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Miserable start to this anniversary of that heinous revolt: I dreamed Six o’ One Patrick McGoohan and I were on the run and had only a small guardhouse to pass, so I let the champ sneak in and do his thing—only to find that he failed and was being held by a group of ruffians; it was Wild Wild James West who never lost a fight, after all. Their leader approached me with all the swagger his entourage afforded him and effortlessly caught my fist, mocking me. If only I could muster the strength to challenge his grip, but it would take longer than I had left, more confidence in myself to reign in my insecurities. Incompetent leadership at work got to me and my run didn’t make up for it, but by the end of the day I was chuckling at the sodium warning on Taco Bell’s new limited-time Crispy Chicken Wings (seasoned with “Mexican Queso”, for future reference).Napped during lunch and saw a passenger jet whose pilot the news said had successfully regained control of it to land intact; was more of a vertical drop out of the sky onto the runway in the near distance, but it didn’t go perfectly: as I looked closer, the plane’s body began twitching, as if it were going to explode. There were two young girls beside me and I pushed them to take cover from the blast behind a parked American sedan while the building wall kept me safe.

Quite possibly the most gratifying moment in my many years of genre television:

I couldn’t help but think that this very same series (with minor changes for continuity) might have served as a return to the Prisoner back in the 70’s or early 80’s, depending upon McGoohan’s fitness to return for the role.

Edit: I was right.

If it ever comes back in stock, I just might put one of these aside for us to work on together someday, though my recent bout with the flu makes me wonder if I’d survive another. But otherwise it’s a rabbit-hole for collectors. And I’m not sure who’s writing these movies, but it’s definitely someone who’s seen The Prisoner.

Was catching up with Dangerous Minds recently, and they themselves had just gotten around to video posted almost ten years ago of McGoohan in LA that really is the stuff of my dreams, especially his new bit with the hanger motif.

It’s been too long a day, so the details are all gone, like the one where 할머니 was a surprisingly able rider, even on the old 1100, though she didn’t quite make her last running start and let the bike fall on its side ahead of her. I was a single man again, a prisoner in a two-room ground floor home in a community very much like Patrick McGoohan’s with a curfew announced over a loudspeaker in the evening. I wasn’t so much making a break for it, but I did want to take a walk, so I ditched the surveillance when the opportunity arose behind noisy neighbors.

Somewhere on the Garbage Island of time is a cassette tape with the theme song I recorded “over the air”, as it were (before I discovered and amassed quite a collection of audio cables and mini-plug adapters), when the show returned to syndication on one of the local UHF networks. The music alone was positively thrilling, with an energy that distinguished it from the soundtracks of spy-king James Bond, and went nicely alongside the end credits to Space: 1999, which Chris will tell you I ruined by humming to. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were in it, too, but we’d move away only a few weeks into the first season.
It’d be years later when cable afforded me the opportunity to revisit the series, and agree with the opinion that Steven Hill was the better frontman than Peter Graves. I watch Phelps now and it doesn’t even feel like the Sixties anymore, though “The Mind of Stephan Miklos” will always be one of my favorite episodes. There are fewer of Rollin’s ridiculous masks in that brilliant opening year than I remember, but Barney still does most of the work, ninja or otherwise, and the Rogosh one makes me wish the IMF had been charged with breaking No. 6.

I didn’t think much of this new-Who spinoff when I first read about it, nor the lead after sidekicking for Christoper “Fantastic!” Eccleston (whom I always thought should’ve been cast in a better Prisoner remake), but after being impressed by some of the other new concepts on television from across the pond, e.g., the Weeping Angels, Sherlock, Karen Gillan… I ventured into the series on Netflix over the weekend, and it wasn’t until the “Children of Earth” serial-season that I was with the Internet when it went out at 3:30am. The music is loud and bombastic like a Taiwanese soap and only worsens any dramatic effect, and the ADHD-catering hour-long format makes me miss my glory days with Tom Baker’s Doctor—though to be honest, many of those stories only ran long because Sarah Jane/Leela was constantly splitting up with him and getting into some mess—but I like how they don’t pull any punches when it comes to mortality and gender relations. You’d expect some dying fighting aliens and shit, and for a guy from the 51st century to have a different attitude towards sex.

Before:

Now:

Have I mentioned already how I’ve been dreaming so much that I wake up like I’ve walked out of the Dark Knight? Well, a version of Dark Knight where the perspective switches between Batman’s and mine, all sorts of details are wrong and the story unravels in a direction somewhat if not completely unlike that of the original. This weekend I came up with no less than three episodes of House and an alternate ending to the Prisoner, apparently filmed later in the Seventies—must be my mind blurring those two decades again, from memories of reunion shows like this one—where No. Six is shot dead by the shopkeeper!

So Sunday afternoon I multi-tasked in the six-episode universally-panned miniseries from last year, and yes, I hated it. Bad enough they’d even hint that the “93” character was Patrick McGoohan’s (I get it, 9-3=6), but there were so many of them, who could keep track, much less care? Life in the twenty-first century is so far one long jail sentence imposed to keep us free from terrorism, and another Matrix is the best they could come up with? I’ve mellowed, though, and might actually agree to the suggestion that the series be remade every now and then, if only to shake things up, to remind us the world hasn’t changed, much, and if we’re to measure progress with a penny-farthing, it’s gotten worse.

Far cry from the hushed archives where I read the original stories (well, Arsène Lupin ones featuring Holmlock Shears), but the spectacle-like pacing kept me from fidgeting—much. If they’re remaking the Prisoner and putting the Beatles in Rock Band, why not sell Holmes and Watson as the Adam and Steve of buddy flicks? Can’t help but snicker how much their new relationship owes to House and Wilson’s, and Linda’s right, Hugh Laurie’d make a fabulous Moriarty. Unless he had to get naked, too.

I read stories like this, and I wonder if we went to the same place. Granted I was prepared for it, but to be perfectly honest, I would’ve had to make an effort to spot the CCTV cameras. And the most inconvenience I experienced was not being able to find a trash can in the Underground. Which is also why I’ve always doubted the effectiveness of those “scared straight” programs; you can’t fully appreciate an inmate’s confines unless you’re there to stay.