Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Life on Mars premiered last week with the initial episode being virtually identical to the first episode of the BBC series it is based upon. Future episodes will diverge with different stories. The basic idea is the same in both.  After being knocked unconscious Sam Tyler appears to have been transferred back in time to the 1970’s while sometimes hearing sounds from around his unconscious body in the present.

The American setting did allow for for some slight changes which worked well for the remake. There are some lines reminiscent of Back to the Future, such as surprise when Sam asks for a Diet Coke. One line in the U.S. version worked slightly better than in the British version. In the original Sam runs into a local police officer and says he needs his “mobile” with the police officer asking “mobile what?” The American version works better with Sam saying he needs his “cell” and the police officer of the 1970’s misunderstanding and questioning what Sam wants to sell. In both cases the scene is in an area which has yet not been built up in the 1970’s but the scene is more dramatic in the American version by showing the World Trade Center’s twin towers n the background.

Recently I began watching Mad Men which includes scenes showing the type of sexism which occurred in an office setting back in the 1960’s. In this show portraying the 1970’s things are not much better as a female police officer is nicknamed No-Nuts by her co-workers.She is also limited to doing what is thought of as woman’s work, including talking to the nutty new cop who thinks he came from the future.

The two Monday night science fiction shows, Heroes and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, both dealt with the future in the last episode. The Sarah Connor episode Goodbye To All That was reminiscent of the movies as it dealt with terminators from the future being sent back to kill everyone they could find named Martin Bedell. One of the Martins is a small child who Sarah protects. Another Martin is to later help John set up the resistance and he is also saved.

The Heroes episode, I Am Become Death, shows a possible future in which anyone who can afford it purchases super powers, Claire is a killer who shoots Future Peter and Sylar has given up use of his powers and is shown as the father to a young child. Having his son get shot makes Sylar literally explode, similar to the explosion which destroyed New York in some alternate realities. Peter from the present now must prevent many of the events of the future. Meanwhile in the present, Hiro continues to try to recover the secret formula and winds up digging up Adam.

E! Online has a Lost spoiler on the reason Ben said all the members of the Oceanic Six must return to the island for any of them to return:

Well, remember what Michael Emerson recently said about Ben’s statement that if any of them are to return to the Island, everyone who escaped has to go back too? He said, “I think [that dictate is] a scientific condition of the mechanism by which the Island operates. I don’t think it’s an esoteric or spiritual issue, I think it’s science.”

He wasn’t just talking pretty. What I’m hearing is that the reason Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sun and Hurley need to reunite is because the Oceanic Six need to fan out to a group of Dharma stations.

Even more intriguing? According to my source, these stations are not on the Island, but in other locations, and these off-Island stations are believed to be the ticket to getting back to the Island.

(Remember, the Island moved in the finale. The Island may have gone to another place…or it may have hopped into another time.)

So how does this all work? And where in the world are these stations? We’ll have to tune into what is looking like an exciting fifth season in order to see.

In the meantime, my source hints that we have seen at least one of these powerful places before.

Remote Access has a guess as to where we have seen one of these places before:

My guess is that’s the Antarctic listening station with those Portuguese-speaking dudes who worked for Penny (and detected the electromagnetic pulse that helped her track Desmond to the island). Another guess is that all of the Sixers will have to turn some kind of mechanism or fail-safe key—much like the one Desmond used before the hatch blew—at the same time.

Variety reports that ABC is considering a remake of V, using aspects of the original with an updated story:

The original “V” served as an allegory for the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. Peters said he won’t duplicate that concept, except that the new “V” will still focus on what happens when the masses have blind faith in their leaders.

In this case, the new “V” will center on Erica Evans, a Homeland Security agent with an aimless son who’s got problems. When the aliens arrive, her son gloms on to them — causing tension within the family. As in the original “V,” several storylines will unfold simultaneously.

But even without the same storyline, the original “V’s” bones will remain: As in the ’80s version, the show will open with an enormous army of spaceships hovering over the world’s major cities. The visitors say they’ve come to help Earth, but their motives are nefarious (in the original, they wanted to steal the world’s water supply).