Five years ago, if you had told me the V remake would be better than the Prisoner remake...

Well, I would've wondered what the hell you were talking about, but still. Some spoilers behind the break!

(Oh, and the scan's from Marvel's Greatest Comics #67, reprinting "Within This Tortured Land" from Fantastic Four #85; written by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby, inks by Joe Sinnott. This was from the second part of a Prisoner-styled storyline, so it all fits!)

Over at Bleeding Cool, Adi Tantimedh came down pretty hard on the Prisoner remake: "So the credo of the remake is, “I am not a number, but I want to be a member of a nice community that gets along with each other!”" (A little harsh, but his review is a good read, and ties in to another of my favorite utterly misguided adaptations, Judge Dredd.) From that, I was expecting to be completely hate it, but it did have its moments...even as it came up short.

Tantimedh has a valid point about the new Number Six (played by Jim Caviezel) coming across as too vulnerable and scared; although in fairness this version isn't the trained secret agent of the original. But Patrick McGoohan wouldn't have been above decking a few guys to get out of the Village...he probably could've just pushed Ian McKellen's Number Two down and just walked off. Caviezel's Six is amnesiac and confused, and didn't have the original's spy training, or rage to fall back on. Instead of seeming driven to escape, to be free, Remake-Six seems too often like he's willing to just play along and see where things go; whereas McGoohan might have sometimes played the game, he had his own rules. (I haven't watched "Schizoid" yet, so maybe Caviezel cracks some heads in that one, but I doubt it.)

And none of this probably makes sense if you haven't seen the original. Sorry. But you should.

Not unlike the reimagined Battlestar: Galactica, there are some plot holes that come with the territory of trying to update a property in a manner both twisty and surprising; which leaves the writers throwing in plot twists as needed to tweak the viewers' expectations, then trying to force them to make sense in the end. And like B:G, the last episode of the Prisoner has an ending that gets less satisfying the more you think about it. The reason for the larger than the original's supporting cast becomes clear in the end, but also underlines why the original didn't have recurring characters, or friends in the Village: even an innocent friend can be manipulated, or gotten to.

Not to spoil it, but in the end of the remake, Six is a prisoner to his own sense of responsibility, and seems stuck for good. I wanted to be glib and say McGoohan's Six would've blown up a busload of nuns and children to get out of the Village, but that's an exaggeration. At least a slight exaggeration, anyway. Actually, although it would've been considered dirty pool to threaten children back then; it would've been interesting to see McGoohan's Six in that position: he would of course save them, even at the cost of his freedom, but there would be no doubt that this would only be a temporary setback.

Perhaps the moral of the remake is that "freedom" is ultimately a meaningless ideal, since we are all Prisoners of something, more often than not figurative than literal: Prisoners of conscience, of fear, of responsibilities, of guilt. And most of us can't choose to reject every attachment in order to truly be free.


Anyway, V is off to an enjoyable start: I liked the original as a kid, and this version has done a great job of paring off all the cheese. Reckon ABC is kicking themselves now, that there's only one episode left before a long break: seems they hedged when they should've gone all in. The mystery of the aliens is a puzzle, though: it doesn't seem like they're here merely to eat people, like the old show; although I wouldn't mind if that was it.

The other new show I've been watching is Stargate: Universe, and I'm hoping it's going to the program that swings the pendulum of sci-fi TV away from imitating aspects of Battlestar: Galactica, like systematically removing anything resembling 'fun.' But maybe more on that some other time.