Don't read any further if you haven't seen the "Life on Mars" finale, "Life is a Rock."

I can't say I saw the flash-forward ending coming, even though I should have. From the show's title to the Mars Rover-like devices that popped in and out of the 17 episodes to the nickname "Spaceman" bestowed on Sam Tyler -- the hints that our hero was actually floating in a tin can in space far in the future were dropped all over the place -- just as the trio of "Mars" showrunners said they were.

I can't say the finale seg, written by exec producer Scott Rosenberg and helmed by Michael Katleman, was the best of the 17, but it was entertaining and it did wrap up the story, with a dash of "Flash Gordon" for good measure. (Sorry folks, no episodic art available for the finale.)

In a nutshell, Sam Tyler was actually on an expedition in the year 2035 with a mission to Mars to locate some real life DNA -- or as Sam and his familiar crew mates put it, a "gene hunt."

"Glitches in the neurotransmitter" managed to scramble the sleeping crew's brains until they landed. Sam went off on a his wild cerebral adventure that had him thinking he was an NYPD cop circa 2008 who was mysteriously transported to 1973.

"You were there, and you were there," Sam tells crew mates Ray and Chris and "Col. Norris" as they emerge from their sleep pods, in keeping with the recurring "Wizard of Oz" theme. (It was kinda funny in the last scene to see Michael Imperioli with a contempo look.) As he did throughout the series, Jason O'Mara's ease and naturalistic perf made it work for this viewer, even with the hokey premise of the closing moments.

Putting the puzzle pieces together, the spacecraft Sam was traveling on was the Hyde 125, and he was housed in pod number 2B. Of course. The voice of the on-board computer was Windy. Another twist was finding out that Harvey Keitel's "Major Tom" character turned out to be Sam's father. (And there was a funny reference to one of the Obama daughters following her father's footsteps by 2035.)

The final shot was that of Gene Hunt's white loafer setting foot on the red planet. Very different from the conclusion of the Brit series, as it needed to be.

For my money, the best scene in the finale seg belonged to Imperioli's Ray Carling, as Ray, Sam and Chris have a existential moment over whiskey shots in the precinct, shortly before we flip the switch to 2035.

"We live on a rock, just one of many," Carling says after explaining his skepticism about faith, the search for deeper meaning in life and his mother's fealty to the Catholic church. "There ain't no answer; there's just this."

Also, a shout-out is due to thesp Tanya Fischer, who played Windy, Sam's ditsy-hippie neighbor. She was only in four episodes but she always stood out with an infectious vivaciousness. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her.

The showrunners just starting the prep for their last episode of the season when the official word came down from the network. "Life on Mars" would not see a second season.

As much as ABC execs from Stephen McPherson on down love the show, the math just didn't work. The long-gestating U.S. remake of the hit Brit series garnered mostly strong reviews (certainly from this space and from Variety's Brian Lowry) but it hasn't been able to draw a crowd, despite the benefit of landing ABC's two best drama lead-in slots, behind "Grey's Anatomy" in the fall and behind "Lost" for the past two months.

The "Mars" masterminds -- showrunners/exec producers Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg -- were just starting to get ready to shoot episode 17, the last of their order, in late February when the final call was made. There would be no second season of psychedelic adventures for Sam Tyler, the NYPD cop who mysteriously finds himself transported from Gotham 2008 to Gotham 1973 after getting hit by a car in the line of duty.

But the news was not all bad. In a sign of ABC's affection for the show, "Mars" was not yanked immediately. The show has been allowed to finish Tyler's journey through deep-seated emotional traumas that scarred 4-year-old Sam in '73 in ways that grown-up Sam has largely blotted out.

"It was a gift that Steve gave us, creatively to finish out the show and to have that closure for the audience," says Nemec.

It wasn't that hard to turn the script for the season finale to the series finale, set to air April 1. Because they were already building to a big revelation, they wound up rewriting the second half of the script to fully explain the "Mars" mythos and enlighten the loyalists on what's been going on and what becomes of Sam.

(Pictured above, "Life on Mars" stars Michael Imperioli and Jason O'Mara shooting on location in Gotham.)

Goofy photo of the day. I'm guessing Michael Imperioli and his family got a free trip to Disney World out of this. Why else would he submit to this photo, snapped at Tony's Town Square at the Magic Kingdom park?

Cutline info provided by Disney notes that Imperioli's birthday is actually March 26 but he's celebrating it this week with the family -- no, not that family, his family.

Imperioli's also on the Disney payroll these days as a member of the ensemble on ABC's fine drama "Life on Mars," which unfortunately didn't catch enough fire to merit a second season, but fortunately will get the chance to go out in style with a mystery-solved finale next month....

... Josh Schwartz and Mary Tyler Moore are the latest biz names to join the speaker roster at the National Assn. of Broadcasters confab in Las Vegas from April 18-23. Schwartz will sit for a Q&A with Paley Center for Media's Joe Flint on April 22. Moore will receive the NAB's Distinguished Service kudo on April 20 for her TV legacy -- it doesn't get much better than "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" -- and for her philanthropic work on behalf of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, among others.

Emerging from my December blog hibernation, I'm much more inclined to look forward to what the small screen has in store for '09 than reassessing '08. Fortunately, my Variety colleague Stuart Levine was motivated to muse on his highs and lows for '08 (posted after the jump).

There's not a whole lot that I've penciled into my must-see sked for the first quarter. Of course, the Big Event is the Jan. 21 return of "Lost" for its high-five season (more on that later). The final two "Friday Night Lights" segs of the season (maybe forever) on DirecTV Jan. 7-14, will be three-hanky affairs, for sure, according to sources who have already screened them. And there'll be more multicamera hijinks to enjoy from "The Big Bang Theory" ensemble, my fave comedy troupe on the tube these days, hands down.

As for new material, I was very impressed by what I saw on the four-episode screener of Showtime's "The United States of Tara." Toni Collette is amazing as a suburban mother and artist who grapples with three distinct personalities who also inhabit Tara's corporeal being. The supporting cast is also strong, with John Corbett playing Tara's husband in an understated way, and the always-engaging Rosemarie DeWitt as Tara's sister. Brie Larson impresses as the older of Tara's two teenage kids.

"Tara," which as everyone knows was conceived by Steven Spielberg and birthed by Diablo Cody, bows Jan. 18.

"Life on Mars" deserves more than the 7.9 million viewers it pulled in last night.

I've fallen for ABC's redo of the Brit drama, which unfortunately is placing third in its Thursday 10 p.m. time slot. I like star Jason O'Mara more and more as I watch the show and I also like ensemble of supporting players -- Harvey Keitel (pictured at left with O'Mara in head lock), Michael Imperioli (pictured below), Gretchen Mol and Jonathan Murphy. The mystery element -- the whodunit on why our hero, NYPD detective Sam Tyler, was transported back in time to 1973 after getting hit by a car while chasing a perp in 2008 -- is unfolding slowly, with just enough intrigue to make you want to keep your eyes peeled for veiled clues.

Perhaps most of all, I love the way the show is lensed -- the look of 1973 Gotham has a hazy, almost sepia tone to it that adds to the mood of the show. We see it all as Sam does -- very surreal and dream-like. Keitel was a little over the top in the pilot but has since dialed it down. Imperioli has settled in to his mustache and sideburns. I hope "Mars" gets the time on air to tell its time-warp tale.