As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never seen the British version of Life on Mars. I also haven’t yet started watching the original The Prisoner series (though I plan to very soon). However, as soon as I saw the guy pictured above, I thought this was a character pulled right from one of those shows. You know, a bushy-browed, jolly ol’ chap with a trench, hat, and cane. You know, like all the old British dudes. Clearly, I also have never been to England.
Obviously the white cane guy has something more to do with the overall mystery of the show. I love that they’re keeping whatever plans he had for Councilman Bobby Prince very vague. Should we assume this show will be greenlit for another season, we’re at a very early point in the show where it’s entirely acceptable to be presented more questions than answers. As for Mr. bushy brows and the Councilman, they’ve definitely succeeded in setting us up for more head scratching. And I like it.
There’s little doubt in my mind that Councilman Prince was suffering from the same fate as Sam. Sure, the details he had about the future were very vague (for example, why say “a black president” and not Barack Obama?), but the evidence we can’t ignore is the chalkboard Annie discovered, which had a nearly identical list to what Sam had many episodes ago. The only line that was different was the word “different” on Prince’s board.
If I had to make a guess now as to how the Councilman planned to get home, I’d say it was to act some way on the dirty cop pictured in the briefcase that Annie retrieved from the man with the rabbit head cane. Just as Sam has been “doing a good job,” as the mysterious caller said to him, and that it’s “not time yet” for him to leave, Bobby Prince was making changes to the city until it was his time to leave. This was to be his final act before being allowed to return home. He was likely making those changes in the same ways Sam has been nudged into making some changes.
So what’s the endgame and who’s behind it?
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Feb 19, 2009 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
“a bushy-browed, jolly ol’ chap with a trench, hat, and cane. You know, like all the old British dudes. Clearly, I also have never been to England.”
No, it’s all true!
Yes, it is very probable that the councilman wasn’t just plain crazy. I don’t know who is behind it, but as of now I have the strong guess, how they do it.
fMRI is very well capable to map the memory in the human mind. It is a noticeable fact though, that ever since MRIs got better in mapping and resolution, that the mind CANNOT tell if the memory is real, imagined or only wished to be true. Everyone sees with the mind’s eye if the mind thinks you are in 1973 you cannot return as long you think so (and of course you are sane). The weird hallucinations of Sam might be the side effect of the contrast they use in fMRIs.
So that you know, though time travel is impossible, researchers on Alzheimers and neurophisiology has started experiments on memory mapping. Using a similar method with patients in coma, some memories can be stressed into a mind, by scents, music.
I was surprised you haven’t mentioned Skelton this time. Even if he is not the guy who was on the phone, Sam knows that guy’s voice possibly from the future. An other reason for scrambling is simple: The memories that Sam lives through are that of someone and some characters Sam sees with his mind’s eye, aren’t even there. Skelton seems always to divert Sam’s attention from the major point to something he is interested in.
“I said it, and you imagined it” might really mean she said it in 2009 or back in 1973 and he imagined that she said it TO HIM.
All in all, there might be 2 parties, the one who sent Price and Sam might be the gentleman with the cane, and at the same time, the Aries Project could have gotten wind of it in 1973, as everything else happens really in 1973.
Hope I was understandable;)
What about the line in the episode about “Skeletons in their closets”
I thought that was more than just a line…it’s a ref to Det Skeleton I think.
Can’t wait to see what else develops on this show.
Wouldn’t the White Rabbit and the man symbolize time? He has the possibility of being a time keeper.
I didn’t think the man saying “a black president” was weird because he had no idea Sam was dealing with the same thing he was. If he had said to a guy in 1973 “Barack Obama is president” what would that mean? Nothing. So, thats was normal to me.