I was scouring Youtube the other night and stumbled across a rare interview that Patrick McGoohan (the titular tour de force behind The Prisoner) did in 1977. It is in four parts that run about 40 minutes and the quality is what you’d expect from a VHS recording, but it is an interesting look not only behind-the-series itself but on McGoohan’s views of society in general.

A warning for those of you who haven’t seen The Prisoner: there are spoilers here regarding the series’ finale—actually, finale isn’t the right word to use regarding The Prisoner‘s last episode, so let’s just get that out of the way right now.

Anyway, for your consideration…

I do happen to agree with McGoohan’s assertion that progress, or what passes for progress, is the most dangerous issue that humanity faces. There are many valid points here that are worthy of debate, such as his observation that there has not yet been a weapon created by man that hasn’t been used. We already know about the ciphering of the citizenry—with everyone assigned with a number (or, in today’s world, countless numbers)—and we know of the horror of nuclear and, to a lesser extent, biological weapons. Ergo, we should all be very fearful of what is to come, unless we take care and control of our actions as a species.

You may not agree, but at least watch the above videos, and feel free to discuss as I intend on writing more on these topics in the future.

Be seeing you.

Most viewers wanted to do this after watching all six hours... Nom nom grenade nom nom—boom!

I’ve wanted to react to the perversion that was AMC’s “remake” of The Prisoner, however I didn’t want to come across as a whinging fuckard who didn’t like it.

But I said to hell with it.

Without a shred of doubt, it has placed itself on my personal list as one of the worst remakes I have ever seen since Lost in Space. Lost in Space had Gary Oldman. The Prisoner had Sir Ian McKellen. Proving yet again that good actors can be cast in shit.

Indeed, the whole six hour miniseries was a waste of time; time that I shall never be able to reclaim. For that feat alone, and for this piece of “art” to so brazenly defecate on its “source material” (and I use these terms very loosely, ergo the quotation marks), it should earn a Razzie, a faux Academy Award purchased from Spencer’s Gifts, and a burning pile of fecal matter in a brown paper lunch baggie.

I’m not going to make detailed comparisons between this abomination and Patrick McGoohan’s libertarian, counterculture masterpiece. I’ve thought about that approach and summarily dismissed it, as I haven’t the will to do it. The commitment to actually go and do a figurative venn diagram for either myself or all two of you is nonexistent.

The reason for this, you see, stems from the abhorrent fact that this new Prisoner is an exercise in blatant stupidity. It is from someone who apparently likes the series (or the general idea), but never grokked it. It’s an exercise from writers who apparently have written horrendous fiction, are interested in twists and turns with no true substance (see Lost), and haven’t plotted out the story. Hence the fairly languid pace, the actors desperately trying to polish the turd script-cum-toilet-paper, and the mishmash of topics and subjects that are supposed to push our “social” buttons (a homophobic father, drugged members of society, the pervasiveness of electronic surveillance, terrorism, et al). Sadly, in pushing those buttons, they failed to realize that buttons need to be pressed in a certain sequence to form compositions. Whether you are manipulating the keys of a keyboard to compose sentences, or the keys to a piano to play music, there is a discipline and order that needs to be understood. Otherwise, you are performing an act that has this technical term.

Today’s kids call it “keysmash.”

This abomination would have gone either unnoticed… or unfilmed… if it weren’t for its use of “nods” and themes to and from The Prisoner. Number Two. Number Six. The Village. Rover. Escape. The question of why Six resigned.

I believe this abomination is the result of the same thought process that went into the creation of New Coke. We all know how that went.

Beyond the use of names, general plot premises, and various bits of dialogue—”Local destinations only,” “Be seeing you,” etc.—this show needn’t have used The Prisoner. It’s not even the same thing. It’s basically trying to sell a car that looks like a Ferrari, but doesn’t have the mechanical aspects of it. The soul of the car isn’t there. It’s just branding a jalopy in the hopes of getting some sucker to buy it.

This interpretation—and I loathe to refer to it as thus—fails on its own merits and will be forgotten in the sands of time, since it ultimately doesn’t make you think. And, failing that, it’s not even entertaining. Mel Gibson’s Jesus Christ couldn’t carry the show as he bumbles around trying to find his character (as a glorified amnesiac, you’d think it’d be easy), and Sir Ian McKellen seems to have just said “fuck this” and go with the flow of the wacky nature of the story. Indeed, the only good parts to this “television event” were McKellen’s appearances as Number Two.

So here’s where I do the whole comparison thing. Out of necessity. I can’t avoid it, seeing as this abomination now shares the name of a perfectly good story!

McGoohan was able to act. He was able to create a character, the Prisoner, that was so strong and intelligent that he was a force to be reckoned with. He fenced with great adversarial Number Twos throughout the course of his imprisonment, played by various strong actors and actresses. Brilliant story telling. Brilliant dialogue. McGoohan tapped into the counterculture of the time, into the cultural zeitgeist like Trek was fabled to do in the sixties.

The point of The Prisoner is that it is a parable telling of an individual’s struggle against society, a society that attempts to force total conversion of a person so that they are socially acceptable. It does what any good science fiction has done since its inception: hold a mirror up to society and, in that crucible, force us to address some aspect of humanity that has otherwise gone unchallenged or unquestioned.

The other brave thing that the original Prisoner did was “Fall Out,” which resulted in McGoohan going into hiding due to the demands of all those members of society who declared that he must give them an answer to their question. However, I’ll cover that more in depth in the future; I don’t care to muddle the point amidst my utter hatred for this New Coke… ahem, Prisoner.

If anything can be salvaged from this horrendous remake, it is this: it helps introduce The Prisoner to a new generation, in another millennium, that never grew up with it. Even with this 21st century rotting turd masquerading as The Prisoner, it undoubtedly helped the series’ release in blu-ray, which itself is part of the testament to the legacy left behind by McGoohan, who passed in 2009. (Another reason why 2009 was a shitty year.) This brilliant bloke and visionary, who exposes Gene Roddenberry as the reincarnation of Antonio Salieri, is the inspiration for many writers and storytellers out there, including Ron Moore, creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

Oh, and for all those future generations: If you’re going to remake The Prisoner, make sure the people at The Simpsons do it. Here’s why.

Having downloaded the PDF for The Prisoner comic, an 8-page comic made available at the San Diego Comic Con that sets up the events of AMC’s 6-hour miniseries in November 2009 (starring Sir Ian McKellan and Jim Caviezel), I feel decidedly underwhelmed.

I will say that I recognize the comic as a piece of promotional material. A teaser meant to whet the appetite, which in itself is no better and, let’s hope, no worse than that “Last Supper” business NBC Universal and the people behind Battlestar Galactica shoved down our throats.

Without spoiling it for you, the comic denotes a completely different direction from its original source material, which… might be a severe mistake. The penultimate fait accompli of this remake, if you will.

The point of the series is this: an extremely valuable unnamed intelligence agent with a promising career suddenly, and without warning or any apparent rationale, suddenly resigns. After resigning, he is abducted and finds himself in a place called “The Village,” where he is subjected to various attempts to extract the reason for his sudden resignation, which he doesn’t care to disclose. There is also the question of which side “The Village” operates for and, while very much a prison of sorts, it is impossible to tell who are the prisoners and who are the wardens. Also, everyone The Village has a number. The unnamed prisoner, the protagonist of the story, is called Number 6. (To answer your question: Yes, this was the origin for the name of that blonde number with the glowing spine from that television show with the ship that looked like a cross between a ribbed prophylactic and an alligator on skis.) More often than not, the antagonist is a person referred to as Number Two, who apparently runs The Village. In the original 1967 series, the Number Two would often be a different person, mostly a man, and sometimes a woman.

Now, in the series, 6′s mental faculties are undamaged, despite repeated attempts to warp his mind. However, in the new mini-series, it appears that The Prisoner has experienced memory loss, which is (according to one report, anyway) deliberate.

At the risk of sounding alarmist, this changes the entire concept of The Prisoner. The fact that Number 6 knows who he is, what he did, and why he did it was vital to the show, as he actively fought to protect his sense of identity through sheer force of will power and belief in himself. To have Number 6 deprived of the knowledge of who he is, and (if I’m reading it correctly) rediscover who he is in an enemy camp, means that the entire premise of the show has been changed.

While I will admit that there are various episodes episode of the original series where Number 6 is tricked into believing that he is, in fact, someone else (or retrained with a new personality during the “Ultimate Test”), the people who ran The Village were very careful to avoid actually damaging his intellect. After all, were his brain or intellect damaged, then they may never actually find out the answer to the question of why he resigned.

So, the question remains… is this new Prisoner a mere “prison break” story with some psychological contrivances and good actors, or will it actually follow the footsteps of its original source material and provide us with an innovative television series that dares to have us question our culture and our society?

I’ll be waiting for an answer to that question, hoping that it will arrive in November.