I’m still encountering people who don’t know about Oats Studios so here’s a look at Volume 1 – Rakka. The storyline is very derivative but the special effects are great.
Sigourney Weaver is along for the ride as the rebel leader. If you’re a wimp when it comes to gore effects don’t watch it.
Filed under opinion
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: THE GENERAL … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 9th episode.
This time around viewers learn the truth about the mysterious “General” that the Villagekeepers referred to back in The Schizoid Man.
As another sign of how The Prisoner is even more relevant here in the 21st Century this episode deals with totalitarian distortion of the educational system, “official” history and access to information via computers/ the internet. Today we see techno-fascists like Mark Zuckerberg plus his fellow Democrats at Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and other social media allying themselves with just one political party.
Centralizing and monopolizing the dissemination of information for ugly partisan purposes and in order to police the free exchange of ideas has become nightmarishly easy for those so inclined. Freedom of expression is becoming limited to those who mindlessly agree with the Democrat Party’s dogma. All other opinions are increasingly banned as “hatred” or “violations of community standards.”
The Story: Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: FREE FOR ALL … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 8th episode.
Our previous episode wallowed in grim, depressing realism. Free For All takes us back into the realm of allegory and metaphor. It plays like Kafka, Ionesco and Pirandello blended with science fiction.
The Story: Eric Portman plays this episode’s Number Two, the rotating series of Village executives who manage the prison-city for varying periods, sort of like Officer of the Day duty in the military but stretched out for weeks at least.
This Number Two pretends to be calling the Prisoner’s bluff, implying that if he doesn’t like the way things are done in the totalitarian atmosphere of the Village he should run for office and try to enact some changes. Nobody has come forward as a candidate in a long time, so Number Two encourages Number Six to run against him.
Needless to say our protagonist figures this election nonsense is just another experimental Head Game of the Villagekeepers. His suspicion increases when he sees that the Villagekeepers had already printed up campaign posters for him and distributed them to all the other Villagers. Despite our main character’s misgivings he gets swept along in this new cerebral duel with his captors.
NOTE: This is why I place Free For All AFTER Many Happy Returns. That episode made it clear that the Villagekeepers have too many co-conspirators in the outside world for any escape to be permanent. With that being the case the Prisoner can justifiably feel he has nothing to lose by playing along with the obviously phony “election.” If he gets lucky he might be able to at least strike some sort of defiant blow against the people who run the Village. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: MANY HAPPY RETURNS … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 7th episode.
This is the most relentlessly downbeat installment of The Prisoner saga.
The Story: The Prisoner wakes up on his own, rather than being awakened by the usual syrupy-sweet broadcast of the Village’s “good morning” message. That is odd, but what is odder is the way that there is no running water as our protagonist discovers when he tries to take his morning shower.
Number Six gets dressed and ventures outside but finds the entire prison-city deserted. The automatic doors don’t work either, because all the power is out, but the doors can be pushed open since they are not locking like they usually do.
Our hero has access to all of the food and bottled water of the Village’s stores so he is in no immediate danger. In a well-rendered moment of irony this most anti-social of characters actually seems to wistfully miss a little human contact after awhile. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: LIVING IN HARMONY … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 6th episode.
In this installment the Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan) finds himself living a western version of his current plight. After resigning as a Sheriff and turning in his badge he is captured and knocked out by unknown parties.
When he comes to he discovers he is trapped in a Wild West town called Harmony … And his captors are obsessed with finding out why he resigned as Sheriff.
First-time viewers of this episode are as disoriented as McGoohan’s character. The program starts with this “western” revision of the usual opening sequence in which he is shown resigning from British Intelligence and getting abducted to the prison city called the Village.
It’s easy to underestimate the commitment shown by creative director McGoohan in insisting on this alternate version of the opening credits sequence. I’ll bet NO American television executives of the time would have okayed reshooting the entire opening for just one episode.
“That’d cost too much! Plus the audience will be confused and won’t understand what’s going on!” That would no doubt have been the reaction back then. It’s all just another of the many ways that The Prisoner was ahead of its time. Sometimes it pays to have faith in the intelligence of your audience.
The Story:
Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
FOR A LOOK AT MY PREVIOUS DYSTOPIA NATION POSTS CLICK HERE
THE NEW COLONIALISM – Here’s another situation to embellish and extrapolate from in standard Dystopian Literature format. It’s the way that isolated, heavily-populated regions of pompous snobs, cowardly hypocrites and hilariously pretentious asses consider themselves the rulers of the entire rest of the nation.
Part of the inspiration for this installment came from the way Ben Franklin observed that – leading up to the Revolutionary War – even everyday citizens in Great Britain would snobbishly refer to Americans as “OUR subjects in the Colonies.”
That possibly apocryphal account easily puts one in mind of the snobbish way that Democrats pompously think they know how everyone else should live their lives. And if the people they consider to be THEIR “subjects” don’t agree, well, in the words of the fictional Darth Vader “Then they should be MADE to agree!” That’s the Democrats’ mantra. (I’m an Independent voter.)
Anyway, in our fictional future for this time around, the isolated areas of Democrat Supremacists or “Blue Meanies” began to panic as they felt their tyrannical grip on their “Colonies” slipping.
As far back as the early 21st Century the Democrat Supremacists had formed masked hate groups like Antifa – really KLAN-tifa – to inflict violence on dissenters.
The Dem-Sup control of the media, internet and film-making ensured that the only opinions that got wide-spread exposure were the opinions shared by millionaires. Dem-Sup contempt for the working class and the poor grew in direct proportion to the way in which the working class and the poor rejected the “One True Worldview” being forced upon them by Dem-Sup plutocrats. Continue reading
Filed under Future History, Neo-Pulp, opinion
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: THE SCHIZOID MAN … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 5th episode.
This episode’s Number Two – the rotating series of executives in charge of the Village – is portrayed by Anton Rodgers, whom regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog will remember from his role in the musical Scrooge (1970).
The Schizoid Man is especially beloved by all of us who value our individuality above nearly everything else. In this episode the nefarious Villagekeepers play their most effective mind game against Patrick McGoohan’s character The Prisoner. They seek to break him by robbing him of the very foundation of all his strengths: his identity and uniqueness. Or if you prefer, his sense of self. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
THE CLONES (1973) – This neglected sci-fi item from the 70s was directed by Lamar Card & Paul Hunt, based on Hunt’s story. The Clones falls into that category of films that I always refer to as “X-Movies” because of the way they put one in mind of the paranoid and conspiratorial air of the best X-Files episodes.
Michael Greene, who played Secret Service Agent Jimmy Hart in To Live and Die in L.A, stars as Dr Gerald Appleby. Gerald is a scientist who has been cloned and finds himself vying with his clone for ownership of his life, career and girlfriend when the duplicate begins impersonating him.
Gregory Sierra, best known to trivia buffs as “And Gregory Sierra” for the number of times he was credited like that in various television shows and movies, plays Nemo, a government agent tasked to keep the clone project a secret and bring in the escapee.
Helping him out is fellow agent Sawyer, portrayed by Otis Young (Blood Beach). Sawyer suffers a crisis of conscience during this coverup assignment. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: CHECKMATE … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 4th in the series.
Peter Wyngarde portrays this episode’s Number Two, the rotating series of executive figures running the futuristic prison city called the Village. Balladeer’s Blog’s readers may remember him from my reviews of his shows Department S and Jason King. X-Men fans will recognize him as the obvious model used by Chris Claremont and John Byrne for Mastermind’s “Jason Wyngarde” persona in The Dark Phoenix Saga.
The episode begins with the Prisoner witnessing yet another sudden unleashing of “Rover” the bioelectrical synthetic creation which the Villagekeepers use to subdue outbreaks of disobedient behavior among the Villagers. As usual everyone freezes in their tracks, knowing Rover will attack anyone perceived as resisting.
For once, one of the residents shows no fear of Rover. An elderly man with a walking stick (George Coulouris from Citizen Kane) continues strolling along, ignoring Rover, who shows unprecedented deference to the man before moving on to subdue whichever Villager has raised the ire of the Villagekeepers.
Our protagonist is intrigued by this and follows the Man With A Walking Stick. The two share a casual conversation in which each man is wary of the other, given that nobody can ever be sure if a fellow Villager is secretly working for the conspirators behind the Village.
Walking Stick Man invites McGoohan’s character to a game of chess he is heading to. The Prisoner goes along and finds that the game is played with human chess pieces in one of the least subtle of the program’s metaphors.
Walking Stick Man is one of the two “players” who sit above the game shouting their moves through bullhorns. The Villagers serving as chess pieces move accordingly. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
Northwest Smith
With the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story in theaters now what better time for my profile of the Han Solo of the 1930s. Female author C.L. Moore wrote a series of pulp adventures about her often neglected science fiction figure Northwest Smith.
THE HERO: Space traveling anti-hero Smith was created by the female writer C.L. Moore in the 1930s. Four decades before Han Solo, Northwest Smith was a ruthless swashbuckling smuggler, thief and all-around mercenary. Smith’s less than sterling character made him a refreshing change from the usually wholesome pulp heroes of the time.
THE STORIES: Northwest Smith’s adventures take place in the far future, when regular trade exists between Earth and the native inhabitants of Mars and Venus. The other planets in the solar system have been colonized by those Big Three worlds, providing a backdrop that combines elements of westerns, seagoing adventures and colonial-era war stories.
Wielding a blaster like a six-gun and piloting his deceptively fast and maneuverable spaceship The Maid Smith and his Venusian partner Yarol roam the solar system making a living by plying various illegal trades. Though Northwest and Yarol are career criminals they often find themselves forced by circumstances into taking actions similar to those of traditional heroes. Their motive is usually their own survival rather than altruism. Continue reading
Filed under Pulp Heroes
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