Det. Sam Tyler
From Life on Mars Wiki
Detective Sam Tyler is a rising star in 125th Precinct of the NYPD. He's investigating a string of homicides, when his girlfriend and partner, Maya Daniels, is abducted by the suspect, Collin Raimes. While looking for Maya, he gets hit by a car. When he wakes up, he's in 1973. He doesn't realize he's in the past until he spots the Twin Towers, still up and around.
Desperately looking for something familiar, he heads to his precinct, the 1-2-5, only to discover that it's a very different place. There's no DNA testing, no finger print databases, and apparently, no rules. All that matters is that the bad guy gets caught.
Sam must figure out how to work with the anything-goes Lt. Gene Hunt while he tries to get himself back to his own time.
Throughout the series, he tries to uncover the mystery of how he traveled back to the 70s, while working with his new co-workers to solve crimes and catch bad guys-the old fashioned ways. Eventually, after geting shot by his father, Vic Tyler, he pieces together some information from almost all the cases he's worked on (in 1973) and gets a possible lead on why he's gone back in time. He discovers an abadoned house with a single telephone which rings as soon as he enters. He recieves the first of several calls from the Mysterious Caller who tells him to go to the basement. (for more info. see the episode pages) Towards the end of the series he realizes that he actually enjoys living in the 70s and even decides to stay when the Mysterious Caller offers him a chance to return to 2008.
In reality, Sam isn't really a cop, but is actually one of five astronauts on board the Hyde 1-2-5 spaceship on its way to the planet mars as part of the United States' Aries Project in the year 2035. As it turns out, both of his lives in 2008 and 1973 were fake; he had been in some sort of a virtual reality program called the "Neural-stim" on the spaceship during its voyage to Mars. Although he had chosen his neural-stim to make him a cop in 2008, the sytem malfunctioned when the ship ran into a meteor storm, causing Sam to "travel" to 1973 while retaining all of his "memories" from 2008.
[edit] Relationships
- Maya Daniels is Sam's partner and girlfriend in 2008.
