Life on Mars

By levinson.paul@gmail.com (Paul Levinson) I hear the British version, with a somewhat different story, is brilliant - and I look forward to seeing that - but the American version of Life of Mars brilliant was not. And that's saying a lot for me, because I'm always willing to give any story with even a whiff of time travel the benefit of the doubt, and usually much more. See also Life on Mars Debuts in America ... Life on Mars 2nd Episode in America: Coma, Time Travel, Mars Rover ... Life on Mars Goes On in America: What Happens When a Time Traveler Runs Into His Earlier Self? ... Life on Mars #4: All in the Family ... Life on Mars #5 Meets the Wire ... Life on Mars #6 Meets Itself on Television ... Life on Mars #7: Is Annie Real? ... Life on Mars Returns with a Glimmer of Sanity   [read the full post]

By levinson.paul@gmail.com (Paul Levinson) Life on Mars is back in America for the second part of its debut season on ABC. So far, there have been two 2009 episodes. And we have a dude in 1973 calling Sam - who may know about, be responsible for, whatever about, Sam's situation - and directing an Internal Affairs investigator to turn over information about Sam. This is also all to the good - if not necessarily (yet) for Sam, certainly for us, the viewers. See also Life on Mars Debuts in America ... Life on Mars 2nd Episode in America: Coma, Time Travel, Mars Rover ... Life on Mars Goes On in America: What Happens When a Time Traveler Runs Into His Earlier Self? ... Life on Mars #4: All in the Family ... Life on Mars #5 Meets the Wire ... Life on Mars #6 Meets Itself on Television ... Life on Mars #6: Is Annie Real?   [read the full post]

By levinson.paul@gmail.com (Paul Levinson) Was there really an Annie Norris back in that 1973 precinct? Is Sam's memory, which he finally can see, that his father killed Annie back then, a real memory - or is it what we call today a false memory, not necessarily implanted, but brought on by the trauma of Sam's accident in 2008? Fortunately, we'll be able to learn more when Life on Mars resumes in 2009... See also Life on Mars Debuts in America ... Life on Mars 2nd Episode in America: Coma, Time Travel, Mars Rover ... Life on Mars Goes On in America: What Happens When a Time Traveler Runs Into His Earlier Self? ... Life on Mars #4: All in the Family ... Life on Mars #5 Meets the Wire ... Life on Mars #6 Meets Itself on Television   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) Ok, I've gotten it out of my system - Life on Mars, at least in America, is not time travel. It has nothing to do with Journeyman or Quantum Leap or The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Actually, not quite final - for Episode 6 of Life on Mars (in America) circa 2008 - for the credits we first see are on an old fashioned screen. Those credits are for the soap opera Sam has been seeing - "Life on Mars". See also Life on Mars Debuts in America ... Life on Mars 2nd Episode in America: Coma, Time Travel, Mars Rover ... Life on Mars Goes On in America: What Happens When a Time Traveler Runs Into His Earlier Self? ... Life on Mars #4: All in the Family ... Life on Mars #5 Meets the Wire   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) Meeting your parent or grandparent when you're traveling in the past is an appealing feature of time travel - I've played with that in my Loose Ends saga and in the sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates - does your mother or grandfather recognize any of your future self, which of course is much older than the version of you that she or he knows, do you do anything in that family reunion that can change the course of the future ... These are the kinds of questions that make time travel so much fun. See also Life on Mars Debuts in America ... Life on Mars 2nd Episode in America: Coma, Time Travel, Mars Rover ... Life on Mars Goes On in America: What Happens When a Time Traveler Runs Into His Earlier Self?   [read the full post]

By Paul Levinson(noreply@blogger.com) There were very good time travel touches last night - the best being when Sam sees his younger self at the end. A time traveler running into his or her younger self is one of the sweet, infinitely paradoxical moments of any time travel story ... does the older traveler instantly get a memory of that encounter? What happens when that look is exchanged between their eyes? "I'm changing, rearranging..." as The Marmalade sing. See also Life on Mars Debuts in America ... Life on Mars 2nd Episode in America: Coma, Time Travel, Mars Rover challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) The second episode last night of Life of Mars - American style - provided a few more clues as to what is really going. Sam puts up a list of explanations about how he got from 2008 to 1973. Coma is at top of the list, ahead of time travel. The others - drugs, another planet, multidimensional travel (whatever that is) - I think we can safely rule out. At this point - and I haven't seen the BBC series, so this is truly just based on the first two American episodes - I'm thinking it's somehow coma as well as something else, maybe time travel... Hey, is that "multi-dimensional travel"? See also Life on Mars Debuts in America   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) Fine start of Life on Mars on ABC tonight, and you know that I'm going to review this American version of the British series here on Infinite Regress, since I watch everything I can get my hands on regarding time travel, including Journeyman, relevant episodes of Lost and Heroes, and Deja Vu, too. But unlike Journeyman and Quantum Leap, Life on Mars will be one continuing, over-arching story, with Sam from 2008 back in 1973. I'm glad to see this, since I thought both Journeyman and Quantum Leap gave too much attention to specific episode story lines, and not enough to the backbone of the plot (Journeyman improved greatly in this respect near the end).   [read the full post]