Mad, in a coma, or back in time?

[arachnekallisti]

So, what the bloody hell was going on there? It's been left carefully ambiguous, in such a way as to admit of several possible explanations:

1. The really grim one.
Sam Tyler got hit by a car in 2006 and ended up in a coma dreaming he was in 1973. He woke up after surgery relieved the pressure on his brain, but was suffering from severe depression (quite possibly something to do with that brain tumour), which went untreated until his eventual suicide. At the end, his dying brain reconstructed the 1973 dream for him, until the Test Card Girl came to switch his world off.

The problem with this one is the assumption that 1973 was a construct of Sam's mind. It's not impossible that Sam was capable of reconstructing a plausible and internally consistent version of the world of his early childhood, complete with a vast and psychologically plausible cast of characters; consider the case of "Kirk Allen". More importantly, this wouldn't explain why Sam appears to be able to affect 2006 through his actions in 1973, most notably with respect to Maya - and, given Ashes to Ashes, it doesn't explain why other people get Gene Hunt too. There's also the consideration that this particular interpretation is incredibly depressing.

2. The only slightly grim one.
In 1973, Sam Williams was sent from Hyde to undermine Gene Hunt's regime in Manchester, but sustained amnesia due to a head injury on his way there, and started hallucinating that he was in fact in a coma in 2006. The hallucinations came to a head at the point in the railway tunnel, where he dreamed that he woke up in 2006, and then threw himself off the police station roof.

Again, this doesn't explain why Alex Drake starts developing the same future-life delusions, why the Test Card Girl switches the world off at the end, and this also runs into the problem of how do Sam and Alex know so much about the future? We can postulate some kind of precognition or other psychic abilities, but in that case we're heading for a much more complicated theory, something like...

3. Astral Projection.
In 1973, Sam Williams was sent from Hyde to undermine Gene Hunt's regime in Manchester, but died from a head injury on his way there. Sam Tyler got hit by a car in 2006 and ended up in a coma; the shock of the accident awakened latent psychic abilities, and Sam Tyler's mind ended up occupying the body of Sam Williams, whilst maintaining a connection of sorts to his original body. Sam's mind snapped back to his original body after the incident in the railway tunnel, but by then his connection to his own time and his own body was sufficiently attenuated to make him unable to live in it (hence the feelings of alienation and lack of physical sensation and emotional response). Sam concluded that the only way to get back to where he was needed and rescue his team was to kill his original body, and go back to being Sam Williams.

The main problem with this is that it relies on Sam Tyler and Sam Williams looking uncannily similar; you can handwave that as being something to do with Sam's body-image and self-perception, but it's still jarring. Mind you, that particular convention does have a certain amount of televisual precedent, which leads us to...

3a. Redeployment
It wasn't Sam's own abilities that brought his mind back in time; it was the influence of some kind of unknown force attempting to change history for the better. Said entity seems to have a particular power over or fondness for people named Sam.

After all, whilst Sam mayhave people who love him in 2006, he isn't needed there in the same way. We saw him drifting off in the committee meeting; he's a small cog in a very big machine. They know about ethics and procedure in 2006, but Gene Hunt doesn't. Now, maybe it's that I'm enough of a fan of Watchmen and Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog to be rather suspicious of people who'd rather be Heroes than get on with unglamourous day-to-day Being Good, but on the other hand, I can see the appeal of having problems to solve, wrongs to right, people to fix, and changes to make. It's not that 1973 is all lovely - it's that its very appeal for Sam hinges on the fact that it isn't.

4. Cop Valhalla
Sam Tyler got hit by a car in 2006 and ended up in a coma, from which he never recovered. As Sam was dying, the Death of Policemen came to collect him; he was given a chance to revisit and resolve certain issues from his childhood, then allowed to dream he'd woken up (consider the similarities between the weird, unreal atmosphere in Sam's 2006 to the description of a type 2 false awakening), and so say a last goodbye to his original life, before moving on to his eternal reward. Some people just aren't suited to Heaven; they'd go mad with boredom in a world where everything was perfect in all problems were solved. They're far more suited to Valhalla; fight the good fight all day, beer and bacon sandwiches with your comrades at night, then back in action in the morning with all wounds healed.

This, at least, explains why Alex has also been seeing Gene Hunt; the Death of Coppers has come for her as well, and 1980s London is her own personal Cop Valhalla.