Boards
The end of the US version of Life On Mars (spoilerrific)
('Norris' is the same as Annie Cartwright in our version)
At the end of the series it is revealed that Tyler's 2008 and 1973 realities were both fictitious, created by the futuristic computer - named W1N-D (a play on "Windy") - aboard a space ship called "HYDE 1-2-5" that is carrying Tyler, Hunt, Norris, Canrling and Skelton on the first ever manned mission to the planet Mars. Tyler's actual reality is the year 2035, and the crew he worked with in the past are just virtual reality versions of his fellow spaceship crewmembers. The reason why he had traveled back to 1973 was due to a temporary malfunction on board the ship: to sustain their lives, the minds of all of the crew were routinely kept active while asleep using virtual reality "neural stimulation" programs of their own choosing, but a meteor storm caused a momentary glitch in the program (Sam had chosen his 2008 identity as part of his VR program, but the program accidentally kicked him back to 1973). Frank Morgan is the Mission Control flight director, Annie Norris is the Colonel in charge of the mission (a wink to her comment in the finale about the sexism of her colleagues that she "just thinks of a time far, far in the future when they all work for me"), and Gene Hunt is revealed to be "Major Tom" Tyler, Sam's father. Unlike the show's BBC counterpart, the series ends on an entirely happy note, with Sam Tyler in good spirits and happy to be back in his reality. In a final wink to its fans, the writers describe the mission as one of science — looking for evidence of life: a "gene hunt".