Status: Jossed. Alex's 1980s and Sam's 1970s are part of the same timeline, and Sam really did die — or rather, he went to copper Heaven (which takes the form of a pub) — before Alex arrived.
Status: Jossed. Gene Hunt is another human being in a similar condition to Sam and Alex — the difference being that he's taken it upon himself to be a Psychopomp for his colleagues.However, Caroline Price does make the link, referring to Gene as the Manc Lion before talking about "having this lion shaved", something which happens to Aslan in TLTWATW.
- Sam Tyler has started a bad trend here...
Status: Jossed. He didn't travel deliberately, only decided to turn the situation to his advantage when he found himself in the 1980s. Also, it's not exactly time travel.
It's all part of Instrumentality. Alex and Sam are aspect's of Asuka and Shinji's subconscious. Gene is probably Pen-Pen, or Gendo.Well, we needed a Eva crossover for this series and we hadn't had one yet.
Status: Jossed.
- I like this, but surely Percival's innocence makes him a better match for Chris? Ray could be Gawain (who is a ladies' man), but could also be one of the more obnoxious knights, like Sir Kay.
Status: Jossed. They're all just people.
- This WMG explains a lot about the finale to the American Life On Mars. The difference between a self-contained alternate timeline and a sufficiently immersive VR cannot easily be determined from inside the alternate reality.
Status: Confirmed, more or less. It's a real place, not a delusion, with multiple real people in it; it's not the actual past of the present Alex, Sam and Summers come from; time runs differently there. But it's not strictly an Alternate Universe.
- Established at the end of Season 1 that Gene was the person who rescued young Alex. Ergo, Gene exists in the "real" world.
- Established early in Season 2 that Alex is gradually forgetting her "real" life.
- In late Season 3, the fantasist believing himself to be Sam Tyler suggests the longer one spends in the past, the more they forget of their old life (supporting the above point).
- What if Gene is a time traveler who has been in this alternate reality for so long that he's forgotten the "real" world? What if he is the original time traveler, and Sam, Alex, and PC Summers are visiting his reality?
- Note that this theory explains why some scenes in A2A are from Gene's point-of-view, whereas all scenes in LoM were from Sam's POV.
- Jossed, excluding a dream Alex had where he appeared via stock footage and a lunatic claiming to be him.
- Damn, I feel cheated. The implication he's in Nelson's pub just isn't enough. T_T
- Word of God says there was an ending written where Sam, not Nelson, comes out of the Railway Arms at the end of 3.08, but was discarded because it would have made Sam seem "superhuman", considering he'd already crossed over.
- Damn, I feel cheated. The implication he's in Nelson's pub just isn't enough. T_T
Status: Jossed.
- Someone on the Railway Arms noticed that Ghost Cop's uniform appears to be that of a low-ranking police officer of the early 1960s. That leads to the interesting (if bonkers) theory that Ghost Cop is Gene himself, since he would have entered the service around then.
- A violent "incident" results in someone winding up in an earlier time period, living a different life, constantly meeting people they really know and people who might be encroaching from the "original" timeline/universe/whatever. Think about it.
- Status: The ending of both shows reveal that the Flash-sideways universe and the place Sam and Alex go are a version of Purgetory where you go after you die to deal with your issues before you can go to heaven. I'm counting this as canon.
- And I'm counting this as the most awesome I Knew It! of my troping career.
- Status: The ending of both shows reveal that the Flash-sideways universe and the place Sam and Alex go are a version of Purgetory where you go after you die to deal with your issues before you can go to heaven. I'm counting this as canon.
- She is going through something...
- Status: Jossed. What she's dealing with is remembering being stabbed in the stomach and dying in the "real world".
- Just a guess
- Maybe as in Episode 2 of Series 3 Drake is listing known serial killers and mentions Jeffrey Dahmer, who isn't caught for a good 10 years after the setting just now.
- In interviews they've admitted he will have a big part in the reveal of what is really going on.
- combining two above theories, it could be that Keats is supposed to keep an eye on "newbie" time travelers like Sam and Alex but believes that Gene is his Evil Counterpart working against him in some kind of Gambit Roulette. Since he believes Gene is personally responsible for Sam's death and has shot Alex intentionally, he feels he has to get involved and why he's started trying to turn the others against Gene to "Stop" him once and for all. Keats could have been the actual voice on the phone to Sam in Life On Mars to test him to see where he wanted to stay. Since Sam chose to stay with Gene, Keats thought Sam would be a good influence and redeem Gene to do police work the right way. He had to let Alex deal with the stuff involving her parents and then was probably planning on making contact afterwards but wanted to avoid Summers who he may have felt also gone over to Gene's side. All that's left is to see what move Keats is able to make against Gene with Summers out the way and turning everyone else against Gene.
Status: Jossed. Keats is Gene's evil counterpart.
- The only reasons I have is that they mention his office is too warm, he had a religious upbringing, he mentioned as liking 'The Old Ways' and that shot in the last episode of him surrounded by smoke. Also he's trying to bring Gene down who, as stated in an above WMG, is Jesus.
- And the whole of LoM/A2A is Quantum Leap fanfic.
- Well one theory is that the ending suggests that maybe Gene will eventually move on but he's got a lot more work to do. Similar to Sam Beckett maybe deep down this is what he wants, or what he feels like he "deserves" for now, to still be stuck in purgatory and that the shift to the 80s setting was really for Gene to give him that push into moving on.
The reason Shaz and Ray have seen stars in the middle of the city is because the sky is a simulation. It occasionally breaks down, causing them to see what's really out there - space.
Gene Hunt is one of the aliens in charge, or rather was. He's decided to play along with the humans. And Jim is here to stop him.
And Sam discovered what was really going on, and Gene killed him because of it.
- Status:Jossed
- Or Gene helped Sam hide from Jim Keats, and at the end of S3 he will help Alex get away from him too by faking her death.
- Bevan (from ep 3.5) helped fake Sam's death, which is his hold over Gene.
- Confirmed (apparently) by Gene in 3.7. Cue rampant speculation he will show up in the last episode.
- As of the finale? Yes, in a sense. It's Gene's job to help dead coppers solve their problems in Purgatory and then help them "cross over". He helped Sam cross over, and Sam's body did disappear, but Sam was already dead. Gene faked the car accident because there was no body.
- Status: Jossed, Thordy's just a whackjob.
- As a corollary to that, Gene did kill Sam — having finally accepted that it was time to let the man move on. Of course, Sam was already dead in the real world — but Alex doesn't understand that yet.
Status: Confirmed. Except for the bit about Keats being sent to sort Gene out — Keats is deliberately making matters worse.
- Mostly Jossed. It's not the world collapsing, it's them subconsciously trying to remember how they ended up in Hunt's division. However, there is a section in the finale where Gene and his world/division/whatever comes dangerously close to being obliterated (by Keats) and being basically replaced with Keats's own world.
- not entirely- it's heavily suggested that the setting is basically a construct of Gene Hunt's (and the others', perhaps) wishful thinking, and the stars a symptom of this breaking down, showing they're really somewhere in eternity.
- Alex's memories of her parents death also lend weight to this idea - in one of the grainy film sequences Alex's father Tim winks at her in the rear-view mirror. In the series one finale, moments before the car explodes Alex's father changes into the Clown and winks at her. Did Tim wink at his daughter just before they died in the carbomb?
- Word of God says that the exact moment Alex died was when everything went black in series 3 episode 1 - just between her first seeing the injured policeman and waking up back in 1983.
- And confirmed by the time on Keats's watch - 9:06, which was when Alex died.
- Status: Jossed. Gene was killed by burglars with shotguns, not Keats.
- I actually meant that in the real/living world he was one of the burglars
- Jim Keats may be some sort of Composer, what with his reality-bending abilities.
OK, so it's a long shot, mostly to allay my disappointments with the endings of both series. But still...
- Another addition to this theory might be Alex is a real person- Sam has been trying to get some sort of treatment off-screen which he neglects to mention (lest his colleagues lay into him) and Alex is his real-life psychologist (don't know how many women were in such a profession in '73, but I suppose some may have been) who ends up becoming a subject of his dreams- dreams being like that, not entirely making sense.
- Or of course maybe he has a subconscious desire for her- which might explain why she "arrived" in '82 undercover as a prostitute?
- Heartbeat centres around a somewhat unrealistically-run police station, set during a very over-exaggerated version of The '60s. There's also a strange passing of time — no-one seems to realise that it's been the same year for about five years — and aside from the police station, the pub seems to be the only place that really matters. The show's even named after a song that was popular at (roughly) the time at which the show is (initially) set. It's the only thing that seems to make sense!
- Dixon of Dock Green, meanwhile, is even more obviously a part of this universe, since — as at least one troper above has already stated — it all takes place after the main character has been killed off.
- Endeavour contains various inconsistencies with Inspector Morse, the series to which it is a prequel. These can be explained by the WMG that, after his death in the final episode of the original series, Morse has gone to "Dead British Copper Purgatory" which in his case has a Sixties setting. By this logic, Fred Thursday is — like Gene Hunt — a Psychopomp who has taken it upon himself to guide dead coppers to Heaven which, appropriately for Morse, is a pub. This puts a new spin on DSU "SuperMac" Mackintosh from Series 2 of Ashes to Ashes, as he bears a very close resemblance to Fred...
We know John Simm is set to return but we also know that the crestors were against Sam coming out of the Railway Arms, and for good reason.
But we also know that the show will touch on “an alternate 80s, an alternate 90s, and an alternate 00s” - so it could feature an NPC Sam Tyler who is still a DCI in Manchester and who hasn’t been hit by a car.