest woodentop. And I shot him. I shot myself. The first man ever to live through a successful suicide attempt! So all those time-travel theorists turn out to be a bunch of eejits. You meet yourself and time doesn’t fold in on itself. It’s not the end of the world.

But it was the oddest thing. I looked into his eyes and he was like a stranger to me. It wasn’t like meeting myself at all. It was like staring at a photo in an album. I realize now that it’s our memories that form us. Our life experiences. His experiences were so malformed. He had yet to go through what I went through just a week from now. The moment in time that changed everything for me. Made me the man I am today.

Operation Rose is coming. It is imminent.

But I worry that Alex is not focused. Gene Hunt leading her astray. Clouding her mind. I need her to focus. I need her to see what is important here. Which means pulling her away from him. It’ll be tricky. They are tied tighter than either of them know.

But I will do it.

My Team is assembled.

My vehicles ready.

The loss of the fire-arms are a set-back but they’ll be replaced soon enough.

My pet within Fenchurch, my poor DC Skelton, will have one last task to perform. A crucial task.

And then it’s time.

Cry havoc and let slip ….

The Rose will bloom.

And my mission will be accomplished.

Goods luck Alex.

I’m thinking of you.

Of us both.

With the revelation in the last episode that the traitor is Chris, and the information given in the trailer and this diary entry it is clear that Summers is not finished with Chris and needs him in order for Operation Rose to be a success. The only question is what task is it that he wants Chris to perform. I suspect that he may want Chris to try to put a wedge between Gene and Alex. Assuming this entry is placed after episode 7 ends it also shows that Summers is unaware that Chris is compromised and this may be the key to the exposure and failure of Operation Rose.

I have to wonder about the meaning of the next couple of paragraphs, now while Summers is possibly insane and certainly dangerous given how easily he “committed suicide” on his younger self, I wonder if the debate about memories is significant to the larger question of is the Ashes world, the past or and alternate past, or is it a form of shared dream world partly formed from peoples memories.

As episode 7 showed, Summers is utilising his knowledge of the past and using it to manipulate what happens, this is where he has a big advantage over Alex (and Sam) in that Alex was a child in the early 1980′s and less aware of what happened. Summers however was already a police officer and so much more aware of events that were going on and apparently whatever happened in the Original Operation Rose put him on the path to disgrace and corruption from his original honest nature.

If the events of episode 7 occurred in the original timeline (or events close to them) it is possible that this is how the older Summers knew that Alex was out of place, as he could have met the original team which did not have Alex in it. If correct this also suggests as demonstrated by the end of series 1 and Alex’s revelation that Gene rescued her, that Gene Hunt is a real person though some of the double meaning of Genes comments suggests there is more to him than meets the eye.

Summers also states that he needs to pull Gene and Alex apart and this puts the character of Jenette mentioned in the Episode 8 press releases under suspicion, the press release also suggests that he is at least for a short time successful in this given that Gene starts to suspect Alex given her odd behaviour.

We are still no closer to knowing precisely what Operation Rose is though, it could be the job mentioned in the initial press release though that does seem a little ordinary and a possible let down given the rhetoric in the earlier diary entries, so it could be something else, even so I have faith in the writers given the high quality of the series so far that I will end up impressed.

Earlier Diary Entries

Thoughts on Diary Entries 1-3

Thoughts on Diary Entry 4