When science fiction is at its best, it weaves together the familiar and identifiable with speculative, impossible, or fantastic elements to tell stories that could not be told otherwise.

Week four of the ABC series Life on Mars gave us its best episode yet by putting the show’s central science fiction premise front and center.  In past episodes, protagonist Sam Tyler’s inexplicable dislocation in time seemed to be a subplot to a period police procedural.

But this week, Sam is thrust into an encounter with his mother in her 1973 incarnation.  Sam responds to the situation with humanity and vulnerability–and fairly falls apart.  He also comes face to face with his mother’s humanity and vulnerability–during a raid on a local gangster, he actually catches his mother on the verge of entering into prostitution to help keep the family finances together.

For the first time, I really felt sorry for Sam.  With this episode, getting stuck in 1973 transformed from being a gimmick or inconvenience into a major existential crisis for Sam.

Episode Four also took some inventive turns that helped illustrate Sam’s angst, and even pushed the envelope of what’s allowable on broadcast television.  The Mars robot (that’s what it appears to be: a 2008 model Mars rover robot) returns, in a scene in which the robot seamlessly morphs from a toy in the hands of the child Sam, to exploring Mars, to driving into Sam’s ear as he dozes.  Later, during an involuntary acid trip, a swarm of miniature Mars robots emerges from his mouth.

This trip continues, featuring Sam’s boss Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) as a kind of tango king or pimp who is dancing with his mother, battle scenes in Vietnam, and rumbustious sex with Annie (Gretchen Mol).  The trip scene was advneturous, from a mature content point of view, and well executed in its editing and effects–weird colors and backgrounds set a dizzying mood.

Lest this review seem like a Life on Mars lovefest, there were some low points.  For example, one moment of cheese occurs when Sam introduces his adult detective self to his mother as “Detective Skywalker.”  (I think Detective Cartman or Detective Wiggum would have been funnier.) The closing montage featuring Gene burning his dirty bribe money (still in gangster-style wads, bound by rubber bands) was also some scenery-chewing schlock. And Robert Klein as a gang kingpin?  He looked like a 21st century Manhattanite–he might have even been wearing Sarah Palin titanium glasses.

But I did enjoy how Klein spoke in pop music lyrics, greeting Gene Hunt as “Jean Genie, lives on his back.” Klein went on to use all kinds of anachronistic lyrics as lines, summoning up the overhyped ’90s Manchester act Happy Mondays (“We’re party people”) and current movie soundtrack darlings MGMT (“Let’s move to Paris and marry models.”)  The underworld club run by Klein’s character was also a fun bit of ’70s pop culture: Sam spots Joe Namath macking chicks, and then bumps into Jim Croce, who dismisses Sam’s advice to stay off small airplanes.

Speaking of music–and getting back to our Life on Mars lovefest–this episode was a veritable festival of glam rock goodness.

T Rex.  That’s all I’ve got to say.

There was also some Velvet Underground and Hollies. I admit that “Mother and Child Reunion” was apt for the period and the Sam-Meets-Mom storyline, but it was still Simon and Garfunkel.  They’ve been featured as Life on Mars soundtrack fare in the past–I really, really hope that won’t turn out to be a regular or even semi-regular thing.

This could have earned five Harvey Keitel Fists of Fury, except that Robert Klein and Harvey Keitel need to get down to makeup and wardrobe, pronto, so they don’t look like they just walked onto the Life on Mars set from last night’s taping of the Bill Maher Show. Plus that cheesy money burning scene and the @#$%ing Simon and Garfunkel sticks in my craw.

Still, I’ll give it an impressive and quite respectable Four and a Half Harvey Keitel Fists of Fury.  Can’t wait to see the next episode. . .