Ashes to Ashes/WMG

There are now three timelines
There is the real timeline, currently at 2008; Sam Tyler's personal timeline, where it's still and always will be the 1970s and he's living happily ever after with Annie, Gene, and the team in Manchester; and finally, Alex's timeline, where it's 1981 and Sam got shot years ago.

Status:

Alex Drake was The Girl In The Red Dress in Life On Mars, not Annie
She said that she was wearing red herself, which may have been a clue; her daughter looks and sounds almost exactly like the Test Card Girl from Life On Mars; and we saw a flash of a girl in a red dress holding hands with a boy wearing what looked like Young Sam Tyler's buckled shoes from S1 of Life on Mars.

Gene Hunt is Jesus
It is revealed that Gene has the nickname "The Manc Lion". A scant few scenes later, Alex discusses with her father how he would read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to her at bedtime. This is clearly to set up that Gene is Aslan. And if he's Aslan then, by definition, he's Jesus.

Status:

Alex Wasn't Shot
Her daughter, Molly, was. In the 2008 sequence of the pilot, Arthur Layton drags Molly offscreen, and a gunshot is heard; Alex runs after them and finds Molly, alone, unhurt, with Layton nowhere in sight and no way to explain how he got undetected from there to the parking lot where Alex's car was. This makes no sense whatsoever in terms of continuity; the logical answer is that Molly was shot, Alex suffered a mental break, and both Molly's reappearance AND the shooting that apparently sent Alex back to 1981 were hallucinations.

People are deliberately using comas to time travel
The man in the coma in 2008 and who's harassing Alex in S2 has gone back to interfere with Princess Diana's history (what specifically he intends to do remains to be seen, though it's likely to be an attempt to prevent her death in 1997 in some way). He thinks Alex is another person deliberately time travelling via coma, hence his interrogation of her after confirming that she's from his time.
 * Sam Tyler has started a bad trend here...

Status:

Ashes to Ashes (and Life On Mars) both take place in the Neon Genesis Evangelion universe
It's all part of Instrumentality. Alex and Sam are aspect's of Asuka and Shinji's subconscious. Gene is probably Pen-Pen, or Gendo.

Well, we needed a Eva crossover for this series and we hadn't had one yet.

Chris will die in the series two finale

 * 1) Heroic Sacrifice
 * 2) Redemption Equals Death
 * 3) True Art Is Angsty

Status:

Gene Hunt is the Spirit of Britain or King Arthur
Sam is Lancelot or Galahad. Alex is Guinevere. Ray is Percival. And Chris is Gawain.
 * I like this, but surely Percival's innocence makes him a better match for Chris? Ray could be Gawain (who is a ladies' man), but could also be one of the more obnoxious knights, like Sir Kay.

Status:

The past Alex and Sam visited is an Alternate Universe where time runs differently
Series two of Ashes to Ashes shows that this world definitely exists on some level outside just the mind of one person, what with Summers sharing the same predicament. But you can radically change the 'past' with no clear ill effects. The only logical conclusion is a self-contained alternate timeline. Time, however, is variable between the two universes, explaining why one is 'behind' the other and how Alex could spend a whole season in 1981 while bleeding out in a ditch somewhere.
 * This WMG explains a lot about the finale to the American Life On Mars. The difference between a self-contained alternate timeline and a sufficiently immersive VR cannot easily be determined from inside the alternate reality.

Status:

Gene Hunt is himself a time traveller.
Status:
 * 1) Established at the end of Season 1 that Gene was the person who rescued young Alex. Ergo, Gene exists in the "real" world.
 * 2) Established early in Season 2 that Alex is gradually forgetting her "real" life.
 * 3) In late Season 3, the fantasist believing himself to be Sam Tyler suggests the longer one spends in the past, the more they forget of their old life (supporting the above point).
 * What if Gene is a time traveler who has been in this alternate reality for so long that he's forgotten the "real" world? What if he is the original time traveler, and Sam, Alex, and PC Summers are visiting his reality?
 * Note that this theory explains why some scenes in A2A are from Gene's point-of-view, whereas all scenes in LoM were from Sam's POV.

Sam Tyler will appear in the final series of Ashes to Ashes
Ok, I am slightly cheating by already having seen the first episode of series 3. But-  If Tyler doesn't have some kind of crucial role in this season, the BBC are royally screwing with us and what's left of our minds.
 * Word of God says
 * Word of God says
 * Word of God says

Gene and the gang are part of a police training video that the protagonists of both series have seen early in their careers.
This would explain why both see the same Gene Genie, and Alex recognises him. It's likely (especially since the season one finale) that Gene was in fact a real person. He also seems like too much of an example of how not to police to not be this.

Status:

The man Alex saw on the tv and who was staring at her when she was looking at Sam Tyler's file in episode 1 is Sam Tyler.
It is hinted during episode 1 that there's something odd about Gene. It's that he's killed Sam Tyler. That's why he has his file, to prevent any investigation from pointing the finger at him. Sam in fact did not drown, but ended up disfigured. Dead copper's ID confirmed as:
 * Someone on the Railway Arms noticed that Ghost Cop's uniform appears to be that of a low-ranking police officer of the early 1960s. That leads to the interesting (if bonkers) theory that Ghost Cop is Gene himself, since he would have entered the service around then.

Sam and Alex were sent to the flash-sideways universe from Lost.

 * A violent "incident" results in someone winding up in an earlier time period, living a different life, constantly meeting people they really know and people who might be encroaching from the "original" timeline/universe/whatever. Think about it.
 * Status:

Shaz is pregnant

 * She is going through something...
 * Status:

Jim Keats is from the future

 * Just a guess
 * Maybe as in Episode 2 of Series 3
 * In interviews they've admitted he will have a big part in the reveal of what is really going on.
 * Status:
 * He still
 * He's, of course he.

Jim Keats and Gene Hunt are the original time travelers

 * combining two above theories, it could be that Keats is supposed to keep an eye on "newbie" time travelers like Sam and Alex but believes that Gene is his Evil Counterpart working against him in some kind of Gambit Roulette. Since he believes Gene is personally responsible for Sam's death and has shot Alex intentionally, he feels he has to get involved and why he's started trying to turn the others against Gene to "Stop" him once and for all. Keats could of been the actual voice on the phone to Sam in Life On Mars to test him to see where he wanted to stay. Since Sam chose to stay with Gene, Keats thought Sam would be a good influence and redeem Gene to do police work the right way. He had to let Alex deal with the stuff involving her parents and then was probably planning on making contact afterwards but wanted to avoid Summers who he may have felt also gone over to Gene's side. All that's left is to see what move Keats is able to make against Gene with Summers out the way and turning everyone else against Gene.

Status:

Jim Keats Is The Devil
Status:
 * The only reasons I have is that they mention his office is too warm, he had a religious upbringing, he mentioned as liking 'The Old Ways' and that shot in the last episode of him surrounded by smoke. Also he's trying to bring Gene down who, as stated in an above WMG, is Jesus.

Gene is Sam Beckett; Jim Keats is the Evil Leaper.

 * And the whole of LoM/A2A is Quantum Leap fanfic.
 * Well one theory is that the ending suggests that maybe Gene will eventually move on but he's got a lot more work to do. Similar to Sam Beckett maybe deep down this is what he wants, or what he feels like he "deserves" for now, to still be stuck in purgatory and that the shift to the 80s setting was really for Gene to give him that push into moving on.

The show is set on a simulated Earth space station in the manner of Dark City
The space station is run by aliens who are playing with humans. The "Earth" is split into different time periods, such as the 70s, 80s and 00s. Every so often they decide to move people from one place to another, such as Sam and Alex.

The reason Shaz and Ray have seen stars in the middle of the city is because the sky is a simulation. It occasionally breaks down, causing them to see what's really out there - space.

Gene Hunt is one of the aliens in charge, or rather was. He's decided to play along with the humans. And Jim is here to stop him.

And Sam discovered what was really going on, and Gene killed him because of it.
 * Status:

Gene didn't kill Sam 3 years ago, he helped him disappear
Other time travelers (such as Martin Summers) were trying to find Sam and stop him...he needed to disappear and Gene helped him fake his death. This will lead to Sam returning for the final episode.
 * Or Gene helped Sam hide from Jim Keats, and at the end of S3 he will help Alex get away from him too by faking her death.
 * Bevan (from ep 3.5) helped fake Sam's death, which is his hold over Gene.
 * As of the finale?
 * As of the finale?

"Thordy" is the real Sam.
He really is Sam, but there was a cover up and the records were switched so that files and photos that show the guy played by John Simm, is shown to be DI Tyler, but is actually the real Thordy. He looks like that in Life On Mars because of the Literary Agent Hypothesis.
 * Status:

Keats and Hunt are both psychopomps.
The universe of the show is a kind of anteroom to the afterlife for troubled coppers. It's Gene Hunt's job to help them let go of their issues and move on to the next stage, but he's not doing it properly -- despite helping Sam and Alex deal with their childhood trauma, he wants to keep them on his team. He loves them too much to let go. Keats has been sent to sort him out.
 * As a corollary to that, Gene did kill Sam -- having finally accepted that it was time to let the man move on. Of course, Sam was already dead in the real world -- but Alex doesn't understand that yet.

Status:

The world Alex and the rest of CID inhabit is collapsing somehow, and will soon disappear.
Throughout Season 3 the number of people seeing stars and having strange experiences has increased massively compared to previous seasons. Even Gene, who has not been shown to have any, seems to recognise that the end is fast approaching from his comments in 3.7. This could well be a sign that the world, whatever it is, is about to collapse and fall apart.

Ashes to Ashes is a sequel to Dixon of Dock Green
Okay, this is based solely on the Grand Finale:

Alex has been dead since 1981
This is based mainly on the finale. The opening sequence in Season 1 never quite made sense. Arthur Layton took Alex's daughter hostage, a gunshot was heard and then Molly emerged but the man didn't - making it look like he either killed himself or ran away. But the police didn't seem to be looking for him.
 * Word of God says that
 * And confirmed by.
 * And confirmed by.

Keats is the one who
It's why they have such animosity.
 * Status:

The dimension in which dead coppers are sent is a form of the Reaper's Game

 * Jim Keats may be some sort of Composer, what with his reality-bending abilities.

This series is actually set in the same reality as Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
See Some Mothers Do Ave Em for more.