One Sentence Review

Alex gets back to 1983, and ends up with lots more questions and no answers

Episode Synopsis

Find it here

Thoughts and Analysis

After the long wait if I am honest I found this episode to be a minor disappointment, however that being said it is still a solid base to build on for the mystery of Gene Hunt and what is going on in the world of Life on Mars on Ashes to Ashes.

One of the causes of this may be due to the confusion of the opening minutes in the present day, was Alex out of her coma or not? My initial thoughts where that she was out of her coma but her later comments to Shaz imply that Alex at least thinks she was still in a coma and was “dreaming” the present day. My current thoughts given the end of Life on Mars is that if you dont leave the LOM/A2A world in the correct way you end up out of sync with the real world giving you the longing and ability to return to the world.  I was also annoyed that regardless of whether or not Alex was still in a coma when she was in the present that no mention was made of if she investigated if Gene Hunt really existed or not which would seem to me to be a relatively obvious thing to do.

The biggest disappointment for me though was the whole Kidnapping plot since as soon as Chris mentioned an abandoned warehouse I thought it obvious Dorothy would be found there, and the identity swap of Gary Soaper a slight cliche in hindsight.

These problems aside I did find several aspects of the episode interesting and/or amusing starting with take over of the television’s by the people visiting Alex in her coma and it was a simple but effective way of updating the audience with what the situation was in 1983, and Gene’s method of waking Alex up was amusing and completely in character. This does tie in with my second disappointment regarding the present day part of the episode and that was that we did not spend enough time in it before we returned to 1983. Just before she returned however there were 3 things shown in Alex’s surrounding that may be significant the first is the story on the news about the policeman’s body being found in Lancashire (for the benefit of people unfamiliar with English Geography Lancashire is a county in the North of England close to Manchester the setting of Life on Mars), the second is the time 9.06 and the third is the appearance of the dead policeman behind her.

It is almost certain that the dead policeman in the news report, will turn out to be the same one that Alex is seeing, which then leads to the question of the policeman’s identity. My current preferences to his identity are the “real Gene Hunt” or someone with close ties to him. As for the significance of the time of 9.06 I have no idea unless it was simply to make Jim Keats look suspicious when he mentioned his watch stopping at the same time. When Alex got back to the station there was also an interesting news report on the radio regarding Molly since it mentions “8 years ago” what is the 8 years referring to? Is it some incident that is causing Alex to remain in the coma or has Alex actually been in a coma now for 8 years.

As for Jim Keats and his relationship with Gene, my early thoughts are that he could be Ashes to Ashes version of DCI Frank Morgan in the sense of being someone you initially think is “in on the secret” but isn’t and is out to get Gene for being the type of Cop they don’t like but eventually ends up being far worse than him. It is early days though so my thoughts on this will probably change as the series progresses. I also think that at some point Alex and perhaps most of the Fenchurch East crew will believe or suspect that Gene was involved in Sams death only for him to be comprehensively cleared. As for the question of will Sam Tyler appear ignoring the is John Simm willing question I suspect that if he does it will not be until the penultimate episode at the earliest and depending on the nature of the world he may not appear at all.

Overall then this episode has a slightly disappointing crime of the week, but there were more than enough questions raised to keep me interested in the story. It is also clear from interviews and this episode that there will be elements from Life on Mars “bleeding through” into Ashes and I get a sense of a continuing dark undertone to the series as well. The worst aspect though is that there are now only 7 episodes of this series left before it ends for good.

Episode Rating

7/10