The Prisoner

The new DVD version has the 17 episodes on 10 discs.  While it's true that is less episodes than the remastered Trek: TOS (only 7 discs), Trek is still more expensive on DVD.  $46 for the series isn't a bad deal.

Only $46? The 10-disc set was like $100 when I bought it 7 or 8 years ago! It's one of the greatest shows in television history, and elevated what a TV show could be, IMO.

That was the price on the new set when I looked it up on Amazon this morning, Sam.  7 or 8 years ago Paramount was also charging $100 per Trek season set.  Now they're right around $50 on release day.

 when A&E put it out originally each 2 disc boxset was $40 srp. that was $200 for the 5 sets.

And those sets were still worth something, because I traded them back to a local Movie Stop for 11$ store credit each - more than enough to pay for the blu-ray.

The Prisoner ... a show that keeps on giving.

And for all those confused about the finale, please remember, it aired around 1968. It helped to be on what we were on and what the Beatles were definitely on and what McGoohan was probably on when he conceived it to best appreciate it.

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

I need to watch that last show again.
I didn't get anything out of it other then they didn't know how to end the series.

Anyone that's interested in either set Std or BR, it's available on Amazon's Deal of the Day here .  I think I'll have to finally pull the trigger on this one today. (Std set)

Std set : $28.99

BR: $40.99

A one day sale at DD last week had the blu for THE PRISONER at $39.99 plus I had a coupon code for another $5 off that and purchased through Bing for a little bit of cash back, which made the total cost $33.00.  That was a price I could live with given that the transfers are supposed to be stunning.

As for what McGoohan was probably "on" when he conceived the finale, I hate to break anyone's 60's cliche illusions, but it was nothing save for imagination.  He didn't need nor want any other substances to fuel his creativity.

It's neither cliche nor illusion, if you were around at the time the show was first conceived and aired. Anyone who doesn't believe The Prisoner was heavily influenced by the psychedelics of the day, just isn't paying attention. The Beatles certainly were, and not only tripped with Patrick McGoohan (according to several accounts), but wanted him to write and direct their next movie after Help after seeing The Prisoner. The collaboration eventually fell through (and they made Magical Mystery Tour instead - no psychedelic influences there), but this mutual ... imagination society did result in the Beatles allowing the unprecedented use of one of their songs ("All You Need is Love") in a televison show - The Prisoner finale.

No doubt McGoohan's synapses were already firing on all cylinders when he conceived the series, but he was also a product of and participant in the era, and add those influences to the chemistry of paranoia already fermenting in his brain and you have a perfect potion for The Prisoner. 

I'm not big on saying "Duuuuude, that guy was so stoned!" when I see an 'odd' movie or TV show but The Prisoner has always seemed like something that was influenced (for the better) by drugs.

Do the "several accounts' also include any mention of McGoohan's strict religious faith, one that might have shed some light on his actual beliefs toward ingesting such substances and perhaps help  dispense the notion that everyone was under the influence of psychedelic drugs during the storied 60's? As for finding psychedelic influences during that era, one can  spot it all over the media then, mostly as a choice of "style"  or "imagery" to connote something contemporaneously hip or cool or "young" and not necessarily as a genuine representative effect from actually experiencing the drugs.  Or are we to assume that Jack Webb used LSD in order to fuel the more surrealist touches of his hopelessly anachronistic late 60's "drug" episodes of DRAGNET? 

It is indeed possible that McGoohan may have been under the influence and/or inspired by same during the creation and execution of THE PRISONER, I don't know and I will amend my earlier statement which definitively said he didn't.  That was inferred from legitimate and confirmed accounts of his genuinely strong religious convictions, but still an assumption and one as blatant as any of those stating for a fact that he did do drugs. So yes, I should not have leaped to the assumption I did. However, I am hesitant to just dismiss the man's inherent intelligence and an imagination that was not just dependent on the then lifestyles or the "cliche illusions" we too often apply in our retrospection of it. 

It's often too easy an explanation for something that might not fit our accessible parameters of understanding to look for a convenient catalyst.  Rather than say it might have been a genuinely surrealist expression of ones creative, chemically free sub-conscious and attempt an analysis therefrom, it's all just so simple to instead say, as Travis quoted: "Duuuuude, that guy was so stoned!"  None of this is to say that hallucinogenic substances cannot expand one's consciousness or can't translate as art, but to me there's more going on in THE PRISONER than just one or more of McGoohan's alleged "trips." 

Edited by Professor Echo - 11/23/09 at 10:54am

No one's taking anything away from the tour de force of imagination that went into The Prisoner by discussing the influence psychedelics may have contributed to that imagination. Don't forget that LSD was legal until 1966 and had been used as a pyschotherapeutic tool (with excellent results for schzophrenia) since the mid 1950's (a fact not lost on one key episode). Even Cary Grant had 'tripped' more than 80 times under psychiatric supervision as part of his on-going therapy. But 1967-68 is when the influence, directly or indirectly exploded across the culture. I remember Rolling Stone featured an issue at the time revealing 87 out of the top 100 albums were either recorded on drugs or heavily influenced by them. I wish I could instantly summon up all the articles and interviews we read at the time related to The Prisoner, but it would probably only provide more fuel for Boomer bashing. Suffice it to say, set and setting is everything. And you could trip and still be a good Catholic, but chances are you may have experienced (or imagined) a more direct connection cutting out the middle man (Number 2?) 

Regardless of history :) , I finally bought that complete set with the Amazon Deal of the Day yesterday.  I've been on the fence about this set for a while but the price was low enough for me to click the button.  First TV/DVD set I've bought in a while, I think since the DD sale in June.

I don't remember much about the series but I do remember watching a few of them.  I'm a big McGoohan fan so it'll be a good show to watch for me.

Being a boomer myself and having experienced the culture and history of which Wayne writes, though admittedly later than the peak period of the late 60's, when I would have been too young to explore such options, for me this is not a case of "boomer bashing."   It's a case of not always looking for what appears on the surface to be an easy answer in describing something that seems indescribable.  I don't immediately discount or dismiss the power of pure and complex imagination in favor of other perhaps more accessible attribution. 

In any case, no matter the genesis, the show retains its brilliance from beginning to end and ultimately the tools should never be as important as the finished work.  Whatever we choose to see within McGoohan's vision is certainly as important a part of the collective whole as his vision itself.

Jeff, my friend, you got a great buy and I know you will become as absorbed in the series as anything else in your exemplary collection, though perhaps not in the same way as THE DONNA REED SHOW.

I know what you mean.  I also "missed" the 60's for the most part.  I was out in the neighborhood playing football, baseball, etc.  My first "rock" album buy was 'Chicago Transit Authority" (Chicago 1).  '69 was the year.  I remember I was an early Beatles fan but that was during my "45 RPM" record days.  Ahhh...those early Beatles hits.....classic.

Thanks (Prisoner buy support).  I know I'll like this series.  Its been so long that I don't remember the theme to the show.  My Amazon set's on the way so I might be able to watch a couple episodes over the holiday weekend....between DirecTV football games, that is...

Now, I think I'll pop (that's plug in) a CD and listen to "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"

Meanwhile, the only conceivable 'drug' the creators of the new version of The Prisoner that ran on AMC last week seem to have been on ... was Ambien. Yikes. What a sleeper (in the not-so-entertaining sense).

Jim Cavaziel may be a decent actor but he just comes across as a sedated victim in this version, something McGoohan never reflected in the role. Every syllable out his mouth had a fierce quality that brought out the sense of a caged and cagey tiger.

I think they might have been going for something like that in the new Prisoner.

     Quote:

I think that's the only good thing about me being born on the very back end of the "Boomer" generation.  I was way too young to even think about the drugs, free sex, hippie, and counter culture junk that dominated the late mid to late 60's. 


Gary "hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving" O.

I'm torn - like others in this thread, I want to think that The Prisoner didn't need to be created with the aid of "outside enhancement," but I'm also not naive.  Regardless of how he did it, Mr. McGoohan created one of the best TV series to air.  I'm re-working my way through this show and am loving it even more the second time around.

And Gary, who needs all of that "junk" from the '60s anyway (the Civil Rights movement, the Beatles, the moon landing)?    just kidding...happy Thanksgiving!

I had high hopes for the the Prisoner--AMC airs two brilliant shows, Mad Men and Breaking Bad--but yes, it was extremely dull. Caviezel lacked any charisma whatsoever--unlike Patrick McGoohan, whose No. 6 was a man we wanted to see escape. Really disappointing mini-series. I really do hope that Christopher Nolan finds the time to direct the film version he's been wanting to do for years!