From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #165 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, July 29 2000 Volume 02 : Number 165 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/comments7/16 ["David S. Bratman" ] The Prisoner ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: The Prisoner [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/comments7/16 [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: The Prisoner ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/comments7/16 ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 23:33:29 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > No, there is no uncertainty about that, on our part or Buffy's, except that > we don't know exactly how he "awakens." But the delay is necessary for the > timing of the story. Buffy knows that she has to draw Angel's blood to save > the world at that point, and "one drop will send them both to hell" (she > could have cut his hand with the same result as stabbing him in the stomach). > Then she momentarily forgets when Angel changes. I would think far less of Buffy if I believed that was so. She _forgets_? It is just as reasonable, and as urgent, for her to fight Angelus to keep him from starting the ritual as to acquire his blood to stop it. > Who says it can't be silent? Oh come now. A world-destroying vortex? The unawakened demon makes more noise than that! The plot need to keep Angel from turning around and saying "What the heck is that?" (not that it would have changed anything substantive, but it would have interrupted the tearful farewell) is the only excuse for this. It's not good enough. > But, at any rate, Angel would not have known > its significance, and would have taken his cue from Buffy. B Pt 1 carefully > established in the flashbacks the key point that when his soul was restored > the first time, he spent a number of minutes in confusion unable to remember > anything that had happened while he was soulless. Oh, that's very clear, from Angel's "Where am I? What's going on?" remarks. Previous episodes are not necessary to explain this. > Do I understand correctly from Don's post that you haven't seen "Innocence" > or other eps in the arc? If so, you really didn't get the necessary > emotional buildup for the climax. I don't think that's necessary: certainly not to get the point that Angel doesn't know what he'd just done. And to the extent that it is necessary, it's a weakness in a continuing tv series. (Insert long essay here on the conflicts between evolving main-character development and the basic raision of a tv series, which is that the main characters continue without fundamental change. This tendency towards a steady state is the reason for the 3rd season return of Angel, the ever-escalating "direst threat[s] we've ever faced," and so on, that you've complained about even more than I.) > Oh, and Spike breaks Dru's neck, leastways that was my impression. But > consistency in vampire physiology is not a priority on Buffy. Indeed it is not, and I reserve my right to continue to complain about it. I do not recall, from Dru's later appearance, that she's walking around with a broken neck, though there's precedence for such things in fiction about the undead. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 23:36:55 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: The Prisoner On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > Did you see The Prisoner in its first US run? When it was a summer > replacement, around, oh, 1968 or so? I did. I was in high school at the > time. To say that it was fascinatingly, refreshingly different from anything > I'd ever seen on tv before would be a massive understatement. Better than that: I saw it at the age of ten its first time as a summer replacement in 1967. (It came back the following year, at least around here, but I didn't see it then, being off at *feh* camp.) My context, i.e. the shows I knew that perhaps vaguely resembled it in some respects, was _The Wild Wild West_, _The Girl (but not The Man) from UNCLE_, and a few episodes of _The Avengers_. To say that I was amazed by _The Prisoner_ would be to understate the case. Of all the shows I watched as a child, this was the only one I was sure was beyond my ability to understand it at that age, and i dearly wanted to see it again some day. Consequently I ran, did not walk, when ten years later I was in college and it appeared as a late-night film program at the UC Art Museum theatre. Later I saw it any number of times on PBS, own several books about it, etc. So I really have a handle on it now, insofar as its mysteries and ambiguities allow one to do so. > I'd be happy to discuss The Prisoner if 30 years or so hadn't fuzzed my > memory. I can still vividly remember quite a bit, though, like the giant > white balloon with its weird intelligence, and the surrealistic architecture, > and the way the people in the village acted. The white balloon (played by a succession of weather balloons) was named Rover, though that name was only used once or twice on the show. Its function was clearly as the guardian of the village: it attacks those who try to escape. (When the ubiquitous cameras detect such a thing, the eerie bald Supervisor memorably utters the phrase "Orange Alert. Orange Alert." to command Rover's release.) The architecture ... did you know that that's real? The exteriors were all filmed at a 1920s resort hotel in North Wales called Portmeirion. I've been there, as has just about every other serious Prisoner fan: there've even been conventions there. It's not anywhere near as big as the show makes it seem, but it's quite real, except for what's inside the buildings. (I recall that Number Two's Green Dome is actually a conservatory.) What makes Portmeirion look so weird is that it's a folly of Mediterranean bricabrac set in the rugged Northern mountains. I like to take local visitors to UC Santa Cruz's Kresge College, which is also Mediterreanean architecture in a rugged northern wooded session, and consequently looks more like Portmeirion than anything else I know of on this side of the Water. > I imagine that people on the list would not object to Prisoner essays, even > if we couldn't respond much. I for one would enjoy reading them. I suppose this is one already. I have lots of Prisoner essays in me, some original and some borrowed: what order the episodes should be watched in, why there are so many Number Twos and why some of them come back, where The Village really is, the secret of the show's creative genius, why a few episodes suck (don't forget the body-switching episode: that one was a real winner, not), and so on. I may haul some of them out some time for general inspection. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 01:27:14 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: The Prisoner In a message dated 7/28/00 8:43:45 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << > Did you see The Prisoner in its first US run? When it was a summer > replacement, around, oh, 1968 or so? I did. I was in high school at the > time. To say that it was fascinatingly, refreshingly different from anything > I'd ever seen on tv before would be a massive understatement. Better than that: I saw it at the age of ten its first time as a summer replacement in 1967. (It came back the following year, at least around here, but I didn't see it then, being off at *feh* camp.) >> Curious as to why seeing it at the age of ten is better than seeing it at 14? (Your pegging the year makes it possible for me to peg my age at the time.) After all, at 14, I =did= understand it, better than I would have at 10 (not saying I might not have missed the significance of some things or wouldn't have noticed new things on repeated viewings -- unfortunately, it was never run again where =I= lived). I knew that much of it was intentionally meant to be open to multiple, even conflicting interpretations, which was unique in a medium where everything else was spoon-fed, and I loved mentally playing with those interpretations. I was amazed not only by its originality and depth, but its sheer courage in being so boldly and uncompromisingly what it was. Yes, I knew that the setting was a real place and a mecca for Prisoner fans. And multi-zillion dollar special effects have never (IMO) been as scary as that simple balloon. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 01:26:45 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 In a message dated 7/28/00 8:40:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << It is just as reasonable, and as urgent, for her to fight Angelus to keep him from starting the ritual as to acquire his blood to stop it. >> But that is exactly what she did! << > Do I understand correctly from Don's post that you haven't seen "Innocence" > or other eps in the arc? If so, you really didn't get the necessary > emotional buildup for the climax. I don't think that's necessary: certainly not to get the point that Angel doesn't know what he'd just done. And to the extent that it is necessary, it's a weakness in a continuing tv series. >> Well, =necessary=.... necessary for what, I wonder. Of course it's not necessary to get the specific piece of info you mention -- wonder why you single out that particular point? But I think you have proven that it =is= necessary to watch a story from beginning to end in order to get the full impact. The fact that you didn't see the entire story explains even more than the fact that you saw it late. Consider: you watch the last chapter only, it didn't have much impact on you; those who watched in its entirety have a different reaction, but (do I understand this right?) you feel that the fact that you saw only the end plays no part in the fact that your reaction to the end is so different from that of those who watched the story in its entirety? (Personally, I disagree that an arc is a weakness in a continuing tv series; I think it is a strength. Its only disadvantage is that it makes it harder for a new viewer to join in.) I'm curious. In this discussion, are you attempting to change others' views or to understand why others' reactions are so different from yours? Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 02:25:22 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: The Prisoner On Sat, 29 Jul 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > Curious as to why seeing it at the age of ten is better than seeing it at > 14? "Better" only in the sense of "even more amazing; having even more of an impact on an even more juvenile mind". I'm sure that you at 14 understood more than I did at 10, but I was well above a minimum age (8? 5?) below which it would have washed over me with no impact whatever. > (Your pegging the year makes it possible for me to peg my age at the > time.) Depending on what the tv stations where you lived did, you might have been able to see it in 1968 only. (Or maybe even 1967 only.) I have seen 1968 written as the only year it was shown, so perhaps that was the case in some places, but I could not have seen it that year, and confirmed from old TV Guides that we had it twice here - though a few episodes got pre-empted the first time, and one episode was censored out, and never seen in the US until the PBS runs years later. This becomes existential. So many artistic encounters of my youth were so important in shaping me, I can hardly imagine what kind of person I would have been without them. What would have happened if I hadn't seen _The Prisoner_ at age 10? What if my teacher hadn't read _The Hobbit_ to us the same year? What if I hadn't been dragged by a friend to see a new film called _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ at 18? What if I hadn't heard a group at Mythcon sing Steeleye Span's version of "Gaudete" two years later? These artistic experiences (all British art, notice) have shaped my life far beyond the artistic. > I knew that much of it was intentionally meant > to be open to multiple, even conflicting interpretations, which was unique in > a medium where everything else was spoon-fed, and I loved mentally playing > with those interpretations. I was amazed not only by its originality and > depth, but its sheer courage in being so boldly and uncompromisingly what it > was. Indeed. Yet it was also not just a soup of unexplained things to be interpreted, but (most of the time) also a clear, compelling, and often clever and witty storyline. It was the perfect balance between these things that really made the show. If just the one, murky sub-Kafka. If just the other, yetanother James Bond ripoff. (And what makes the poorer episodes poorer is that they fall into one or the other of these traps.) > Yes, I knew that the setting was a real place and a mecca for Prisoner > fans. And multi-zillion dollar special effects have never (IMO) been as > scary as that simple balloon. Ironically, Rover was originally to be played by a complex gadget. But it broke the first time it was used. There's a lesson in that. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 02:48:34 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 On Sat, 29 Jul 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 7/28/00 8:40:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time, > dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: > > << > It is just as reasonable, and as urgent, for her to fight Angelus to keep > him from starting the ritual as to acquire his blood to stop it. > >> > > But that is exactly what she did! He'd already started it, so in a sense she didn't ... but my point was that she didn't have to forget anything. > Well, =necessary=.... necessary for what, I wonder. Of course it's not > necessary to get the specific piece of info you mention -- wonder why you > single out that particular point? Because you did. > (Personally, I disagree that an arc is a weakness in a continuing tv > series; I think it is a strength. Its only disadvantage is that it makes it > harder for a new viewer to join in.) And to the extent that it makes it harder, it's a bad thing. Consider _Twin Peaks_, which I never watched at all because all the commentaries implied very heavily that if you hadn't been on board since Day One, you'd never catch up. It also makes for tv series that approach the condition of soap operas: minimizing the end-of-episode closure, multiple storylines that don't always intersect, etc. I do not consider that a good thing because when fully developed it results in a work which cannot be fully appreciated even by a dedicated week-by-week viewer, but only by watching the whole thing at once, which is a bit difficult when a season is 20+ hours long. It doesn't make the work as a whole bad. It's just a flaw. Many serialized novels, including Alan Moore's graphic novels (_Watchmen_ and _V for Vendetta_), have only fully revealed themselves to the serialized reader who re-read all the previous installments as each new one appeared. Fortunately on completion they were pretty promptly published in book form, and weren't too long to digest that way. > I'm curious. In this discussion, are you attempting to change others' > views or to understand why others' reactions are so different from yours? Getting other people to understand mine is not an option? Please remember that I began by saying why I felt disappointed in "Becoming," not "why Becoming is bad." You have brilliantly convinced me that much of my disappointment was misplaced. (So not only do I now understand your reaction, you've helped change mine.) But not all of my disappointment. Nonwithstanding some of your own comments about inadequacies, one begins to feel that the only acceptable response would be to bow down and say, "_Buffy_ is perfect and without flaw! I worship at the shrine of Joss!" That is not meant as a personal criticism. I am probably the same way when confronted with flaws in Tolkien. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #165 *****************************