nuPris

[avevale_intelligencer]

Well, you didn't really expect me to pass on that one, did you?

Weirdness abounds. Nobody reading this can have escaped the volumes of bile and vitriol I have emitted into the atmosphere, in clear contravention of local environmental guidelines, on the subject of the remaking of Doctor Who. Now here is a remake of another show I loved, The Prisoner. You'd expect me to hate it, right?

Well, I don't. So there. :)

It's not The Prisoner, of course. It never could be. The age in which The Prisoner was possible has long gone, sadly, and will never be recaptured. But to its credit, it's not trying to be. There's no suggestion, beyond a few superficial similarities like Rover, that this is the same world in which possibly-possibly-not-John-Drake resigned from spying and got taken to Portmeirion. There was no artful hint that the old man nuSix found in the desert might have been oldSix renumbered. (Okay, he wore a blazer and nobody else seems to, but that could have been coincidence.) It's not vainly reaching for a stylised, anachronistic look, or being clever and philosophical as McGoohan tried, with varying degrees of success, to be. It's The Prisoner if it had been done today as a straight techno-thriller. And on that basis, the first episode didn't look half bad. Telly these days is all about the pretty people and the flashy effects, and it had plenty of the first and not overwhelmingly too much of the second (though that interferencey approach to opening credits is really really old and boring now, I have to say). There was also the beginning of a plot. I shall be watching to see how it develops.

And it might even help to take away the taste of nuWho.

Comments

[gingicat]

I really enjoyed the entire thing. One major difference was character development of several folks throughout, which worked extraordinarily well.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

You didn't dislike the reworked "Randall and Hopkirk (deceased)", you recommended it (and thanks for that recommendation, my only disappointment was that it only lasted two short seasons).

I suspect that the difference is indicated by your comment that it doesn't pretend to have any connection to the original apart from the name. NuWho has always claimed to be a continuation of the original, and thus sets up expectations and comparisons (and fails most of them). Recreating a series as something new but using the original idea, however, distances itself from te original and although there will be some comparison if it then goes in a different direction it's easier to see it as good in itself. (When it is, of course...)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

You live to confuse us :-)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. :D

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

And I actually hated it. ;)