The episode opens in 2006 with Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler arresting Colin Raimes, a suspect in the kidnap and murder of a young. Despite an entry in Raimes’ diary stating that he killed her, Raimes’ psychiatrist claims that it’s just a fantasy. It also appears that Raimes has an alibi for the night of the abduction.
Maya, Sam’s girlfriend and fellow detective, isn’t convinced and after Raimes has been released, she decides to follow him. While tailing him, she phones Sam to tell him what she’s doing. Maya mentions her current location before she screams and the phone goes dead.
The police arrive at Satchmore Road, Maya’s last known location, where they find her shirt but nothing else. Sam tells the other policemen to preserve the scene before he drives away.
After another car cuts him off, Sam stops his car, gets out and tries to calm himself. David Bowie’s Life On Mars? starts playing on Sam’s iPod. As the show has the same name as that song, it’s without a doubt a sign that something significant is about to happen.
Sure enough, it does. Sam steps away from his car into the road and gets hit by a speeding car that, rather unfortunately for Sam, happened to be passing at that moment.
As Sam lies there, a voice is heard asking for a charge of two hundred joules, and then some hospital machine noises. Some images flash by as well – a pair of black shoes with large shiny buckles, a snapped twig, an arm in a black sleeve, and a glimpse of something red.
I guess it goes without saying (even though I’m saying it now) that those images are going to have some significance in later episodes. And all this time, Life On Mars? continues to play.
Sam sits up and looks around, only to find that he’s somewhere completely different, and his car has disappeared. In its place is a much older car, equipped with an 8-track, and I don’t think I need to tell you what song the 8-track is playing (but if you really need a hint, it’s an anagram of File No Rams).
While Sam is staring at the car, a policeman who is clearly on Plot Device Duty approaches him. When Sam can’t tell him what had happened, the policeman notices some papers on the seat of the car.
He takes a look at them, and reveals that Sam is a Detective Inspector who has been transferred from C Division in Hyde. Sam runs off, but not before he notices a large poster announcing the upcoming construction of a new highway, which presumably has been built by 2006 (unless Manchester shares Cape Town’s practice of not finishing the flyovers).
Sam heads towards his police station on foot. While on his way, he catches sight of his reflection in a car’s wing mirror, and discovers that his clothes have changed.
He also discovers his badge in his jacket pocket, which confirms that he is a Detective Inspector. So in other words, he’s not only travelled back in time, he’s also been demoted.
Sam enters what used to be his department, only to find that it’s a typical 1970s office rather than the one he recently left. One of the detectives introduces himself as DC Chris Skelton.
Sam freaks out, and starts asking where his things are and claming that this is his office. While he’s raving, DCI Gene Hunt emerges from his office, and proceeds to knock some sense into Sam.
Literally – Gene pushes Sam up against a filing cabinet and then punches him in the stomach. He does also provide the information that it's 1973, so getting attacked by his superior officer wasn't a completely bad thing for Sam.
While Sam’s sitting recovering, he hears an echoey voice giving some medical jargon and then asking Sam if he can hear him. Obviously, this is supposed to suggest that Sam is dreaming all of this while in real life they’re trying to revive him.
The voice disappears, and Chris arrives to inform Sam and Gene that a young woman who was reported missing has been found dead in Satchmore Road, the same place that Maya disappeared. Gene tells everyone that he’s heading to the pub to give a statement to the papers and that Sam, being the next senior officer, is in charge.
Sam gets his first taste of what policing in the 70s was like. The crime scene wasn’t preserved in any way, and the fingerprint that they did find has been sent to Scotland Yard, and they’ll only hear back in a fortnight whether there was a match or not.
Sam heads down to the morgue with Chris and DS Ray Carling, one of the other credited characters. Sam’s frustrations get the better of him and he freaks out, ranting a bit, and urging himself to wake up.
Chris and Ray seem to take this in their stride, attributing Sam’s outburst to concussion and a need for rest. They suggest that they call in someone to take a look at Sam, but not before Sam notices synthetic fibres under the victim’s fingernails – the same type as was found on the victim in 2006.
The person brought in to look at Sam is WPC Annie Cartwright, the final member of the main cast. She says that Sam appears to be OK, and on Gene’s suggestion, offers to take him home.
At Sam’s apartment, he tries to convince Annie that in he’s actually from 2006, and one of three things has occurred – he’s either mad, dreaming, or has really travelled back in time. Annie laughs it off, and tells him to get some rest.
Sam falls asleep in front of the TV, where a man is giving some sort of maths lecture. I wouldn’t have thought there was a huge demand for that sort of thing on TV, but maybe it’s the after-effects of the 60s drug culture.
The TV lecturer suddenly starts talking about Sam, giving some more medical jargon the way a doctor reporting on somebody lying in a coma would. He then starts talking to Sam, repeating his name.
Sam, who has woken up by this time, starts yelling at the TV screen. The screen goes black and then the test card appears, with a picture of a girl playing noughts-and-crosses on a blackboard together with a toy clown.
The next morning, Sam arrives at the police station to find that they brought in Dora Keens, a young woman who was the last person to see the victim alive. Sam starts the interview, but when Dora is uncooperative, Gene steps in and starts acting aggressively towards her – pretty much the sort of behaviour that would earn a modern-day cop a suspension, or at the very least a serious review.
Sam and Gene head down to pub for a drink. They discuss the case, and Sam claims that he has knowledge which will help solve it, and Gene challenges him to prove it. Sam returns to the station and gives Chris a list of names which he must look for in past case files.
The next morning, Sam finds Annie in the parking lot and gives her notes which he had made the previous night detailing his knowledge of “the real world”. They’re interrupted by Gene, who says that he wants Chris to stop looking at old cases as it’s a waste of time. When Sam refuses, Gene enacts further light violence on Sam’s person.
Sam has decided he’s had enough, and leaves the police station. He meets Annie and tells her that he’s just going to walk off, as eventually he’ll reach the point where his mind can’t make up anything more.
While Annie tries to calm him down, Sam notices that they’re standing outside a record shop – the very one where he bought his first album. He and Annie go inside.
In the shop, Sam notices a listening booth. He tosses out the man inside (by showing him his badge), and takes a look at the booth’s walls.
He notices that the soundproofing resembles the fibres form the victims’ fingernails, and realises that’s how the criminal is keeping them quiet without gagging them. He returns to the police station, only to learn that Dora Keens has gone missing.
Gene and Sam head off together to look for her, without success. Chris radios them to inform them that he’s found one of the names on Sam’s list – Beryl Raimes, Colin Raimes’ grandmother, who had laid a complaint three months earlier.
Beryl is brought down to the station, and she tells them that the complaint was about her next-door neighbour for playing his music too loudly. She says that the complaint must have worked, because he still lives there but she can’t hear a thing anymore.
Sam and Gene realise that the neighbour must be using soundproofing and they head out of the office, jumping over a desk on the way. This is apparently a nod to the 1970s cop show Starsky and Hutch, which featured a lot of furniture-jumping.
They arrive at the house, where they find Dora, who is indeed being held by Edward Kramer, Beryl’s neighbour. As Kramer’s being driven away, he waves at a young boy (who looks a bit creepy to me), and Sam realises that this is Colin Raimes.
Back at the station, Gene and Sam discuss Kramer. Sam reveals a doctor’s report which says that Kramer is mentally unstable.
Gene is in favour of making the report disappear, because it will then mean that Kramer is locked away for life, rather than going to a mental hospital for twenty years and killing again on his release. I would have thought that even if the police destroyed the report, Kramer’s lawyer would be able to produce a new one, but maybe things were different in the British legal system of the 70s.
Sam realises that as Kramer’s must have been released in 2006, then killed another woman and kidnapped Maya. He’s torn between doing the right thing and holding on to the report or getting rid of it, and ultimately preventing Maya’s kidnapping.
Gene decides to make it Sam’s call, and eventually Sam screws up the report and throws it in the bin. Cue time travel paradox…
Sam sits in the station canteen for a while, and a man named Neil, whom Annie had earlier introduced him to, comes in. Neil claims to be a hypnotherapist who is speaking directly to Sam’s subconscious.
Neil says that Sam is actually lying in intensive care, surrounded by his friends and family, including Maya who is now safe. Neil also mentions that Sam’s mobile hasn’t stopped ringing.
Sam gets up and tells Neil to tell Maya that he’s coming back, before heading out to the roof where he stands on the edge, preparing to jump. Annie finds him there, and tries to persuade him to stay, saying that Neil is actually her ex, and she had shown him the notes Sam made earlier.
Sam says that there was nothing in the notes about a mobile phone, and that Annie is just his mind trying to keep him there. She climbs over the railing and takes hold of his hand.
Sam feels something in it and Annie explains that it’s sand as a result of her falling against a fire bucket when she was running up to the roof. Sam wonders why he would bother imaging a small detail like that.
He asks Annie what he should do, and she tells him to stay. The episode ends there without it being resolved, but obviously Sam does stay, as another 15 episodes were made.