{"id":11800,"date":"2009-01-14T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2009\/01\/14\/11800.html"},"modified":"2009-01-14T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T04:00:00","slug":"rip-patrick-mcgoohan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2009\/01\/14\/rip-patrick-mcgoohan\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P., Patrick McGoohan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Patrick McGoohan has died<\/a> at age 80.<\/p>\n

When I was in high school, I was a huge fan of The Prisoner<\/a><\/cite>. (It seemed to fit in, somehow, with Illuminatus!<\/cite> and the Paranoia roleplaying game and various other things I was into.) Sarah L and I used to go through bits of some episodes a frame at a time to pick out details. I wrote \"Be seeing you!\" next to my high school yearbook photo. I read the Thomas Disch novelization. I read Dean Motter's comic-book miniseries<\/a>. I even appeared on TV<\/a> as part of a panel discussion of the show.<\/p>\n

And I was thrilled when I later saw \"Colony Three,\" an episode of McGoohan's earlier series, Danger Man<\/cite>, in which spy John Drake infiltrates a secret spy-training village; apparently that episode was one of the inspirations for The Prisoner<\/cite>. (Danger Man<\/cite>'s theme song, of course, is the source of the line \"There's a man who lives a life of danger \/ To everyone he meets, he stays a stranger,\" to which Laurie Anderson appended: \"Howdy, stranger. Mind if I smoke?\")<\/p>\n

Over time, I drifted away from Prisoner<\/cite> fandom. It's been at least twenty years since I last watched any of the episodes, and I imagine I might find them a little dated and heavy-handed now--though I'm kinda tempted to give it a try. (You can watch all 17 episodes<\/a> for free online, at the AMCtv.com website; turns out AMC is doing a miniseries remake<\/a> this year, starring Ian McKellen as Number Two!) I haven't yet read the transcript of the 1977 interview<\/a> with McGoohan that various sites are quoting. The desire to wear a pin featuring a penny-farthing bicycle and the number 23 is no longer as strong in me as it once was (though I still laugh whenever I see official real-world signs printed in Albertus, the basis for the typeface used in the Village).<\/p>\n

But McGoohan gave teenage me a lot of enjoyment and a lot of food for thought. And the series was hugely influential. (Just one tiny example: the name of Six in BSG<\/cite> is an homage.) Even though I didn't follow much of his subsequent career, I'm sorry to hear he's gone.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick McGoohan has died at age 80. When I was in high school, I was a huge fan of The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}