Your Penny for My Farthing

Weather same ... nice, but sneezy.

Memory changes things, doesn't it? I've got some fixes and additions for last night's (this morning's) post:

The spy series Patrick McGoohan was originally in was called Danger Man in the UK. Though McGoohan played pretty much the same character in the "The Prisoner" -- he later said the high-concept series was no remake of "Danger Man/Secret Agent." In the opening sequence, McGoohan's character is driving a Lotus 7. They knock him out with some kind of gas, not a spiked drink. The first ep's intro had no dialogue, as I remembered, and it did have some in subseqent ep's, also as I remembered. But the intro dialogue was a lot longer than I recalled. It contained (and I can still hear McGoohan declaiming this in my head) the famous sentence: "I am not a number! I am a free man!" McGoohan's character's number was 6, not 96. (Though it's interesting to report that mercurius_21 heard a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "If 6 was 9" playing in a bookstore recently. That may come up in a future post. The song itself is an anthem to individualism and personal independence -- to which mercurius_21 is an obvious devotee. He is not a libertarian*, no matter what he says. Am I? Hmmmm.) The big-wheel bike is called a penny farthing. It was the logo of The Village, but it apparently was not on the number badges of the citizens. The floating/bobbing security device that I called The Bubble was called "Rover" in the series, though I don't remember it having a name. It was white, though the series was apparently shot in color. We may have just had a b&w TV at home at the time, but CBS may also have aired the series in b&w, because of incompatibilities between US and UK broadcast-color systems at the time. My memory of the show is definitely black and white.

All the info is found (plus way more) in the Wikipedia entry on the show. It's interesting to note that when the series was aired in England, the reaction to the final ep was a lot like mine, except more vocal. McGoohan apparently had to go into hiding for a while to avoid trying to explain it all. There has been some fictional output as a result of "The Prisoner" -- notably a graphic novel called "Shattered Visage." With that last thought ...

Next time: Season 8 and The Dark Tower.

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*Note the little 'l'.


LJ orig.: 05/19/07