The Mancunian Chronicles

O.K., so when I said "the weekend", I was obviously counting Monday, because I don't have to be at work on Mondays. Except that I did today, for reasons with which I shan't bore you.

Although it was, for this reason, foreshortened, my weekend was pleasingly productive: I sent off the proposal for my reference book, did some work on one of the short story ideas, and even managed to get to the pub on Sunday evening.

Anyway. Tonight the BBC are broadcasting the last episode of the first season of Life on Mars, and I wanted to get some thoughts down before it airs.

Personally, I'm a little ambivalent about the fact that the programme's running to a second season (the current thinking being, apparently, that there will be three overall, and that the background story of Sam's time-travelling and the reasons behind it will be wrapped up at the end of season three). It's obvious that everyone involved is having immense fun pastiching the '70s tough-cop show and doesn't want to stop, but many of the recent episodes have been marking time as far as the arc story is concerned.

Some of these episodes have been great -- last week's, with the crime under investigation being corruption in the police station itself, and with the unusually vivid images of Sam's 2006 life attempting to break through into his 1973 one, was fantastic. But I can't help feeling that a tighter story-arc operating within a single season would have been more satisfying.

Of course, as somebody astutely pointed out, three eight-episode seasons are around the same length as a single season of a US TV series, so it's not quite the grotesque inflation it would appear (though of course, a BBC TV hour is about half as long again as a US TV "hour").

All the same, I'm glad to see from last week's trailer that it looks as if some of the interesting stuff is finally going to be addressed:

[NB Look away now if you don't want to see SPOILERS:]

Sam's father is finally making his appearance, so we should learn how it was that Sam was "let down" by him, and there appears to be a conversation between Sam and Philip Glenister's very excellent Gene Hunt acknowledging that Hunt is to some extent in on whatever's happening to Sam.

The latter is something I've suspected for a while. The first time he meets Hunt, Sam asks him something along the lines of "So what part of my mind do you represent, then?". While I'm sure the situation is nothing like as Star Trek as that would imply, occasional scenes, as well as the DI's knowing references to "Hyde", have continued to foster the impression.

("Hyde", of course, is where the 1970s characters believe Sam came from prior to his "transfer", and has become a watchword for Sam's 2006 life. The name is surely significant. It immediately calls to mind "Jekyll and Hyde", suggesting that Sam may live some kind of secret life in the present -- Jim Smith at Shiny Shelf has an interesting theory along these lines. What's more, when taken alongside "Hunt" it suggests "Hide and Seek", which I'm fairly sure is what little-boy Sam and his red-coated friend are playing during the sporadic flashbacks to whatever happened in the woods.)

In Jungian terms, Hunt is functioning as Sam's "Shadow", the amalgamation of the elements of his personality (bigotry, sexism, brutality, boastfulness, and the instinct for policing which Sam has been prevented from exercising in the present) which Sam himself feels unable to acknowledge overtly. In this reading, the chalk-and-cheese buddy-cop aspect of the series rises above pastiche and becomes Sam's process of individuation, a confronting and uniting with his dark half.

And, while we're talking Jung, can it really be a coincidence that the show's only female regular, who persuades Sam to stay in 1973 and becomes his inspiration and guide during his stay there, is named Annie, as in Anima? It may even be that, with the second pair of polar opposites Chris and Ray factored in, the four male policemen form a quaternion, one of the Jungian models for the self.

Of course, this is unlikely to become explicit, and would almost certainly be horrible naff if it did: Jungian analysis is always more interesting than Jungian exposition. It would obviously be unwise anyway to expect much by way of resolution from an end-of-season episode, although I'm hoping for some significant developments. Lovely though the evocation of the seventies, both as a historical and a televisual era, has been, the show did draw me in by promising to be about a time-travelling policeman.

Given that there are going to be two more seasons, there are some places it will look increasingly odd if the narrative doesn't go. So far, Sam has made no effort whatsoever to contact himself or his friends in the future, whether by leaving himself messages or by making an alteration of any kind to history[*]. Surely, at some point, he's going to have to confront his own young self. The early promise of disturbing intimacy with his mother needs to be followed up. And, much though I enjoy the headfuckery of her occasional presence, some actual reason, even a dream-logic one, has to be given sooner or later for the the girl off the test card turning up in Sam's flat at nights.

Sadly they'll probably never do the plotline I most want to see, where Sam goes into a coma in 1973 and wakes up to find himself doing black-and-white Dixon of Dock Green style policing in the 1950s.

Evening, all.


[*] Certainly if I were a time-travelling policeman in Manchester in 1973, and people kept mentioning Hyde to me, I'd feel pretty much impelled to warn the local medical authorities not to appoint Dr Harold Shipman to any jobs in the area. Perhaps the programme-makers feel this might come across as tasteless.

My Life, and Other Fantasies

So... aside from pontificating about science fiction and Islam (which reminds me, Jon Courtenay Grimwood is another author I really must get round to reading sometime soon), what have I been up to recently?

Well, the same as ever, really. I've sent off the chapter breakdown and sample chapter for this arguable pseudonymous novel -- the chapter was speed-written really, 3000 + words in just a couple of days last weekend, but I'm still pretty pleased with how it came out. I need to wait and find out whether the range editors agree.

I've also had my proposal for a short story approved, and am also pleased with that. I think I can probably reveal without too much risk of shocking my readership that it's another Doctor Who one. I think I've found a strong central concept and worked out a moderately detailed background, with the potential for further elaboration as I write the actual prose. I've also inherited some strong central characters from the original TV series, which I obviously can't take the credit for but am happy about anyway.

I'm also faffing about with a handful of speculative projects, including an idea (currently very vague and nebulous) for that rarest of species, a Doctor Who reference guide that nobody else has written yet. I don't know whether I'll be able to persuade any of the likely publishers to take it on, though, or whether it'll turn out to be as precious as gold dust to a Cyberman.

The vagaries of Channel 4 scheduling meant that I've entirely missed recording or watching episode three of Desperate Housewives Season 2, which is deeply annoying. I'm looking forward to Teleporting last night's Life on Mars, though. I really must blog out my theories about this series sometime soon, before they all turn out to be moot. (The degree of my enthusiasm can be gauged by the fact that I currently have Test Card F as my desktop image, despite the fact that it's almost impossible to see my icons against it.)

The Buffy rewatch is going well -- we've just seen the superlative body-swap episode, Who Are You?, which sidelines Buffy in order to focus on the internal strife of Faith, which Sarah Michelle Gellar (playing Faith in Buffy's body, obviously) portrays with heartstring-twanging authenticity. And the next one's the Jonathan episode, so hurrah twice over.

Apart from The Time Ships, I've just finished reading The Extremes by Christopher Priest, which was as fine and thought-provoking as ever, but which I felt suffered somewhat from a mismatch of authorial voice and subject-matter. Priest's meditative, quietly shocking style doesn't really lend itself to a full-on virtual reality thriller full of gun-battles and FBI agents, even if one of the agents does spend most of the novel staying in a quiet Sussex seaside town.

Otherwise... life's been busy for various reasons, non-writing work continues to be much the same as usual, and next week is half-term, which will be very welcome indeed. Plans for the week include getting some writing done, having a romantic Valentine's meal out with B., looking after our god-daughter for a morning, and visits from and to some old university friends whom we don't see nearly often enough -- in one case because she lives in Kuala Lumpur, in the other just because we're crap. Looking forward very much to all of that.

And now I need to go and have a shower.