Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gatsby]

If you are having a bad day, remember, it could always be worse -- you could be dead.

Such is what happened to one of the most remarkable and intelligent actors I have seen, Patrick McGoohan. His death was just announced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/arts/15mcgoohan.html

Some of you will know what I am talking about, for others his name may be just a blank.

He was "The Prisoner."

No. 6.

John Drake. Danger Man, aka Secret Agent.

He was the villain in Silver Streak. And the good guy in Ice Station Zebra, which, oddly enough, was not entirely fiction, though few knew it at the time; the technology described was very real, and very, very secret. McGoohan seemed to have a pipeline to the intelligence community.

There is much debate on whether there was connection, a sort of continuity, between Secret Agent and The Prisoner.

I saw an episode when Drake was in a banana republic in South America and makes an enemy of someone very powerful in Britain whom he discovers had faked his credentials (he had actually been a chauffeur or something). Drake figures out that this South American government is being manipulated by this person, and his backers in the British government.

It has always seemed to me that this would have provided a plausible reason for him to resign, and for the power elite to want to know why, and know what he knew.

Well, it's too late to ask him now.

[ED209]

There was an episode of Danger Man that was similar to the Prisoner. Some British Soviet sympathises travelled to Russia to find jobs only to find themselves in what could only be described as an English Village teaching Russian spies.

[howie2424]

He was great as the warden in Escape from Alcatraz

[mindmetoo]

I downloaded The Prisoner recently and watched it. I found it amazing McGoohan played Longshanks in Braveheart. Wow. An amazing piece of acting.

The Prisoner I thought started off well. There was a great ep where everyone is using some machine to learn a subject in their sleep or something. They learn the whole history of the civil war in almost no time. Number 6 quickly realizes people are learning all the "what" but no one can answer the "why". They can cite the date of every battle in the civil war but no one can answer why the civil war happened.

I thought this was prescient of Google. The University of Google puts an enormous number of facts at the tips of our fingers but that can have disastrous results. For example, parents who have formed a belief that childhood vaccines cause autism pretty much from the internet.

Also interesting how Lost owes a lot to the series. It starts off on what we think is an island. Both have a guardian monster. There are "others".

The Prisoner sort of went off the rails half way through and it's rather confusing whether or not the prisoners were even on an island.

[ED209]

[mindmetoo]

[Oreovictim]

You can't go wrong with Iron Maiden's "The Prisoner," either. Although the bass playing is torture on my ears, the opening guitar riff is amazing.

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=LqixtGEVXhc