I just watched the full series for the first time and really enjoyed the series for the first eleven episodes. However I thought it derailed starting with the twelfth and continuing through the last. It seemed as if they just wanted to get it over with. Does anyone else agree with me?
shareIts true the show became inconsistant in quality as it went along.
I felt "Living in Harmony" and the finale two episodes "Once upon a Time" and "Fall Out" were among the best of the show's run. But I'd agree that "Do Not Forsake me Oh my Darling" and "The Girl Who was Death" were the worst of the lot.
I thought "Living in Harmony". "Once Upon a Time", and "Fall Out" contained very interesting ideas but I thought they were poorly executed. I think that there was a lot of fluff accompanying the great ideas and that with more time and effort to tighten up the writing, the episodes could have been much better.
shareLast five were the best purely for the fact they include "Once Upon a Time" and "Fall Out", while I do like a lot of the earlier episodes these two were by far the best.
"The World is Your Lobster My Son!"-Arthur Daley, Minder.
"Once Upon a Time" and "Fall Out" were brilliant episodes imo. "Living In Harmony" was decent enough, but the idea of switching minds/consciousness with another person may be too far fetched...even for "The Prisoner" lol. They only filmed that episode that way because McGoohan was busy working on another film at the time. However, when I watch the episode, it's still entertaining enough for me; any one where me makes it back to London in some form always gets my attention.
The other two are my least favorite as well. I appreciate bringing in a different, western style to "Darling" and don't mind the effort, I just don't think they pulled it off completely. I'll at least watch the episode and not be entirely bored. "The Girl Who was Death" (sp? don't have another firefox link up to check the titles properly) is a real waste of time, and doesn't really belong in the series. It truly does seem like a call back to Danger Man, despite there being no correlation to the two series. The idea that he's reading to children is just too silly for this show.
Minor correction - "Living in Harmony" was the western episode, "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" was the mind-swap episode. :)
shareI'm always perplexed by the regular comparisons with The Girl Who Was Death and Danger Man given the style of the Prisoner ep is nothing like Danger Man whatsoever, other than the final two (colour) episodes.
shareI'm always perplexed by the regular comparisons with The Girl Who Was Death and Danger Man given the style of the Prisoner ep is nothing like Danger Man whatsoever, other than the final two (colour) episodes.I don't think the style was remotely like the last two episodes of Danger Man either.
"The Girl Who Was Death" also had an agent name Potter, and this one like Danger Man's was played by Christopher Benjamin. For whatever that's worth.
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"the idea of switching minds/consciousness with another person may be too far fetched...even for "The Prisoner" lol"
If that is the case, you should have given up on the series in episode one where a tiny ball expands out of water, chases down and envelops a man and whisks him away.
Not only that, I would say switching consciousness would be more likely than being able to not only view another's dreams on a TV screen, but introduce characters into dreams at will. (A, B, C).
For me, the idea that he's reading for children is chilling, in that it implies a generation born into & raised wholly within The Village. Not unlike the world of constant surveillance we live in today.
Also, I've always felt that "The Girl Who Was Death" is a bit of a raspberry at many of the viewers expecting/wanting a traditional spy story a la James Bond, i.e., "Is this what you really want? See how silly & ridiculous it is?"
Originally, McGoohan only wanted to make seven episodes...those were:
Arrival
The Chimes of Big Ben
Free For All
Dance of the Dead
Checkmate
Once Upon a Time
Fall Out
The production company wanted him to make 22-24 eps, so they compromised on 17 eps. So 10 of the episodes were created sort of "out of story" and more stand-alone. If you watch only those seven, it's a very short but intense series.
I like most of the episodes, but my favorite is still "Hammer into Anvil".
lordxur: Originally, McGoohan only wanted to make seven episodes...those were:
Arrival
The Chimes of Big Ben
Free For All
Dance of the Dead
Checkmate
Once Upon a Time
Fall Out
The production company wanted him to make 22-24 eps, so they compromised on 17 eps. So 10 of the episodes were created sort of "out of story" and more stand-alone. If you watch only those seven, it's a very short but intense series.
This is simply not true. First of all, that list was initially announced as what McGoohan considered after the fact to be "the seven episodes that count" while the rest could be thrown into the "rubbish" (I'm pretty sure that last word was attributed to him in connection with this). This is corroborated by the fact that there was not so much as a rough outline for "Fall Out" (the finale) until a very short time before it was filmed. Since the "intelligence agent resigns, gets kidnapped, etc.," concept was created by George Markstein in early 1966 and gave McGoohan a conventional narrative hook by which he could pitch The Prisoner to Grade and figures so centrally in both "Arrival" and "Chimes...," neither of those storylines could have existed prior to that time. Furthermore, as all indications are that Patrick was firmly committed to ATV/ITC, "only seven" was in no way, shape, or form an option. He may well have had the thought during the five years or so that he worked on his original ideas that seven or so episodes would have been for the best, but he could not ever have genuinely considered that number to be a realistic possibility, let alone ever discussed it with Grade. Nor could those aforementioned two have been among the seven in his mind, if any specific seven were at all. More evidence: "Chimes," working as I said before pretty much strictly on the superficial spy-story level, belongs on that list only in that it establishes McKern's #2 for his return (explicitly stated to be such more than once in "Once...") for the last two episodes, while "A Change of Mind," which isn't there, really plays to McGoohan's underlying themes of individuality vs. conformity and the like much more than it does anything else.
Note to rediguana who launched, and therefore named, this thread: "Eleven" + "five" = 16, while there are 17 episodes to this series. Since in this day and age I can't assume which order you are using, I must ask: Which episode are you leaving out? Why doesn't it fall into either group?
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I just got done watching the series and I noticed a drastic change in the last couple of episodes, only a few of them were able to have my full attention. I was also very displeased with the finale, Once Upon a Time was brilliant in it's set up, but then you get to Fallout and it felt like a complete mess, ruining everything episode 16 had going for it.
Maybe I was expecting too much, but I can't help but feel a little empty after watching the finale.
Because sponges never have bad days.
As I said, "Fall Out" was thrown together essentially from scratch shortly before it was filmed. The late Kenneth Griffith (President of the Assembly) has said that because of time constraints, he wrote his own speech at McGoohan's request. I really must get a copy of the recently published collection of the series' scripts, as this is the most prominent of several for which I have good reason to wonder just what they look like.
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https://youtu.be/hfyhDD140Xw?t=238
Reported for doody.
What order did you watch the series in? After all, there is no universally agreed-upon episode order, and the A&E set contains at least one major blunder.
"FUNNY HOW SECRETS TRAVEL..."
scottt-purcell: What order did you watch the series in? After all, there is no universally agreed-upon episode order, and the A&E set contains at least one major blunder.
Who are you asking?
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Who are you asking?
The OP and yourself.
Always interested in hearing smart opinions about possible episode orders.
"FUNNY HOW SECRETS TRAVEL..."
I watched in what was the standard screening order through the 70s and 80s (at least here in the US), as seen in the MPI home video releases and in many episode guides, such as the Matthew White & Jaffer Ali book of 1988.
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There were 7 basic stories .The writers had to use a fair bit of padding to manage 17 episodes .TV bosses wanted 2 series of 13 episodes but the idea wouldn't stretch that far.
shareMcGoohan MAY have felt from early on that only seven would have been best, but that certainly was not an option at ITC in those days. Furthermore, the finale, "Fall Out," wasn't written--not one word--until shortly before it was filmed, working against the contention that he had "his" seven episodes on paper from the beginning. Furthermore, the two-volume collection of the series' scripts, published relatively recently, includes two teleplays that weren't filmed and two plot synopses that weren't scripted. That brings the total to 21, leaving them just five short of 26. Especially given this, I have to believe the long-standing story that ITC chief Lew Grade pulled the proverbial plug because making the first 13 episodes took too much time and money; that he wouldn't allow it for another 13 fits the known descriptions of him--all businessman, no artistic sense--perfectly.
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Much as I've been a fan of the Prisoner for 35 years I don't think it could ever have sustained any more episodes and even McGoohan in an interview said that a good deal of episodes were padding.
I take your point that even though there were a basic good seven, McGoohan cobbled together the ending without a real idea how to finish the series until near to the close of production!
Wasn't one of the unfilmed plotlines something about a plane that crashes near the village and the pilot turns out to be one of the Number Two's?
Hungerhill: I take your point that even though there were a basic good seven, McGoohan cobbled together the ending without a real idea how to finish the series until near to the close of production!
For years the story was that as time to film the finish approached McGoohan went to Grade and said that he didn't know how it should end. Grade responded that this was Patrick's obligation, not his own, and the star locked himself away for a weekend and came out with "Fall Out." Or at least part of it, since (as I said earlier) Kenneth Griffith said that time constraints caused McGoohan to have him write his own speech.
Wasn't one of the unfilmed plotlines something about a plane that crashes near the village and the pilot turns out to be one of the Number Two's?
I've never seen the book, as much as I'd like to have my own copy, so I don't have any idea of those four's plot premises. What little I've read about it gives nothing more than authors' names and (working) episode titles.
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One of the things you need to remember is that the second-to-last episode was about the seventh episode to be filmed.
So any analysis of the *Last Five* needs to take into account that they were not written in that order.
I think the nature of "Once upon A Time" demonstrates that the final episode was never likely to be a huge studio-set where Number One and all the baddies got blown to smithereens by the secret agent hero called 006...................
Oh Oh what?........ But - that's actually exactly what happened........ The Secret Agent blew Number One and all the baddies to smithereens........
What exactly was the query about the final episode again?
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/
back to the o/p, although a huge fan of the series from day one I have to agree that the quality of scripts and ideas definitely tailed off at the end.
Fall Out was entertaining but just a little too trippy, at odds with the "Bond blowing up the volcano" ending. However that dichotomy helped the discussion of the series last more than 40 years so is a good thing overall :-)
I have never personally got along with the middle part of Once Upon A Time, to me it is just too much poor experimental theatre improvisation and comes across as just time filling.
Forsake Me was a straight spy story with sci-fi mind swap plotline, although I like it quite a lot it has little to do with the Village concept, quite apart from the huge plot holes. To name just one, the prof escapes at the end in the village helicopter and No 6 says he is now free - the same village helicopter that so easily brought No 6 back by remote control in Arrival.
Harmony just looked cheaply made in the sets and location, something which was expertly masked in earlier episodes which look fantastic compared with other ITC series of the time.
Death Girl was sort of entertaining but an obvious tongue in cheek take off of the Emma Peel era Avengers, which was already about as far tongue in cheek as you could go without falling off the edge. Again little correspondence with the ideas behind the early Village episodes.
I am a great fan of McGoohan and the series but looking at the episodes it is apparent they were running out of time and ideas to do justice to the original concept, and perhaps money too which led to a somewhat more slapdash look to the final episodes.
I thought it derailed starting with the twelfth and continuing through the last. It seemed as if they just wanted to get it over with.
You'll need to get just a little more specific, I think.
But regardless, the answer is a resounding "no". Many of the latter episodes were the most inspired. Of course it all depends on what order you're putting the episodes in...
"FUNNY HOW SECRETS TRAVEL..."
Well, I watched in A&E's order: Arrival, Free for All, Dance of the Dead, Checkmate, COBB, ABC, The General, Schizoid Man, Many Happy Returns, It's Your Funeral, Change of Mind, Hammer into Anvil, Do Not Forsake Me, Living in Harmony, Girl Who Was Death, Once Upon a Time, Fall Out.
I loved Fall Out. I was a little disappointed that the show went the leave-it-open-to-debate route (like Lost did) instead of just closing the story in their own words, but the absurdity of it all was great and Kanner as 48 was one of the most enjoyable performances to watch I've ever seen on TV.
I wasn't blown away by OUaT, but it was alright. Overall, I thought the whole thing seemed rather directionless and felt more like a bizarre improv bit than anything else. What I did like: The back and forth between #6 and #2, probably my favorite #2 (?) making a return, and one of my absolute favorite parts of the entire series: McGoohan brimming from ear to ear chomping down on an ice cream cone.
Maybe I'm in the minority but I loved both Harmony and Girl. I thought that Harmony probably had the most entertaining twist of the entire series and both did a great job at creating worlds only to reveal them not to exist.
I really didn't care for Forsake Me at all. I think Stock did about as good a job as anyone could at filling McGoohan's shoes, but the plot was terribly far-fetched (even for The Prisoner) and felt overly/unnecesarily convoluted. (Along with Change, I thought Forsake Me started to show that the program was really stretching what else they could put #6 through at that point.)
So, I'd say that of the final 5 episodes, three were great (Harmony, Girl, Fall Out), one was one of the weakest of the series (Forsake Me), and one was somewhere in the middle (OUaT).
I'd definitely take the first 12 over the last 5 because 12 episodes of The Prisoner beats only having 5, but I would say of the 4 episodes I didn't really like that much (Many Happy Returns, Change of Mind, Forsake Me, and It's Your Funeral) 3 fall in the first-12 category (and, oddly enough, ran back-to-back-to-back in the order I watched it).
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Do Not Forsake Me and The Girl Who Was Death are generally considered two of the weakest episodes. I always loved Living in Harmony - one of my favorites in fact. Once Upon A Time didn't do it for me and I've always kind of wondered why it was considered so good - to me it was just two overacting people screaming at each other. Fallout is a psychedelic *beep* that answers nothing (other than the actual shooting location), but I think it's a lot of fun as sort of a stand alone episode.
share[deleted]
Regretfully, I have to agree in principle with the OP, while differing in the numbers. For me it was the last four that didn't work, but I am taking as my running order the order given in the IMDB episode guide, here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061287/episodes
which appears to be based on the presumptive original broadcast order in the UK (although there seems to be no universal agreement on that, as different TV companies did different things).
(As far as I remember, the IMDB episode guide order coincides with the order in Lovefilm's (UK) "watch online" episodes (in which they refer to "Arrival" as a "pilot" ... not sure it really was one though).
This thing about Patrick McGoohan only wanting there to be 7 episodes: Now I've read this quite a few times in various places on the web recently, including here.
However, just going by my memory of various reports in the press etc, over the years, my (vague) understanding of the situation was approximately that Patrick McGoohan originally had very ambitious plans for this project, and probably wanted it, if anything, to be longer than the 17 epissodes that we ended up with.
However (so the story went), it all got a bit out of hand, he came under a lot of pressure (or put himself under a lot of pressure), and no doubt, as has been mentioned, there were financial pressures as it must have been very costly to make, and basically the poor chap cracked up somewhat. Consequently, it was finished rather hurriedly, with the result that episodes like Fall Out are, to some of us, let us say, unsatisfying.
This is said with absolutely no disrespect to Patrick McGoohan; quite the opposite. In some respects he possibly sacrificed his career, or potential career, for The Prisoner.
I may have got the wrong end of the stick (it happens...), but I'd be interested to hear if this chimes with anyone else's memory.
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I am not a number. I couldn't even remember my number.
The IMDb's order is that of the first, UK/ITC, airing, and I've never heard of any disagreement on that. However, this order was influenced at least in part by what was and was not completed and available to them for airing. Four of the last five episodes there are the last four filmed, "Do Not Forsake Me...," "...Harmony," "The Girl..." and "Fall Out" ("Once Upon a Time" had to be the next-to-last, of course). This can be confirmed by noting how many members of the crew are different, as well as the absence of George Markstein as script editor.
As far as McGoohan "probably wanted it, if anything, to be longer than the 17 episodes...." I said before that as long as he dealt with ATV/ITC, a 7-episode run just was not an option, and that is and always will be a fact. The content and credits of the episodes support the now discounted but previously long-standing belief (indeed, repeatedly reported as flat fact) that Grade cancelled the planned second batch of 13 episodes after the first 13 took approximately one year and a lot of money to make; then he and McGoohan compromised on just four more, including a finale. The phrasing of every report of that which I've encountered suggests strongly that there was no committment to a conclusion (of sorts) until then, but never mind that here. The point here is that the "discounted belief" appears to be the fact of the matter (other than most of "Chimes..." being shot in and near the Borehamwood studio first to be a pilot, as I explained on the thread "Multiple #2s").
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Thanks tbritt.
(and I've just re-read your comments in "Multiple #2s").
I won't flog this particular horse any further to death.
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I am not a number. I couldn't even remember my number.
Sorry, but I don't quite agree with you all.
Firstly, the pre-last episodes (Forsake me, Living in Harmony and The girl who was death) were, I agree, under the quality of the others and off plot, but they still were entertaining and refreshing, being able to have a plot outside the Village was a cool breeze in this kafkaesque setup.
Secondly, the finale (Once upon a time and, mostly, Fallout) was brilliant, and it amazes me that it was written only shortly before filming. Really, I couldn't have think of a better, more intellectually fulfilling ending for this serie, or a more surprising one. Except from the gunfight scene (which surprised me at first too, but it has some significance for me), the Fallout episode was really inspired, and we hardly see something like this in tv series (or even in movies) nowadays.
But I agree that this had to finish here. Even if I greatly enjoyed the show, it would have done more harm than good if it continued to run for another season with a degradation of quality and scenario, and we can't live too long in a kafkaesque world, its highly interesting, but not very enjoyable in the long.
For those who think the ending was poor : what did you expect as an end ? What would be a good end for The Prisoner ?
McGoohan certainly never wanted to make an endless show out of this. The books that say that are talking bull - quite frankly. What he actually said was the he felt his original ideas would not sustain more than seven episodes. However as tbrittreid says, that would never have been enough to interest Lew Grade and because McGoohan was a skilled, professional and experienced TV guy of nearly 40 year of age, he and his team stretched it out a bit.
Several of the episodes are vaguely twins of one another: Many Happy Returns and Chimes are both spinning a tale of escape that isn't all it seems. Schizoid Man and Do Not Forsake Me are both playing with the idea of undermining a man's personal identity by interfering with his body and si belief that he is who he thinks he is. Change of Mind and A,B&C are both about altering brains physically/chemically and infiltrating the individual that way. The General and Hammer into Anvil both have No6 unusually setting out to *get* the No2 of that episode. Some of these points just illustrate the cogency of the concept, but equally the limitations and that Mcgoohan was basically swimming in much the same pool of concepts that he started with.
If McGoohan just wanted an inverted version of "The Fugitive" that would run and run.. ... then he could have just have had new characters entering every week or the same No2 dragging on for weeks and weeks, and a story of their interactions and lots more Village. There were many aspects of the initial ideas for the village that were never utilised - the House of Fun springs to mind and the Cat & Mouse barely scratched the surface in the end.
So far as an alternative to the final episode goes, I devised a different one here:
http://numberschizx.blogspot.com/2009/09/walk-out.html
It stays with Mcgoohan's deliberate idea of not being simplistic and explaining nothing.... but the budget would have been much lower than for Fall-Out.....