Episode 17: The Prisoner (1967) Episodes 12-13

Hello there, I'm Christinashoe and I'm just bired. We are the host of the One Season show show where we take a look at TV shows that only lasted one season. Each month we tackle several episodes from the show, and this month we continue our trek into the Village with the Prisoner, kicking off episodes twelve and thirteen. Hammer into Anne Bill and Do Not Forsake Me? Oh my darling, clemon time.

What a title? What a title? Indeed, so Hammer into Anvil aired December tenth, nineteen sixty seven. It's directed by Pat Jackson, written by Roger Woodis. Number two is played by Patrick Cargill.

This episode would find Number six vowing revenge on Number two and he essentially gaslights him the entire episode. Yep, that's almost it like it's I actually find it to be a pretty decent episode of the show because, in my opinion, it is an interesting table turn on the character of Number two. Yeah, it's much more of a Number two focused episode and kind of like the episode we talked about before where it's where there were two number two's, we are seeing a bit more of that happening where we're starting to get I guess as we're going along, we're seeing number two getting kind of broken down as well in this whole you know, quest for information and to break down Number six. Each Number two seems to be getting a little bit more splintered, you know, mentally, and it's strange.

They seem to be getting angrier and like more violent or more tending towards violence and say and sadism than they were at the beginning. Like at the beginning, we were getting some just kind of like cheeky, fun, you know, quirky number two, and now we're getting a much more like all right, I'm starting to get fucking pissed off and number six and I guess they're bringing in they're more leafal number twos. But not that it matters anyway, because yeah, no, it's a it's an interesting episode because again it shifts the focus away from number six. And I honestly, with the episodes that are in this home stretch of the show, almost all of the episodes are straying away from number six being the focus.

Not to kind of give away the give away the you know, the cow ahead of the milk, but like pretty much every episode from here on out is going to be less focused on number six, which is interesting because up until this point they've been pretty much number six focused only. Well, and so here is something interesting because I was, you know, while I was reading and researching about some of these episodes and reading more about the Prisoner Um. Patrick McGowan had initially only wanted this year. He had planned for basically a seven episode series, and he had the seven episodes planned out, and basically the marketing director managing director for i TC at the time, lou Grade, wanted to sell it to American markets.

But American markets demanded twenty six episodes. Yes, Patrick McGowan couldn't come up with twenty six episodes, so they compromised on seventeen. So ten of these episodes are what Patrick McGoo effectively refers to as padding episodes and filler episodes, and their whole purpose and this like their whole purpose, I guess, is to keep the He wanted to make sure that all of these phil Our episodes kept the theme of violence not being the answer, effectively like he wants the and that comes into into play a little bit more later on in the series. But that kind of just leads me to wonder which episodes were the original seven that Patrick mcgoughan had planned. Well, we know that the last two are more than likely part of that, and the first right, and the first one three probably the other episode with Leo McKern who is going to reprise his role as Number three two more times, the second to last in the last episode of the show, So that would be four.

The question then becomes, what are the other three? I think this might be one of them. This is a fairly interesting episode that doesn't feel like padding, right. It feels like, okay, we are at we have a purpose here where we're focusing. It's more like Number six is subverting internally and trying to escape himself.

And so, like I was mentioning earlier, we are seeing this progression of each Number two becoming more agitated and quick to you know, I guess, you know, be violent, which if one of the themes that Patrick Gouen was trying to push forward is that, you know, violence doesn't pay off in the end. And then I guess as we see Number two become increasingly more violent and more volatile, his plans or her plans fail even more spectacularly, right, And I mean again, with this episode, like you said, normally we do see number six trying to escape, and in this episode, not only do we not see him trying to escape, he's actively trying to convince them that he is without actually trying to which is really interesting I think as an episode of the show because it subverts the audience's expectations on top of everything else.

Having on my companerol all right, there we go. Yeah, I think that this episode does it is it's different enough from the you know, filler episodes that we have seen that it does kind of rekindle an interest. But ultimately still I still feel like this episode is trying to do It's just another episode of that's trying to do too much. Wow. I mean almost every episode of the show is trying to do too much.

Yeah, And there is a lot of like as we go on there, there is a whole lot of you know, identity switching and things happening, which it gets worse and which gets worse and makes it even more convoluted. And I mean you can you can just tell how convoluted it is if you go in and read any of the episode descriptions in Wikipedia. You'll read sentences that are like and then number two it does this, and it turns number six into this number five, and it's just it's and the fact that we're referring to everyone as numbers does make it, you know, harder to remember who's who, aside from number six and number two always being you know, the number six is always the same and number two is always established, right, but everybody else is just kind of like coming in and out.

Yeah, you know again, Ultimately, for this episode, for this episode, it delivered on what I wanted, which was a subversion of my expectations. Did it subvert them enough for me to consider this an interesting episode? Yes? I think the issue with this episode really is is that it has come way too late in the run of the show, right, and if you know, this is really just supposed to be seven episodes, then I don't know where this would have fit in the probably you know, some way in the midway point, I would imagine. Which if you think about that, I mean, that's ten episodes of this show, that's ten hours of programming that are completely being admittedly said, our waste.

Yeah, just because all because they wanted to sell it to American markets, and because American markets were as we've talked about, all this show. You know, we're shows like I Dream of Genie and Gilligan's Island and all the stuff that were sitcoms and quick to make and you know, limited sets, so they made tons of episodes each season. They were cheap to make, and they did them that way. So that's how they marketed all their television. And if you wanted to sell something overseas, you had to adhere to those markets.

And yeah, it effectively he forced this. I do feel badly for Patrick mcgoughan creatively in this show. And I understand, you know, as we go forward and get closer to the end and your story of our and Father Malone, you know, seeing him in a bar and being told not to bring up the prisoner at all because he'll leave. I can understand why. Because if he had an actual vision for something this transformative and something this you know, like even as a failure, yeah, even this, you know, it's high, it's high.

It's high concept television in an era where high concept television did not exist Star Trek exactly. And if he had an actual vision and had written seven episodes that told a story and the story he wanted and conveyed the themes he wanted. It probably would have been really, really, really interesting. And I mean, yes, this show has a cult following, and you know, it has its audience. It's not necessarily remembered badly.

I think it deserves the audience too, don't you. Oh yeah, absolutely, But I can also see, you know, why people wouldn't like it because, as we've just stated, ten hours of these episodes are an hour long. Ten hours are just nothing because Patrick McGoohan was forced to I mean, he didn't write all these episodes. Obviously, he had other writers, but he still had to come up with these concepts and just you know, wing it and shoehorn them into a story that was already complete. And that's I mean, yeah, he had to just like destroy and break his own creation.

And I don't blame him for not wanting to talk about it and being pissed off about it. No, I don't blame him either. I mean, again, if you know, and we have no reason to doubt any of these stories, I mean that you know, if you're if you're someone who creates something ineffectively, the control has taken out of your hands and chopped up and repurposed and turned into something else, chopped and remix is what it feels like. I mean for me, I would be just as upset because then because then the reviews come back and people go, well, this isn't very good and this does this is incoherent, and you know you can just sit there and go, well't it wasn't originally right? What?

Like, what choice did I have? Because the American audiences they wanted to make money. Yeah. Well, and I mean again, it's its show business for a reason. I mean, unfortunately that is the reality of oh yeah, of the industry.

Yeah, I mean that that's absolutely what it is you making. Like the second money is involved and other people are involved, it becomes not your project anymore because you have to start molding it and molding it into a sellable package. Because if people are going to be putting money into something, they expect a return, so they're not. It sucks because you know so many people in this industry, myself included yourself, included people who you know, creative, people who want to just make their stories. It's it's hard because if you the second you get anybody's money involved, it's not yours anymore, and you're open to much more opinion.

People are changing story these lines people are, you know, rewriting scripts when you're not there. It's it. It can become wildly out of control. And the bottom line is that you still have to put your name on it. And that to me is like, like, I still, you know, Patrick mcgoughan still having to put his name on this, and you know, that's maybe why why he wrote with some pen names for these episodes that were you know, the quote unquote filler episodes.

I think that you know, we can probably narrow it down based on the ones he wrote himself and then once he wrote under a pen name to kind of decide, you know, which was filler and which wasn't. Sure, Yeah, I know, it's just having to put your name on it and be like, yes, this is the thing, but it's not at all the thing I wanted it to be at all, and it's unfortunate. But at the same time, with an episode like this one, I don't know if this was part of those seven episodes, but it's a good episode in its own right, and it feels kind of like it feels kind of like the stopping post for good episodes because what we're about to get next with the next episode is ah it's just it's an honest to God travesties.

So the next episode we're talking about is Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, or on Amazon it's just known as Do Not Forsake Me. It aired January seventh, nineteen sixty eight. It's directed once again by Pat Jackson, written by Vincent Tilsley. It actually doesn't really star Patrick McGoohan. It does, but it doesn't.

And Number two is played like Clifford Evans, and then Nigel Stock plays Number six. And I say he plays Number six because this whole episode revolves around the idea that before Number six was taken away to the island, one of the missions he went on was to find a doctor Seltzman, who he befriended. Doctor Seltzman apparently invented away to switch consciousnesses from body to body, and so they end up switching Number six is consciousness with another person played by the Colonel or excuse me, played by Nigel Stock, whose character is only referred to as the Colonel, And the entire episode is Number six trying to figure out, while in the Colonel's body, how to get back to his own body at the village.

It is a total mess and a waste of an episode. Yep, so interestingly en up when I was reading about this one. So yeah, like we said, Patrick McGowan is pretty much not in this episode because he was off filming a movie with Rock Hudson called Ice Station Zebro, which evidently is on Amazon Prime. If you want to check it out, it's there. I'd put it on my watch list, but I'll probably never actually watch it.

So he was filming this movie, so he was not there. So yeah, they had this episode written and and from what I understood as I was reading, there is some speculation that Patrick mcgoughan's notes that he gave for this specific episode were either misunderstood or completely thrown out. And I guess the character of the colonel is actually supposed in the original script, which they're evidently and they're out of print. You can't unless you want to spend three hundred dollars on them now. But there are two volumes of the Prisoner original scripts, which I would actually like to read original scripts, because I guess this episode was vastly different in certain aspects, so I guess, like the Colonel, it's speculated that in Patrick mcgoughan's notes the kernel is actually supposed to be Saltzman, like it's supposed to be Colonel Saltsman, but then they somehow misunderstood that and just created that.

I'm not really sure it Again, all of this is convoluted, and even when you're trying to read about it, it's still very convoluous. Yeah, sure, no, I completely agree, but he as a whole I guess original script for this was entirely rewritten without Patrick mcgoughan. There So isn't that nice like it It's still it's just like slap in the face after slap in the face to you know, your career, Patrick mcgough's creative integrity. And I'm not you know, as we've discussed on this show before, Patrick mcgoughan kind of seems like he has his own issues and he you know, was known for actually hitting people during the fighting scenes, and he was known to be a big drinker, and I guess he was like very devoutly Catholic, which explains, you know, his hang ups about promiscuity with James Bond and all that.

So I'm not saying that Patrick mcgoughan would have been a treat to work with, but I don't know, to just rewrite somebody's script while they're like filming something else and have no ability to do anything about it. It's just so shitty. Well, like you said, I mean, you know it was already paid to work with. This isn't making it any better. I mean, this is literally making it way worse.

It's like, here, we're gonna rewrite your whole script, make this episode entirely a waste and incoherent and yeah, fuck you by it doesn't. It doesn't help the situation. No, And I mean this you would think that because so we do learn a couple of things I guess in this episode, because we learn that Number six has a fiance. Yeah, I mean there's a female love there's a female love interest in this episode, played by Zena Walker, who is clearly the woman that Number six was going to get married to. Yeah, because of this whole like switching consciousness thing.

Um, he number six wakes up in the body of the colonel. Yeah, unnamed character the colonel he's just got in the name of the colonel wakes up in the body of the colonel, but is in Patrick McGowan's house in London. So this is an episode that occurs outside of the village, suppose mum, And yeah, we learned that he has a fiance. We this is obviously more you know, intel on his own government, you know, working against him. But we already know that.

We know that. I don't need it to be reminded of it all the time, unless you're going to have some new developments how and why or how they're you know, controlling him. I don't need to be reminded all the time. The boy that they do that every single time, get their even the opportunity to yep. I think, you know, one of the bigger disappointments with this episode, other than the fact that it's again convoluted, other than the fact that again you know, it had doesn't even have Patrick mcgoughan in it, other than the fact that it feels like a waste of time because we don't really find anything out, is the idea that somehow they thought we would want an episode without Patrick mcgoughan in it.

Yeah. And I mean, I'm not terribly you know opposed to that, because I was kind of thinking, I was like, well, all right, it's going to be a different act one because I read about what the episode was going to be before, and I was like, Okay, maybe it's a different actor, maybe they'll just be you know, some different energy, different whatever to the character and to the story. But it's this guy's boring as shit. Like this guy is not at least Patrick mcgoughan is kind of cheeky and goofy to watch, but this guy is a standard British stiff upper lip type. Well and yeah, and it's I just I still can't fathom the idea of putting an episode together without your main character.

I mean, it's just especially when this um, especially when this show doesn't have that many episodes to begin with, and this episode, it's not like we find out anything new or exciting. We're literally just hearing reiterations of the same information we've heard before. Yeah, it's all the same stuff. Yeah, I mean this episode is pushing, really pushing me in the direction of I'm just disappointed. I mean, I'm disappointed.

And the issue is is the next couple episodes we're gonna watch are very much in the same Oh yeah, absolutely vain as this episode. Yeah, and I will say that that I am also disappointed because again I still stand on that like these could be interesting. Is like what little one offs. You know, it's like basically like I picture this working is like the end of the as the end of Clue, where it's like this could have happened and then you watched the episode, or this could have happened, and anyone episode. I think, Yeah, it just it works better for me on an individual basis, And it is disappointing knowing that the show didn't necessarily need to happen this way, because it was just seven episodes of probably really interesting, high concept television that probably would have been even more well regarded in the long run than you know, just having a cult following.

Yeah. No, I completely agree. I mean, you know, and I don't know what we're supposed to take away from the ending of this episode. He ends up getting this doctor back to the island and the switch bodies, but then the kernel is lost to time forever. The consciousness of the colonel has lost the time, and Saltzman changes into the colonel's body, and Number six was back to his own body, right, Okay, sure, and then it's like, well the end, number six goes back to his body, the colonel goes into saltzman body, Saltzman's body and dies that's right.

And then Saltzman goes into the colonel's body and escapes, and that makes number two angry because it because of course it does, because he was, I guess, working with Patrick McGowan, and he was supposed to be working against Patrick McGowan. I think, I don't, I honestly don't know. Convoluted, very extremely and infuriatingly convoluted. And that is pretty much the biggest takeaway from these last two episodes that we watched is just, boy, couldn't this couldn't be any more convoluted if it tried, because it's already pretty convoluted on its own. Yea, So it feels like it feels like a race to the bottom at this point, it really does.

Like Yeah, and I'm wondering how many of these last episodes we're just filler? Like in this order that we're watching, is how many of these are just filler to the last designated episode? And I feel like that might be the case, feeling we might just be watching. I think they this could be the point in the order where they just like throw in the last like four that aren't really great. Yeah, I know, it would definitely seem that way.

Wouldn't it. So, speaking of that, what are the next two episodes we're talking about the next two episodes we're talking about our episodes fourteen and fifteen, Living in Harmony and the Girl who was Deaf. I'm like, I'm at this point, I'm just ready to get to the last two episodes to see where the show wants to go, because I'm probably I'm going to be under the impression these next two episodes are going to be wheel spinning. Yeah, pretty much, I really, but I do. I guess that's still I still I'm interested in how it ends, just because I guess negative reaction to it is so strong, right, which I mean, given the you know, given the fact that the show is the way this show is, you know, every episode and effectively being the same allegory every time, I don't I want to know what makes people mad because like if you're watching the same thing over and over again, I don't know, Like I can't, I don't, I don't know.

We'll see. So when we're not here, Jess, where can people find you? People can find me on Twitter at writer Jess Buyed. You can find me on your show, Chris The Culture Cast twice a Month where we talk movies. Every month is a different theme and you can find us on our other podcasts Scary Stories, we tell where we encounter strange tales of the unexplained and cover true crime and horror culture that all kind of surrounds it.

So if you're into that kind of thing, check us out there. What about You, Chris Casualty Underscore Chris on Twitters where you can find me at one season show on twitters, where you can find this show on one seasonshow dot com is where you can find the rest of the episodes. We've done two seasons before this that had nothing to do with the prisoner, So if you want to listen to us talk about something else, head on over there. Big Thanks is always too Markteinis and Mustaches. That's the music for this season of the one season show.

I Will catch you on the next episode, be seeing You