The Prisoner
I am not a number I am a… no, wait, I am a number.
Tags: Misc DVD 2009 Categories: DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Oct 27th, 2009
I did something I don’t normally do before I sat down to watch The Prisoner on Blu-ray – I researched it. This television series is lauded by science fiction fans, by spy action fans, mystery fans, or by those that simply enjoy good stories and many other varied groups of television viewers. I myself had seen the series, but it has been many years. Originally aired in the late 60’s, The Prisoner is a product of its time, technologically and socially, but it still holds relevance today as well as having been ahead of its time.
Patrick MacGoohan is Number 6, a British operative of some sort who resigns at the opening of the series, only to be awakened in The Village. Why? Where is The Village? Who are all these residents? Plenty more questions are asked, many of which are never answered. Thee is a running theme of social commentary about being true to yourself, the rules of polite society, service to country, and more.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the series, so I dug out my book on the series as well as checking a few sources online. One of the major problems with the series, as many other British programs from this era of type, is the order in which they are aired. Looking at the episode order on this Blu-ray set I could tell they are arranged in broadcast order, with “The Chimes of Big Ben” as the second episode. This is a mistake, so I checked out what I could and then watched the series in the order it was intended to be seen – at least as far as can be surmised.
This is the biggest problem with A&E’s Blu-ray release of The Prisoner – the way everything is organized. Replicating the broadcast order at this point in the series life is somewhat … well, it’s almost offensive. Not only are the episodes arranged out of order, but the special features are also poorly organized. While it’s wonderful that we get two versions of the first episode “The Arrival” the fact that the final broadcast version is presented with the rest of the series, as it should, on the first disc, the alternate original edit (along with a music only version as well as a restored version) is placed on the 4th disc which is where the bonus features begin.
Still, even with the poor organization of this Blu-ray release, it’s hard to deny just how groundbreaking The Prisoner was. Its influence can be seen in series from Lost to burn Notice as well as a bunch of other seemingly unrelated programs (such as The Simpsons).
There are a number of excellent episodes exploring the will of the individual over the confines of expectation. My favorite might be “Many Happy Returns” which explores many of the themes central to the series but also takes some of the most twisted turns throughout the whole 17 episode series. A few of the episodes simply don’t work nearly as well either on a dramatic or concept level, but that’s to be expected. These are buoyed by the rest of the series as well as the high concept of The Prisoner overall.
One of the most telling lines of the whole series is in my least favorite episodes. Towards the end of the series, an episode “Living in Harmony” has Number 6 recreating his situation in the Old West, resigning his position as Sheriff and then forced to live in a town. There the judge tells him “I’m not letting you join some other outfit,” as to why he is being kept there. Plenty of hints are dropped throughout the whole of the series, but there are no definitive answers.
It is the lack of finality that leads some people to hate how The Prisoner ends. While the final episode does sort of wallow in its silliness, the point that it makes at the end about how we are all prisoners of our selves should not be taken lightly. Watching it again, part of me wants to believe that the whole of the series was a psychotic episode by the main character and it was all happening in his mind.
Presented in the special features is a “Textless Title Sequence” which runs about 12 minutes and features a lot of extra footage from the series. There is no sound, but interestingly does feature a look at how forward thinking the producers were as far as marketing the series in different countries with the file cabinet designating the character of Number 6 as resigning from his post in different languages. We also get a whole lot of audio commentary tracks on various episodes by a number of different people. Some of these are better than others, all of them with audio issues – the mix between the commentators and the show audio is completely off.
Other special features include a few minutes of a sort of interview with Peter Wyngarde, who portrayed Number 2 in one of the episodes as well as an interview with Eric Mival about the music used in the film and how it all fit together. We also get a documentary on the series that runs just over 90 minutes and is quite exhaustive. It unfortunately is replacing some of the previous special feature, such as A&E’s own Prisoner Video Companion. This is all in addition to various montages, bumpers, promos, and other promotional material.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Landmark series with great themes + Good special features + No really, this was one of the first series to explore some existential ideas this way |
7.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Lousy organization - Some of the episodes are rather lackluster - Ending is a bit wierd - Dont get all the previous special features |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| A good set, but not as definitively as one would like. | |
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Tags: Misc DVD 2009
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Oct 27th, 2009 and is filed under DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
