Ashes to Ashes series 2

[Nakrophile]

Have just been shown this. I await.

Topic

[si]

Did you see the ident after Doctor Who leading into Robin Hood, with the exhaust fumes forming the ‘one’ circle? Outstanding.

[Nakrophile]

What?

[si]

The Quatro rounds the corner, with Gene, Alex and co, zooms past the camera down the back alley, with a stream of exhaust smoke, which forms the circle for the Beeb ident. Brilliant.

[SeeYouAtThePartyRichter]

Now THAT is a series I can’t wait for! … not that a new series of Red Dwarf isn’t – of course.

[Tarka Dal]

> The Quatro rounds the corner, with Gene, Alex and co, zooms past the camera down the back alley, with a stream of exhaust smoke, which forms the circle for the Beeb ident. Brilliant.

Oooh. Can we have a video of that?

[si]

Not from me, you can’t – I don’t have the tech knowledge.

[Nakrophile]

Oooooh. So you weren’t talking about the video I posted. Tats a relief. :)

[Ridley]

Alex (still) isn’t a very likable character… in my opinion.

[Ian Symes]

You’re still not a very likeable character… in my opinion.

[Tonguetied]

I watched the first episode of series 2 and noticed that the opening titles lack the dazzle, polish and style of the era, that Life on Mars managed to capture with the 70s. Still I like Gene Hunt and even though the series doesn’t have the wow factor of its parent; with the replacement time traveler Alex Drake having woken up in the 80s, it’s just a rehash of Sam Tyler’s character. It would have made more sense for Gene Hunt and his motley crew to carry on in their own time without any ‘companions’ from the future. It diminishes the concept from Life on Mars. It’s still a very watchable show – well made, good script nailing the seriousness of the crimes with blatant humour and great characterizations.

[Carlito]

> It would have made more sense for Gene Hunt and his motley crew to carry on in their own time without any ?companions? from the future. It diminishes the concept from Life on Mars.

Well, as the Gene Hunt character (and those around him) are, thus far, established as figments of the central characters imagination, it would far too contrived to just continue the show with them, and without Tyler (or a replacement) from the future. It would completely undermine the rules of the fictional universe established in ‘Life on Mars’, therefore pissing on the legacy of the show. Therefore “diminishing the concept”.

Or something like that.

[Carlito]

I’ve seen them all, but I’ve never actually stopped to pay attention to one particular point, which only becomes relevant when you’ve seen the finale anyway: in Life on Mars, are there any scenes in the show not witnessed by/from Sam’s perspective? ie. do we ever have evidence of the world existing without Sam there to see it? And, by extention, is the same true of Ashes to Ashes?

I probably didn’t articulate that very well, but… you know what I mean!

[Tonguetied]

Are they figments of imagination though, I thought it was all established that both time travelers came into a true version of the past with real characters?

[neildo]

Great point Carl, that’s exactly the thing that’s intriguing me about where they’re going with this story in Ashes to Ashes. In Life On Mars, every single scene had Sam in it. There was no evidence of the world without him being there to witness it. But in Ashes to Ashes there most certainly is. Many sequences happen without Alex being present.

[Carlito]

Obviously there’s a mystical element of ‘well, are they real or not then?’ with Ashes to Ashes picking up where Life on Mars left off.

All we know *thus far* is that Sam Tyler was in a coma throughout LoM. Therefore, we assume that Hunt and the gang were all occuring in his mind. However, his ability to return to the same world, at the same time he left, upon committing suicide implies that maybe this wasn’t the case after all (maybe Sam discovered the truth behind his 1973 world between recording his experiences on tape, and throwing himself off the roof?)

Certainly, you could read Ashes to Ashes either way. Alex’s arrival in the exact same world could be a result of her simply having detailed knowledge of Sam’s experiences which are then implemented into her comatose dream (the fact they look exactly the same isn’t really that important)… or you could read it that this world she finds herself in is actually real after all, some kind of mysterious purgatory-like environment, with Gene Hunt as some kind of angelic figure… or it could just turn out that Alex Drake and Sam Tyler are astronauts in an AR machine on their way to Mars…

LOLZ!!!! nah, nobody would come up with an ending THAT inane… would they?

[Muzzy]

Don’t scare me like that Carl

[Carlito]

> Are they figments of imagination though, I thought it was all established that both time travelers came into a true version of the past with real characters?

I think there are implications of that… for example, Sam seemingly rescuing his missing girlfriend by putting away her kidnapper in the past. We know that, at least in his mind, he puts away the guy in “1973” who was committing the murders in 2006. And we then find out his girlfriend is safe, as he can hear her at his bedside.

But that is just an implication. If Sam was really affecting the future, then by putting away her future kidnapper, he would never have been out looking for her, therefore would not have been hit by the car and ended up in a coma to begin with.

Sam having an effect on the future through his actions in 1973 is never explicitly stated. A lot of ‘questions answered’ in 1973 come from Sam’s deductive reasoning/obscured memories becoming clear… ie. his muddled mind had the capacity to solve the mystery in 2006 but he couldn’t access the information. In his coma, he can piece together the situation with his father, he can piece together the fact that they had the wrong guy when they arrested Colin Rhames… things that should have been clear to him, and which he could have solved in the present day had his mind allowed him to.

So I believe these are red herrings, and Sam never had any affect on the future through his actions in the past.

‘The past’ also has its historical inaccuracies (and seems quite the stereotypical portrayal of the era) which could be explained away because it is all constructed in Sam’s mind, based on his assumptions and hazy memories (and viewings of The Sweeney, so it appears!). This isn’t 1973 we are watching, it is the way Sam imagines/remembers 1973 to be.

And there is never any evidence that Gene Hunt and co. are real either. I would have thought that when Sam got out of his coma, he would have done a little research into these people to find out whether they were real and what became of them. Even pay a little visit to Gene Hunt, if he were still alive, or Annie. He never does this (that we saw, anyway). Maybe there’s a good reason for that, yet to revealed, or maybe he simply couldn’t because it was never real.

But maybe (kinda like the alternate dimension made real in Red Dwarf: Back to Earth) simply by creating them in his mind, they BECAME real. The world exists now because Sam MADE it exist.

[ChrisM]

Yes. I think the world actually does exist for real in some form. Whether they actually created it or not themselves…. I’m not convinced, but could be.

I suspect the truth will be that a little squid was smuggled into their bath tubs. Everything including the hit (car for Sam, bullet in the noggin for Alex) are all in their heads. But is it to induce despair, or happiness? Or just…

Okay I’m overdoing that silliness. Spoilers ahead.

I caught the new episode on I-player yesterday. I really liked it. It’s great that they’ve dared to bring in another twist to that world too, i.e. the scene at the start with the nurses* talking about Alex, and then Alex’s strange abducter, the red rose man. And why a rose? Have the writers been reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower?**

*Actual people, not just voices from TV sets or radios. They looked so alike to me to be almost twins too, apart from their different accents.

**I doubt it, roses being a rather common flower used for pressies and freaking out pretty ladies. I find the apparent coincidence of other worlds and roses intriguing though.

[si]

Has anyone seen http://www.thebackintimes.com ?

[Ian Symes]

Oh dear. That Twitter feed at the side is just a feed of *everyone* on Twitter to use the phrase “Ashes to Ashes” in a tweet. This is clearly a very dangerous tactic…

[si]

I see what you’ve done there. The epitome of Maturity, as ever.

[Nakrophile]

I did think it was time travel for Alex, and as such any references to LoM are just what Alex remembers from reading Sam (whose own experience was evidently a fantasy world he created)’s files and reports.

But someone I know reckons that patient at the start of the episode is the mystery man who attacked Alex, which essentially leads to thing not making any sense.

[pfm]

The end of A2A is going to be Hunt waking up from a coma in 2010 (at the end of series 3) with Alex and her situation turning out to be all in Hunt’s mind. Or he wakes up in 2010 and both Alex and Sam are there at his bedside.

[Plastic Percy]

There were no shots that weren’t from Sam Tyler’s POV in ‘Life on Mars’. One of the reasons John Simm called it a day was, because every scene needed to have Sam in it, he spent the longest on set. It led to late night finishing and early starts and Simm probably felt a little tired out from it all. Plus, he probably would have liked to spend more time with his family.

However, in ‘Ashes to Ashes’ there are a number of scenes that don’t involve Alex (one that springs to mind is Ray, Chris and Shaz going through Gene’s bin in the office whilst Alex and Gene are out playing Scooby-Doo. Though apparently this was to stop Keeley Hawes having to go through the same grueling schedule that tired out John Simm.

P.S. – One thing that I never understood was why Sam (or indeed Alex given her interest in Tyler) never checked police records to see if there were a DCI Hunt, DS Carling or DC Skelton working for Manchester CID in 1973.

[pfm]

> One thing that I never understood was why Sam (or indeed Alex given her interest in Tyler) never checked police records to see if there were a DCI Hunt, DS Carling or DC Skelton working for Manchester CID in 1973.

Because it’s not real, it’s just a television programme.

[si]

The end of A2A is going to be Hunt waking up from a coma in 2010 (at the end of series 3) with Alex and her situation turning out to be all in Hunt?s mind. Or he wakes up in 2010 and both Alex and Sam are there at his bedside.

I was actually thinking something similar.

Maybe Gene could wake up to find Mrs Hunt (Alex) and Dr Tyler (Sam) at his bedside, with other Doctors (Ray and Chris) and Nurses (Annie and Shaz) regularly swanning about.

[Ian Symes]

Oh dear. That Twitter feed at the side is just a feed of *everyone* on Twitter to use the phrase ?Ashes to Ashes? in a tweet. This is clearly a very dangerous tactic?

Similarly:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noodlepie/3459683106/sizes/o/

I can’t see this trend lasting very long…

[Muzzy]

For anyone interested who hasn’t got round to buying it yet, Zavvi are selling the season one boxset for ?9.95 http://www.zavvi.co.uk/zavvi/9955771.product

[ChrisM]

Sendit are even cheaper:
http://www.sendit.com/sendit/9955771.product

Strange thing is, comparing the Life on Mars prices, it’s cheaper to buy them individually than as a box set.

http://www.find-dvd.co.uk/search.aspx?title=Life+on+Mars&scategory=title&x=0&y=0

It might have more stuff I guess, but you can tell from the reviews I’ve seen (which isn’t to say there isn’t more details somewhere.)

[Somebody]

Zavvi = Sendit = (various other shopping websites) = The Hut, for the record. There are occasional slight price variations, but they’re effectively different “shops” in a single chain…

[Nakrophile]

Tyler! Hmm…

[si]

I’m pleased that Chris is proving to be quite a decent copper – he’s probably grown and developed the best over the nine years from LoM to A2A.

[Muzzy]

Yeah it was really nice seeing him putting the pieces together when he was interviewing the doctor with Alex. Really enjoyed the episode as a whole actually, seeing Hunt play along with the corruption then reveal to Alex its all a part of an undercover investigation was very satisfying for me.

[Nick R]

You’re playing with them?

[si]

No, it’s just the way I’m standing.

*Very* funny line. I actually sat and applauded, with my sister looking at me like some kind of weirdo.

[Carlito]

Hmmm, he stole my standard response to anybody who ever asks me “are you coming?”.

[si]

Years ago, to celebrate finishing college, most of the coarse, sorry, course pupils went on a pub crawl round Sheffield, which I duly went on, despite not being a big drinker.

After a couple of layabouts had managed to get us all thrown out of The Cossack (yes, it was), I was sat on the kerb, where a couple asked me if I was pissed.

‘No’, I replied honestly, ‘I always look like this’.

That works better if you know what I like.

[Ian Symes]

Hint: he’s really ugly.

[si]

I have piggy eyes.

[Dave]

Swine

[pfm]

Flu

[Jo]

Oh dear. That Twitter feed at the side is just a feed of *everyone* on Twitter to use the phrase ?Ashes to Ashes? in a tweet. This is clearly a very dangerous tactic?

Similarly:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noodlepie/3459683106/sizes/o/

I can?t see this trend lasting very long?

I think G&T should set up a similar feed…

[Dave]

It’s been too long since the word Twonk was used on British television

[Ben Paddon]

It was in the original TV draft of the Jump Leads pilot, which may explain why the BBC decided to pass on it.

[pfm]

Great episode this week. I wonder how far they’re going to delve into the darker side of Hunt’s nature, and the Masonic subplot.

[J_Spaced]

Yeah, getting deeper into the Masons and all that, good story. But surely the point of being undercover in the Masons is to at least pretend occasionally to toe the line?

“Make it disappear Gene… I note it’s not disappearing… no seriously, make it vanish… is there a reason you’re waving a sign pointing to something I want disappearing Gene?”

“Who sir? Me Sir? No Sir.”

I’m much more interested in her stalker. It suggests some permanance to this world she’s in, much as was in the last episode of Life On Mars. That you step in and out of the same world.

[Dave]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC22Y5t_iwc

[si]

>I?m pleased that Chris is proving to be quite a decent copper

*eats words*

Oh Chris…

[Carlito]

This show just will not grow on me. Loved Life On Mars, can only just about bear Ashes To Ashes to be honest.

I think it’s just the 80s setting… it really isn’t anywhere near as fun to watch as the 70s setting of LOM, even though the show seems to think it is. The Eighties: the decade that tried too hard.

[Jonathan Capps]

Leave Chris the fuck alone. Ray has been a cunt for 4 series now, why on Earth can’t they destroy *his* character instead? As obvious as it may be, HE’S AN UTTER SHITBAG.

[Author]

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