The Prisoner (2010 remake)

(Posted after UK episode 1, not sure if the USA is ahead . . . if so please warn of spoilers!)

Anyone else watching this?

I won't try to explain it or the 60s original (because, well, whole books have tried to do that and not always succeeded!) but there are some points that struck me as very interesting to otherkin.

Essentially, in the 2010 version, an unnamed man wakes up in a strange desert and staggers to a nearby village. Everyone in the village is convinced that there is nothing else in the world, that they are the sum total of humanity, that there is nowhere to escape to and that there is nothing to escape from.

But here's what makes it interesting . . .

A handful of people, including the unnamed protagonist - known only as Number 6 - have flashes of memory from their life "before". While Number 6 remembers basic facts about the world (what New York is, who invented the lightbulb, chunks of the day before his arrival in the village), others just remember things like the image of Big Ben. None remember their names.

Asking about the world outside and trying to leave the village seem to be equally fatal. Those that question and don't tow the party line are said to be "mentally unwell", everyone is drugged to keep them compliant, the entirity of village life seems to be obeying one's superiors, refusing to question, and fitting in to one's assigned role.

Questioning doesn't make you criminal . . . it makes you ill, and you'll be treated whether you want to or not.

It's a very different flavour from the 60s original, but this idea of living in a small small world that everyone else thinks is the whole universe, and having vague flashes of a life before, of desperately seeking to remember one's own name, of being thought insane for even doubting the proscribed reality . . . well it's all very otherkin, isn't it?

There was a great moment in which one character admitted to Number 6 that she, too, had memories and dreams of the outside world. She had nothing tangible - just a drawing of an image she saw in her dreams without knowing what it was . . . the Statue of Liberty. Number 6's joy at realising someone else shared his memories was palpable.

But I shouldn't call him Number 6, of course . . . because he is not a number. He is a free man!




(Watch it. ASAP. It's full of goodness. And Ian McKellen.)

Apparently no-one watched this but me. I wish I could join you in your happy ignorance. Despite a promising start, it ended up being possibly the single stupidest thing I have ever seen on TV . . . and I watched Lost for two and a half years! <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing" /><!-- s:lol: -->

I dunno. What couple episodes I watched of it weren't too shabby. ;;

You are number six.

I AM NOT A NUMBER! I'M A FREE HUMAN BEING!

The original was awesome. My personal interpretation is that it was about a TV series. Why couldn't 6 escape? Because he's the lead character, and lead characters aren't allowed to leave their own show. Why the Western episode? Because TV shows do themed episodes where the cast get to dress up. Why was 6 being spied on all the time? Because that's what TV fans do, they watch the characters they like, and the characters don't even know they exist.

Aside from that there was the political stuff, character stuff, individual stories . . . but that was what, to me, it was about. The original explanation for 6's imprisonment was much more straightforward but also made very good (though not perfect) sense, and I can live with the "reality" of TV or the "intent" of spying.

The new Prisoner though . . .

The characters were uniformly uninteresting, by turns boring, unpleasant, or simply stupid. The theme the ending was trying to present was not supported by much of anything in the previous five episodes. Important choices made at the climax did not follow from the characters of the, err, characters. Mysteries were set up and then ignored by the "revelations" at the end, revealed motivations were completely inconsistent with how characters actually behaved, and the whole thing was a mess.

What really, really, really annoys me though is that given the final episode's explanation of the situation, there was room for a really great story to be told. It was a really neat idea with all sorts of interesting implications. But they weren't followed through and events in earlier episodes were nonsensical in the light of the final episode.

The best analogy I can think of is this . . . and STOP RIGHT NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT A SPOILER FOR THE SIXTH SENSE . . .

. . .

wow, I'm amazed I wrote that, but just in case there's one person alive out there who doesn't know how it ends, I feel the urge to warn.

The whole thing hinges not on the fact that Bruce Willis is a ghost, but on the fact that up until that revelation all of his scenes make sense either with him as a ghost or with him alive. So when the penny drops, you suddenly remember that no-one other than the kid interacted with him at all and it's all blissful. The kid even explained it by saying that the dead people don't know they're dead. It's great.

The Prisoner is more like . . . Bruce Willis arrives at the kid's house, the mother chats away to him, he talks to various characters normally, interacts with the world etc, but there's some weird stuff where people seem to not see him. And then - HE'S A GHOST! Then it's not "Wow, cool!" so much as "Huh, if he's a ghost then how come some people could talk to him?" The Prisoner gave me the very strong impression of being planned out one episode at a time. Dude arrives in Village. Weird stuff happens. Village is not what it seems. Crazy, unexpected revelation about nature of Village! . . . Realisation in viewers that if the Village was as per explanation, none of the preceding weird stuff made any sense.

Sigh.

I blame that Abrams bloke who did Lost. He pretty much went on record as saying that he made it up as it went along and explanations don't matter, what matters is the sense of mystery. No no no. Good mystery writing is coming up with an explanation that while almost impossible to forsee, is perfectly obvious in retrospect. It's not about the "Wha . . . huh?" - it's about the great feeling of everything fitting together.

Rant over.

(PS . . . there was a valid reason for the original Village inhabitants having numbers. They were dehumanised and turned into commodities, rather than people. Hence "I am not a number, I am a free man" - and 6 only coming to acknowledge his number after having spent some considerable time there. As opposed to the new Prisoner, in which there was no reason whatsoever for them to be numbered, and 6 was happy to be called that throughout. And don't even get me started on the concept of awareness/lack of awareness of being a prisoner . . . because if I start I'll be here all night. I was late for work this morning because of a 15 minute mutual rant with a family member about how terrible it was. Argh! See?? It's actually making me psychotic to even think about it!!!!!)

Arguably, I've never seen the original, so I didn't know what to expect. I just went and obtained it after you mentioned it.

I just got a kick from seeing Magnedalf be 2.

And I found it hilarious that the alien in the new AVP videogame you play campaign with is also "six." Iunno. I played it after seeing the whole miniseries and that really made me ROFLIRL.

I'm ignoring the existence of the new version. Just so you know.

simim23 Wrote:Arguably, I've never seen the original, so I didn't know what to expect. I just went and obtained it after you mentioned it.

See I think it was a terrible, terrible story even if it had nothing to do with the original. (I don't go mad when remakes are different, in fact I love seeing totally new ideas based on the same concept.)

Quote:I just got a kick from seeing Magnedalf be 2.

Nah, I find it really sad to see such an amazing actor play a character with no consistent motivation of any kind <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad" /><!-- s --> Why Ian, why??? If you needed money that badly, I'd have done a sponsored run for you!!!

And I can't honestly watch anything from before 1985 unless it's been digitally remastered.
Otherwise my brain doesn't shut up about the crappy movie quality and I fall asleep.

We're forever divided, Min. Forrrrrevvvverrrrr.

I miss you. DX

Bloody elitists! YOU AND SEL BOTH!

I on the other hand can play the Old Fallout 1 for story and enjoy it to bits even if the graphics are shite.

This! This is just fine!