Life on Mars

[altariel]

Further to this interesting discussion on communicator's journal, one of the writers of Life on Mars has been teasing people on the BBC website: "And remember, Rule Britannia is out of bounds, to my mother, my dog and clowns..."

I am liking this show very much, and it is making me think, particularly about nostalgia. Leaving aside the personal questions of what is happening to Sam, I would like to see them brave enough to try an episode about the IRA, and also I am intrigued as to what subtext the show will eventually contain about the period between 1973 and 2006. What it has to say or not say about Thatcherism. And about television. Sam's relationship with his telly is at least as interesting as his relationships with Gene and Annie.

Damn, I wish I had been keeping this on the skybox. I haven't wanted to neurotically close-read anything this much in ages. Well, I'm sure there'll be a DVD release soon enough. My, how times change.

Comments

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

On a slight tangent, I keep hearing Ford Prefect in my head saying "Don't phone yourself up at home" every time Sam comes close to meeting himself. I guess we're only assuming, like him, that the little boy last night was him? It doesn't have to be, I suppose, it could just be symbolic for him.

Now I want to do a PhD on time travel stories.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I kept on having this deep taboo response whenever Sam seemed to get close to himself! "No, no! The universe will implode in some kind of weird recursive technobabble effect!"

Now I want to do a PhD on time travel stories.

Damn, that would be good!

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

The philosophy of time section of my MA was one of my favourite parts of it. Paradoxes, and suchlike. I've always, always been fascinated by time travel for as long as I can remember.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thinking about time travel makes my brain hurt, I can't wrap my head around them (I'm trying to think of Life on Mars as a ghost story). Did you ever see Crime Traveller with Michael French and Chloe Annett?

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

Yes, I saw a few of them (there was some reason I didn't see them all, because they were right up my street) and I enjoyed them a lot.

A ghost story?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think I have them on tape somewhere. It's possible I even have them on DVD, now I come to think of it...

I guess ghost stories for me are about coming to a fuller understanding of the past, usually about some wrong which has been committed but won't be put to rest till justice is done. The past is haunting Sam in some way; Sam is haunting the past.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the Futurama episode where in a rubbish attempt to not influence history Fry not only manages to kill his grandfather but impregnates his own grandmother? oops.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Oops indeed!

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

I've hardly seen any Futurama, to my shame. *adds to list of must-sees*

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I think something similar happens in the Heinlein story "All You Zombies". And he did another brilliant time travel paradox story called "By His Bootstraps". These stories were written back in the 1940s and 1950s, before he became weird (and at times objectionable).

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Completely random remark:

I think I have to thank you for this comment. I had been wondering for quite some time about a classic SF-story involving time paradoxes I'd once read, and both title and author would always escape me when they were already on the tip of my tongue.

But it was Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps", of course.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Nice icon!