The Prisoner For Our Times!

The Prisoner -Original Art Edition is a fascinating volume. Let me be frank. I don't own this elegant but exceedingly expensive volume featuring the raw unfinished work done by Jack Kirby, Mikey Royer, Gil Kane and Steve Englehart for two different attempts to launch a comic book adaptation of The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan. But you can get an expansive and detailed all of it at AE Index. Check out the link for some eye-popping glimpses of comics in different states of undress. This was originally priced at $79.99, but is not available at that price anymore. I found prices ranging from one hundred to two hundred bucks if you can find it. I can't really argue that it's worth the asking price, but it's sure worth a look see at the AE Index location. 

Jack Kirby was a stalwart supporter of our national freedom. He fought in WWII, putting his life on the line to stop a dictator's desire to control the world. Giving The Prisoner another watch in these times of trial when our very freedoms are under direct assault from some of the institutions entrusted to maintain them, might prove to be enlightening. Happy Birthday Jack!  

Secret Agent or as it's known in Britain Danger Man is the McGoohan spy show that predates The Prisoner and first presents the super-spy "John Drake" who is almost certainly the same disaffected spy who become the titular "Prisoner". The connection between the two series is thematic for certain but not official, almost certainly due to the complications of ownership rights and suchlike.

 

Despite being an immense fan of the Johnny Rivers theme song, I've never actually seen an episode of Secret Agent, and I found them excellent entertainment. (Note: The theme to the second season was an offbeat tune which a friend of mine said sounded like the theme of The Munsters performed by The Chipmunks. I can't really disagree.) The first series offers us our first glimpse of Drake, and he's a dashing and extremely capable espionage agent who is able to work in all theaters of operation and like most of his counterparts knows more than it's likely anyone person can know. And of course he laden with all sorts of nifty gadgets, my favorites are the frequently seen camera lighter and the shaver recorder. This conceit is forgiven of course for the sake of drama and he follow as he skips across the globe in a host of guises rescuing capture diplomats, stalking enemy agents and liberating stolen secrets. 

These early episodes are exciting little narrative pellets that race along dispensing just enough information to keep you aware of what's happening and why and then dashing off in a split second. The action is more violence and lasts typically only a few seconds. There are few of the extended fight sequences in the familiar manner of the Republic Serials. Here the movements are quick, brutal and few get up when tossed down some stairs or smacked with a ready piece of furniture. (Though truth told the fights do get more tradional and more tedious as the serious wears on.) Drake eschews guns for the most part, even sometimes when a gun would be the prudent option. He prefers not to kill. 

Likewise, he is a man of a strict moral code, and we don't see McGoohan's hero making much time with the beauties who populate the stories. He's either got little interest or no time and a promiscuous hero seemed not the image McGoohan wanted to convey. The complexity of the character of John Drake was able to be developed a bit more when the show shifted to an hour with the later seasons. But I dreaded that the plotting would suffer and at first it did with odd additional beats added to shows to broaden them to length, stuff that really wasn't key to the main focus of the episode and at times felt almost like a new show. But this improved vastly as the shows went on. 

There's no doubt in my imagination that by the end of the series the super-spy John Drake is a man who has at the very least become overtly jaded by his long service and at the most has developed disdain for his superiors who seem to sacrifice the nobility of humanity to fulfill the needs of any given situation. Drake himself is forced to make hard choices and he chooses to fulfill his duties, but one can see he's a man who is about to change that circumstance. 

I must confess to being a relative latecomer to The Prisoner. For whatever reason I never saw it when it ran originally, nor did I catch subsequently on television. But that doesn't mean I didn't read about it, a groundbreaking television show that has launched decades of debate and discussion about its deeper meanings. I finally took the plunge several years ago and picked up the Fortieth Anniversary edition of the show (it seems to have an anniversary edition every five years or so) and watched the episodes and found them interesting and curious, but I must confess they did not live up to my expectations. But that might well have been because of my overdeveloped expectations and not the fault of the show. 

Subsequent research and another good close look have convinced me that there's less to The Prisoner than meets the reputation. That is not to say there isn't plenty to chew on and it is not to suggest its standing as a thought-provoking entertainment isn't earned. I just don't find it to be as dense an experience as some argue, and furthermore I find the haphazard nature of the making of the some of the episodes either gifts or curses the show with an ad hoc feeling. One way to think about it which works for me is that it's like a concept LP album, with different tunes by the same band, but each song with different influences, writers, and featured artists. There's even what you might regard as a cover song, the episode in which McGoohan is "replaced" by another actor thanks to a brain-switching device. 

Patrick McGoohan's powerful personality made the show possible, but hearing interviews and reading about the show convinces me that his dour insular manner also shortchanged some of the possibilities of the show. Pun intended, "it takes a village" to make a television show and any auteur is not helped by holding too much of the vision inside for too long. It's clear to me that writer George Markstein deserves much more credit for The Prisoner than he's given. All that said, there's little question that The Prisoner raises some provocative questions which a society dependent on a plethora of techniques to calm their masses might find troubling. "Number Six" is an absolute individualist who demands that he be left alone to think and feel as he chooses. That his thoughts and actions are sometimes contrary to the efficiency of the Village. The ending of The Prisoner is beyond bizarre and consequently will always be open to individual interpretation, and I'm sure that enigmatic nature is why the show persists in the imagination. 

Be seeing you. 

The Bionic Woman tomorrow. 

Rip Off