Just added a new article transcription.
This time the elusive Michael Synergy, from the first issue of Mondo 2000, interviews key people involved with the original Max Headroom telefilm and series.
Time for more Slack Injection TV! Religion, fire, and UFOs conspire to take you on The Voyage to X-Day!
Backups: archive.org
Found myself enjoying Deep Rock Galactic lately, and it was a bit of a rough start so I figured I’d go through a quick mission run to introduce the elements of it to folks who might be curious.
That was, maybe, the perfect Batman film.
I mean, Batman ’89 will always be my personal favorite. It’s infinitely rewatchable.
But I can’t deny just how great nearly every corner of The Batman is. The overall mood. The music (oh god, the music).
It just all FEELS RIGHT.
The plot may not be terribly original (good luck finding a fresh Batman story after all these decades), but the nearly flawless execution of that story cannot be ignored.
More like this, please!
🐀🐈🦇❓
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Not fantastic, but not terrible. Inoffensive is a good word. Shame she’s leaving; she finally feels ‘comfortable’ at this this point.
⭐⭐⭐
I’ve mentioned this show before, but I figured I’d tackle the whole series here in this one post.
Let me tell you: The Prisoner is a truly incredible show. Don’t sleep on it. In fact, consider it required viewing.
It’s a thorough mind-fuck of a war between unstoppable forces and the immovable object. It’s the grand-daddy of many a subsequent TV show’s mysteries, most notably there’s an obvious influence on LOST. At least to me. Though that show went down a different path, the basic kernel of mystery and raw “is this really happening” fuckery is unmistakable to me.
A quick refresher: our protagonist is an ex-spook who angrily shows up one day and and retires from the job with a tea-cup smashing slam of his fist on the desk.
His head full of secrets, valuable to both ‘sides’, he’s gassed in his own home and wakes up in The Village — a small microcosm of a perfect community where people are issued numbers instead of using their names. Escape is made nigh impossible, enforced by a gang of thugs and a bizarre (sentient…?) white ball that smothers people to death.
The people running The Village, headed by the ever-changing form of No.2, just want to know: why did you resign?
No.6, as he’s labelled, not knowing which side his captors are on, refuses to answer the question. He’s valuable to whoever is running the show, so they’ll do everything short of physical torture to try and break him. The various ways in which they attempt to pry this information from him in each episode is quite impressive, and imaginative. And often downright cruel.
I’ll include a brief synopsis (via Wikipedia) as a refresher and talk a bit about each one.
Oh, and uh, it goes without saying but: _spoilers._
And these were watched in the order Shout Factory put them in. I recognize and even noticed that some episodes feel out of order — Dance of the Dead, most notably, suggests No.6 has ‘just arrived’.
There’s a recommended fan-authored viewing order that, in retrospect, I might have followed. But what’s done is done…
…about half way through the series run I started keeping realtime observations and commentary as I watched each episode. I circled back afterward and made some quick notes on a speedy rewatch of the first six, but they’re nowhere near as detailed.
Anyway, onward…
After waking up in the Village and discovering his captivity there, No.6 encounters a friend from the outside who may have a possible escape.
They really pull out all the stops for the first episode — the sheer wall to wall insanity at times is impressive. The series doesn’t quite put the pedal down quite like it does here, going forward, but that’s a good thing.
If you watch this and enjoy it, yeah, it’s safe to say you’ll be all set for the rest of the series.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A new prisoner, Nadia, may have information about the Village that makes an escape attempt possible.
You might think that it’s a bit early in the run to have him escape all the way back home, being only the second episode. But I choose to see it as a show of power: look at how convincing a fake they can create. How far you think you’ve gotten — yet every single step along the journey was artificial.
But then there’s the whole thing where the series is probably being shown out of order, but let’s take the wins where we can.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
A desperate No.2 manipulates No.6’s dreams to discover where his loyalties lie.
An interesting exploration using “what would No.6 have done” to figure out his loyalties. Fun watching No.2 sweat in fear of the big red phone, too.
⭐⭐⭐
Presented with the opportunity, No.6 runs for election to the post of No.2.
This isn’t the weakest episode of the series, but for some reason I found myself struggling to pay attention. Just a mind-fuck to screw with him. What else is new?
⭐⭐⭐
No.2 replaces No.6 with an identical duplicate (played by McGoohan) to weaken the real Six’s sense of identity.
This was so damned good. There was even a moment or two where even I was questioning the real No.6’s authenticity. But what’s really great is that they go the extra mile in the last third of the story to turn The Village’s plan to break him, into an escape attempt. If No.6 didn’t botch a bit of personal information, he might have genuinely escaped. (Well… I thought that way until “Many Happy Returns”, at least.)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
An important prisoner’s new speed-teaching machine can be used to indoctrinate everyone into believing the same thing, posing perhaps the greatest threat to No.6’s independence.
A classic Trek story: secret hidden intelligence turns out to be a computer. Damned well-done story, though. Three years of education in 3 minutes! I enjoyed it despite not just borrowing a Trek “computer god” cliche but also defeating it with the usual “tainted data input” that causes the machine to eat itself.
This episode made me lose a whole Saturday investigating the Professor’s typewritten manuscripts.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
After waking to find the Village deserted, No.6 returns to England, but he does not know whom he can trust there.
After seeing how far No.6 got in The Chimes of Big Ben you’d be forgiven for spending most of the episode waiting for the other shoe to drop. The journey he takes, making a raft, getting picked up by gun-runners, and stowing away in a truck on the way to England makes for an impressive episode, with very little dialogue for half the episode.
What’s interesting here is that he really DID escape, and he was able to get information about The Village to his associates. Even locating it somewhere off the coast of Morocco before being cruelly jettisoned back into The Village by the end.
This one was a delight and it really kept me guessing. But what’s interesting here is that No.6 did make contact, he did reveal what happened to himself, he did give them a general idea of where he was being kept, and they weren’t in on it. And none of that was undone or otherwise subverted by the end. An interesting choice.
In theory, in light of this, a rescue mission should not out of the question. Though that’s never alluded to during the episode.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No.6 tries to save an old friend who is headed for destruction at the hands of the Village.
Maybe the worst episode so far? Only the pure grit of Mary Morris’ performance as this installment’s No.2 keeps this one interesting. She’s a bit over the top at times, especially looking into the camera cackling madly before the credits roll. But still, she’s quite memorable.
It’s recommended that this be seen as the second episode of the series, and the events and dialog that go with it, seem to concur. The episode has elements that either got dropped or at least not explicitly stated before (No.6 being assigned an ‘observer’ for example).
The episode seems more of a showcase for insanity, and an attempt at cementing No.6’s fate.
No.6 thinks he has a means to tell the prisoners from the wardens.
Another one that feels like an early episode. Probably even right after Dance of the Dead. More “getting to know” the island. Prisoners vs guardians.
A weak escape attempt considering Six SURELY must know even stepping foot on British soil doesn’t mean he’ll actually have escaped. Actually escaping from The Village doesn’t mean you’re free.
But it’s hard to be fair about the show’s intentions considering the actual order of them is up for interpretation. There’s a low-level of continuity, but even that’s scrambled a bit.
Mediocre episode, but the “Battle Chess” theme in the first quarter is fun.
⭐⭐⭐
No.6 takes revenge on a sadistic No.2 for the death of another prisoner.
Yet again, this one feels like an early episode…. though the plot could easily have made for a fine penultimate episode. No.6 turns the tables on the new No.2, stoking his paranoid tendencies, making him afraid of everyone around him until he finally breaks, calling in for a new No.2 to replace himself. That’s crazy.
I wasn’t sure about this No.2 — he was intense out of the gate, and physical, actually striking No.6. Something we’ve never seen before. 2’s are usually hands-off masterminds kind of characters. But seeing him slowly lose his grip and spiral out of control was incredible.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
To save the Village from calamitous consequences, No.6 must intervene in a Village power struggle and prevent the assassination of the retiring No.2 by his successor.
Definitely one of the weaker entries. An interesting premise, pitting one No.2 against another, but it struggles to keep it interesting. It even devotes over 3 minutes to a phony sport supposedly invented by Patrick McGoohan himself.
⭐⭐
No.2 stirs the Village to ostracize No.6, and then takes even more drastic measures to cure Six’s “unmutuality”.
Another episode where the tables are turned on the current No.2. It feels like a bit of a cop-out that they didn’t actually do the full “social conversion” on him, but considering it’s a weekly TV series, we can’t do TOO much harm to our protag.
⭐⭐⭐
Deprived of his memory and placed in another man’s body, No.6 travels back to England to seek a missing scientist. Nigel Stock portrays Six for most of this episode.
One of the more daring, fantastical sci-fi plots, the Wikipedia summary spells it all out. An interesting premise, with a different actor playing No.6 for the entire episode.
Another story where No.6 is literally back home on British soil, yet he’s not really free. We get a peek into some of his personal details, too.
This might be my second or third favorite post-Arrival episode, but by far the least interesting No.2, existing only to get hornswoggled in the end by an elderly white man.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
In an Old West setting, a lawman who resigned is trapped in a town called Harmony where the Judge wants him to be the new sheriff – by hook or by crook.
This one goes right off the rails immediately. If you didn’t know the actor and the typeface on the episode title and minimal credits, you’d never know this was an episode of The Prisoner and just assume it was some random western.
An interesting premise: kind of a microcosm of the entire series, but in Western form. Unfortunately the actual plot is so thin that it has trouble filling the hour without long drawn out stretches of scenes, and all the fist-fights allowed by law. But when you get down to it, this is basically The Girl In Lover’s Lane crossed with vaguest suggestion of The Prisoner, Westworld, and every other generic western.
The ending takes a twist, but with more of an unsatisfying “What the fuck was THAT?” whimper, rather than a real doozy of an angle.
Anyway, I bet if I looked we could find some other shows around the same time using the same Western sets. They’re elaborate, damned good looking TV sets. I can’t believe they’d have been erected just for one novelty episode… probably just heard of the opportunity and slapped together a quick script to take advantage of them. If not, it sure feels like it.
Sigh. Well, nobody can accuse The Prisoner of not having a large variety of settings to keep things fresh. It just doesn’t always work.
EDIT: Turns out this episode was quite literally filler.
⭐⭐
No.6 avoids the assassination attempts of a beautiful woman while foiling the plots of her megalomaniac father.
This one is… I can’t help but describe it as a drug-fueled over-indulgence. Like a 50 minute long music video.
It just hits the ground running and forces you to piece together things as it goes along. Except none of that matters, since none of this happened because it’s stories he invented for children…?!
Ambitious… The Prisoner certainly takes some big swings, and it usually hits it out of the park. Being that this and Living in Harmony were among the final episodes filmed, it might admittedly be premature to think that maybe it’s best there wasn’t a second season. This just feels like desperation to do something different.
Up until the last quarter I was actually enjoying the inventiveness and creativity put into the whole thing. I LOVE the ‘poisoned’ shot glass and the creative use of the rear projection screen during the driving sequence, for instance.
But once it gets to the Napoleon stuff, and the reveal at the end… eeh.
This was like one of those episodes of Bob’s Burgers where the kids all tell different stories, and that’s the WHOLE episode. Same idea. More or less.
⭐⭐
No.2 subjects No.6 to “Degree Absolute”, a desperate, last-ditch effort to subdue him – an ordeal that will not end until it breaks one of them.
Hooooooly shit. Was this the Infinity War to the series finale’s Endgame? This was crazy intense. I mean, wow. These two just going off into a bizarro psychological showdown. A lot of screaming. This feels like an episode that if they knew about it, they’d never have given these guys money to make this series. And I love it.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No.6 encounters the forces in charge of The Village, but can he finally escape?
You know that last week of school before Summer where you’re obviously done with school, and the teachers stop trying, and it just devolves into skipping classes and generally screwing around, getting away with anything until the bus comes at the end of the day?
That’s the series finale of The Prisoner. It decomposes into a crazy, unhinged, strange, abstract art piece.
I don’t know if it was good television, but it was one hell of a show.
And it conclusively ended.
With some minor asterisks.
It’s a shame that it spiraled out like this. A large part of really appeals about the show’s basic premise was that it was the usual “out there” super-spy stuff, but it was grounded. More or less. Mind swapping machines notwithstanding. Instead of an ending that suits that ‘groundedness’, it quite literally takes off into orbit.
Frankly, I’d rather have had it be open-ended without a conclusion (which I’d feared), than go out the way it did.
Bit of a monkey’s paw wish seeing a proper finale, I suppose.
Hell of a ride, though. 🥃
EDIT: This was apparently a rocky, last minute scramble to assemble a finale. It’s kind of impressively weird in it’s own right given those conditions. Supposedly McGoohan had to “go into hiding in the mountains for two weeks, until things calmed down”. I kind of believe that. 😉
⭐⭐⭐
| viewed order | episode title | rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arrival | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 2 | The Chimes of Big Ben | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 3 | A. B. and C. | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 4 | Free for All | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 5 | The Schizoid Man | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 6 | The General | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 7 | Many Happy Returns | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 8 | Dance of the Dead | ⭐⭐ |
| 9 | Checkmate | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 10 | Hammer into Anvil | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 11 | It’s Your Funeral | ⭐⭐ |
| 12 | A Change of Mind | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 13 | Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 14 | Living in Harmony | ⭐⭐ |
| 15 | The Girl Who Was Death | ⭐⭐ |
| 16 | Once Upon a Time | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 17 | Fall Out | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Check out the wonderful end of the decade “wigout” monologue from CT’s own “Wigmaster” on WPLR from the final Friday of 1989 (and the 80s).
Like many of us, I have a whole backlog of TV and movies that I’ll watch “some day”. Having grown tired of this, over the last year or so I’ve been making an effort to scratch some of these names off the list.
One of the oldest entries on that list is 1967’s “The Prisoner“.
Well, turns out Shout Factory posted the entire series — in HD, no less — over on YouTube, free with (easily blocked) ads.
I finally dipped my toe in with Episode 1, and well, the rest is history. The Prisoner is way, way, WAY ahead of it’s time. I thoroughly recommend it. It’s a real mind-fuck at times (especially in that first episode). It’s easy to see the influence it’s had on other shows (like LOST, for instance) in the decades that have followed it’s airing.
But this isn’t a series review — I’ve stopped at Episode 6, The General because I noticed something that would be fun to note and archive.
The episode (at least as far as I’ve gotten) concerns a visiting professor who’s seemingly developed a technique to teach students 3 years worth of education in 3 minutes. A test of the technique works quite well on the citizens of ‘The Village’ and our protagonist, Number 6. But not everything is as it seems, naturally.
Anyway, the professor is not a willing participant in this. In fact, he’s seen trying to escape from The Village at the opening of the episode, causing a mad chase to ensue, dragging him back in time for his ‘lecture’.
In the scene I paused on, the professor is urgently authoring some typewritten notes in his room. A couple Village scientists burst in, and drag him away. Meanwhile, another scientist, quite pleased with the current results, begins feeding the documents into a machine (the prop seems to be a Xerox 660 desktop copier with the name plate altered).
While I can’t vouch for the detail present in the original airing, this HD version of the series renders the text VERY visible, if upside-down.
So let’s see what he was writing!
- 2 -
a person washing up during the d??es and Sunday morning ?nd a cleaner
working all day Saturday and Sunday morning.
Theatre Outings
---------- ----
Secretary reported that 52 17/6d seats @ 12/6d each had been booked for
the Cinerama production "Grand Prix" on Wednesday 5th April. Coach has
also been booked.
Football Section
-------- -------
Alf Hunter[?] has asked for twelve pairs of football shorts. As some of
the present white shorts are missing he also asked if it would be
possible for the new ones to be old gold because he did not know of any
local team with that colour, then perhaps players would resist the
temptation to 'borrow' H.G.K. shorts for other matches. The cost of
the shorts would be between 16/- and 18/- per pair and this was agreed.
Darts
-----
Secretary asked, subject to Treasurer's Report, to purchase two
dartboards. This was agreed.
Treasurer's Report
-------------------
Jack Howtree said our bank balance stood at £263, less outsanding bills
to [?] of approximately £151, but receipts from "Hawaii" are still
to come in. Chairman asked for a full statement of balances and
Jack Howtree agreed.
Bar Committee
-------------
Frank War?sle has agreed to replace Peter Hancock on the Bar Committee
while he is away on location. George asked if a replacement could be
found for Christine on the Bar Committee. It was agreed Brian Dolan
sit as new ?????r. It was also agreed that the Bar Committee should
meet[?] fortnightly, dates to be arranged by members concerned. [?]
...(NOTE: I tried my best on this. Anywhere I was unsure, I tried to mark it with question marks.)
Obviously this has absolutely nothing to do with the show, and wasn’t intended to be read by the audience.
It’s unsurprising that this text is clearly sourced from the UK considering The Prisoner was an ITC production. There seems to be a pattern of the letter a, e, and s, especially, having the hammer not strike hard enough. Makes critical pieces of this tough to puzzle out.
I went through several frames of the episode. The paper actually appears twice, once at 20:38 and again in another, similar scene with the same props at 43:36. Pieces of it are clearer than others depending on the frame, but I used all of them, and some visual tweaking in Photoshop to draw out details.
There’s a little more at the bottom of the page but it never appears in focus on-screen.
This one helps ground the text in the mid-1960s. At least December 1966, since the Cinerama production “Grand Prix” was released on 1966-12-21. If I’m reading that correctly, it looks like they reserved 52 seats valued at 17 shillings, 6 pence, but gotten at a bulk discount? (I may be reading into it there.)
I did a bit of research (thanks, dv!) and all I could turn up was a showing at the Abbey Cinerama Theater in Liverpool. Turns out the ‘Liverpool Echo’ newspaper (PDF) was dated April 5th, 1967 – the exact date in question.
I really busted my ass trying to connect these dots. Shockingly, I got the most traction on the Cinerama section. The rest… lots of little clues, but nothing substantial. I could spend a lot more time on this and maybe start opening my wallet to some better tools, but this is about as much as I can squeeze out of this little OSINT side quest on a Saturday.
If you know anything, found something, or just have an observation I might have missed, hit me up on Twitter.
Finally got around to it!
I was initially interested in it back when it came out, but all the stories and horrible things I’d heard… and THAT JOKER… I noped out pretty fast.
Fast forward to 2021 — figured I’d give it a go, since I seriously enjoyed Margot Robbie’s version of Harley in Birds of Prey. That, and it’s pretty much the last DCEU film I’d yet to see.
And I… liked it?
Now, hold up, I mean, it’s by NO MEANS perfect. But I actually had a better time here than, say, with the sequel to Wonder Woman ’84. Which, honestly, I never thought I’d ever say considering how near godly the original WW was.
This was fun. It was pretty much what I expected after years of exposure, but there were actually several twists in this I didn’t know about despite everything I’d heard.
Smith’s Deadshot is fun, but only because it’s Will Smith playing Will Smith with shooting skills delivering dialogue like a tired Will Smith. And if that still works for you, here you go. (It did for me, despite this.)
Harley is fun, but a lot more unhinged. In the bad way. I thought for sure Joker was going to betray her at some point, and we’d get the start of her disconnect from him and her liberation.
But no, we’re in full Stockholm Syndrome mode for the entire film.
That said, this was a great stepping stone to her further refinement in Birds of Prey, where she stole the film for me.
The rest had their moments — especially Diablo. (And hey, it’s the positively delightful Karen Fukuhara (The Boys) as Katana! Woo!)
Hell, I didn’t even hate Joker…?! No, I’m serious — and I can’t believe I’m saying it.
I still absolutely LOATHE his version of the character. But…. I can’t really deny that this gangsta thug incarnation… he slots in quite well into this particular, gritty universe.
I mean, I can dislike him and still accept that he’s a good match, right?
Enchantress was interesting, but as the ultimate goal of the film it was kind of lacking. The ending reminded me a whole lot of Ghostbusters, actually. With more sword fighting. Less marshmallows.
Far better than expected, but it was a almost the lowest possible bar going in, so… the deed is done. Glad I gave it a go. It’s not the complete dumpster fire folks said, but still on the lower end of the DCEU’s already low-skewed rankings.
⭐⭐⭐
https://letterboxd.com/drfortyseven/film/suicide-squad-2016/
An exceedingly simple recreation of the answer cards seen on Jeopardy!. But it’s worth noting that the modern answer cards aren’t actually a simple blue background, but a surprisingly nuanced barely perceptible gradient. Without it, something looks ‘off’, so hopefully I’ve added just enough here to satisfy. 😉
This isn’t the original font, either, but a recreation… supposedly…
Look, it goes down a weird hole and this is just a fun CSS exercise. 😉
Anyway, the ‘editable’ part of this is a cheat, using contenteditable attribute on the containing div tag.