From 3 January 1993, Harlan Ellison’s Watching—a cultural commentary by the eponymous writer, named for his film criticism column—closed episodes of the Sci-Fi Channel’s weekly news program, Sci-Fi Buzz. It was my first sustained exposure to a writer who would—sixteen years later—become one of my closest friends for the last nine years of his life.
Those Watching segments shaped my opinions and tastes in ways it would take too long to enumerate, but what really established a sense of one-way kinship between Ellison and I was his affinity for The Prisoner (1967–8), which had permanently warped me when KUHT ran it in 1990.
On Labor Day, 1993, Ellison met McGoohan in my mind:
“Feeling trapped? Feeling paranoid? Are they out to get you? Are they listening to your every word? Thought so. Which makes you absolutely ready for The Prisoner marathon. I’m Harlan Ellison, world famous author and outcast, just like you. And I’ve been trapped into hosting the seventeen episodes of this classic and controversial series. They’ll be shown uncut, and in their entirety, right here, on Monday, September 6th.”
The Prisoner was the first television series that confronted me with the possibility of multiple viewing orders. When I first saw it on Houston’s PBS affiliate, the seventeen episodes were presented in the “official” sequence determined by ITC, the show’s corporate owner. That order had more to do with when the episodes were completed by the post-production crews than what was going on within the story. (This was also the order used by MPI Home Video for their VHS and Laserdisc releases of the series, as well as the sequence proffered by several books on the show.)
In 1991, the A&E cable channel screened The Prisoner and I was startled to see the episodes appearing in a different order, a sequence I’d later learn was preferred by Six of One, The Prisoner Appreciation Society.
For the Sci-Fi Channel marathon, Harlan commented upon the ordering controversy and supplied his own iteration, fixing at least one major continuity issue in the Six-of-One sequence. (Some kind soul uploaded a very dodgy recording of the tail-end of Ellison’s linking material to YouTube, if you’d like to take a look. One day, I must exhume my videotapes to revisit the earlier part of the marathon.)
How, you may well ask, could a mere seventeen episodes be ordered in no less than three sequences? (As of this post, Wikipedia.org lists six viewing orders for The Prisoner, so the question is twice as complicated as you might have thought.)
But none of them are Harlan’s order.
“I’m Harlan Ellison, asking if you know how many sides a round building has? And assuring you we’ll be back directly, with yet more of The Prisoner marathon, on the channel whose name will never pass my lips.”
During the marathon, the Host echoed the Prisoner’s refusal to explain his resignation by not speaking the name of the channel, instead gesturing to the logo superimposed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Harlan had a long-standing aversion to “sci-fi”, “that hideous neologism”, which he likened to the sound of insects fucking, so it was all in character.
Harlan’s order:
01 Arrival
02 Free for All
03 Day of the Dead
04 Checkmate
05 The Chimes of Big Ben
06 The General
07 A. B. and C
08 The Schizoid Man
09 Many Happy Returns
10 It’s Your Funeral
11 A Change of Mind
12 Hammer into Anvil
13 Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling
14 Living in Harmony
15 The Girl Who Was Death
16 Once Upon a Time
17 Fall Out
“I’m your host, Harlan Ellison, and the answer is: a round building has two sides…inside, and outside…and you’re watching the five thousandth hour of The Prisoner marathon, exclusively pumped into the Village by…”
Thanks, Harlan. I miss you.
In the interest of embracing new ideas, I commend to you Alex Cox’s 2017 book I Am (Not) a Number: Decoding The Prisoner, in which the writer-director of Repo Man (1984)—a movie I first encountered thanks to Harlan’s review—offers a radical reinterpretation of the series…and another viewing order.
I tried Cox’s order in March 2018, when I was ill with what I still regard as the most congenial virus that’s ever infected me.1 While low-maintenance as illnesses go, I regret that my memory of how Cox’s order played went with the infection. It’s probably time to try it again.
I Am (Not) a Number is a beautifully designed—by Elsa Mathern—book, by the way. The 6 on the cover is spot glossed, and the word “not” is rendered such that the book appears to be titled I Am a Number from a distance, but becomes I Am Not a Number when you pick it up. Kamera Books is to be commended for the production.
If this review has compelled you to purchase I Am (Not) a Number, may I request that you use one of the Amazon links below, which will earn me a small commission on the sale that will fund my ongoing research and publishing work:
Alternatively, I have Ko-Fi for digital tips.
Much appreciated,
JASON DAVIS
©2015, 2024 by Jason Davis. All rights reserved.
- For seven days, the virus robbed me of the ability to sleep, filled my head with an oppressive pressure, and supplied my body with an indistinct ache. There were no coughs, sneezes, or other respiratory issues—which are what I hate most—just a sort of living death that vanished after seven days. ↩︎