Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/The Prisoner (US Remake)

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User:Monika/The Prisoner (US Remake)

I am having trouble concentrating on stuff I really really have to do, so I'm going to put this here now so it's one less thing to think about. Take your time, no rush.

Apparently I need a touch of spit-polish or something. I would like to get at least one review from someone familiar with both The Prisoner (the original, not the remake) and Burn Notice, but I'd appreciate a review from anyone else as well. Ideally, this article should be at least as informative as a real wikipedia article would be about this show if it were real, so no prior knowledge should be needed to read it, even if you won't get every joke. (By the way, you should totally watch The Prisoner. Burn Notice is also recommended.)

Let me know if you'd like me to review this. The reasons I'm asking are this: It was 1st runner up in PLS (congrats) and right now it's up for VFH, so you may not still want a review. Also, while I'm quite familiar with The Prisoner (I know he was never called "John Drake" in the series; I once participated in a human-piece chess game; and I believe I know the real reason why his character was given the number 6), I know nothing about Burn Notice other than what I can read about it online. If you're all right with this, let me know, and I'll review it. --and tell me how slow you want me to be. King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  06:19, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Sure, I'd love you to review it. I'm under the impression (but it's hard for me to tell from where I'm standing) that the jokes mostly require a deeper familiarity with The Prisoner and only a bit of basic Burn Notice knowledge - basic premise, main characters, that stuff. (The only Burn Notice jokes that I think might be hard to get and have a bigger payoff for getting are that 66 is the character Virgil, and that some of the quotes are based on Burn Notice quotes. BN is a good show, but it's pretty straight-forward.) If you have any questions or bits you want some background on, let me know. --monika 06:38, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Re: slowness - :) I'm working on my prelim doc, whose soft deadlines keep passing. I'm having trouble concentrating, so the fewer distractions, the better, but on the other hand, when I have concrete distractions such as something to respond to, I seem to be able to get back to work faster than when I'm just refreshing pages. Anyway, it's up to you, but there's no rush. --monika 06:44, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

We just had some weird sort of temporal thing going, or maybe it was a mind trick by Number Two. I was adding the phrase "and tell me how slow you want me to be" to the end of my comment, as you said you didn't want to take time away from your studies. But you posted a message here immediately before I opened this file, and I didn't realize it. As the end of your message is very similar to the end of mine, I tacked the addition to my comment to the end of your comment. Anyway, this time I fixed it. I hope. And by the way, what is your number? Mine is Number 86.854.32.179 06:49, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

OK, now my comments fixed some how. What's going on here? Number 86.854.32.179 06:49, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

I fixed it but somehow made the period at the end of my thing disappear. --monika 06:51, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

I see, you fixed it. This must has something to do with the topic. In any case, look for my review within 24 hours. Be seeing you! Number 86.854.32.179 06:52, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

I wish I could still refer to school as "studies", but I'm far beyond studies. I'm at "highly skilled labor no one else in the world can do paying $12 an hour". I miss studies. I'll be happy on the 6th. Municipal Waste is coming to town that night and I plan to go out and celebrate whether I fail out and get to leave or pass and get stuck here for a few more years... --monika 06:56, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

I had something like that once. I had a semester where I was really overloaded and, until I was hospitalized for a couple days and had a chance to think about it, didn't realize that I wasn't taking any real classes. I had been too busy to notice. I hope things go well for you! King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  07:09, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

What's a "class"? Is that that thing where you get to take a break for an hour? --monika 07:23, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, except when it dawns on you that you were supposedly helping the instructor who was there for the first session and now isn't coming back. King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  07:27, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Memories... I miss college. I was happy in college. --monika 07:31, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Time amendment: I just saw that Monika posted a link to The Prisoner episodes online, legal and free! Let's see, 17 episodes...my review will be delayed 17 hours. She said she's not in a hurry. So assuming I get some sleep, 06:52, October 27, 2009 + 24 hours original + 17 hours watching episodes plus 8 hours sleep = Pee Review in by 07:52, October 29, 2009. King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  21:49, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

Humour:	5	What is your reviewer's number? I like to start my reviews by telling you about myself so you'll know how unqualified I am. I'm the current NotM and nommed for RotM, and my first 1 1/2 articles got featured (I cowrote one of them). So somebody thinks I don't totally suck. As to The Prisoner, I may have told you I love the series, was a chess piece in a live-player chess game, and have a theory why Number 6 was assigned that number. The company that produced it was Everyman films, or something like that, and the number 6 is very important in Hebrew numerology. Six was the day "man" was created, male and female, and in early Christian numerology the number 666 likely represents "man" as the trilogy, or God. It's odd that Number Six says "I am not a number! I am a free man!" but never says his name. I think that's because he represents everyman. All right, enough of my lecture. I just re-watched "Episode 1: Arrival" thanks to your link, but I knew nothing about Burn Notice when I first read this article, but did read the Wikipedia article on it before I began my review. And by the way, who's Virgil? You said he's Number 66, but I found no reference to Virgil in the Wikipedia article. I like to comment on Humour and Prose and Formatting in the same section to avoid repeating myself, but do score them separately. Your introduction This sounds like a well-written Wikipedia article; clear and informative. Unfortunately, also like Wikipedia, it has no humour that I could see. I would advise adding some, especially here to set the tone of your article. Miami The first paragraph reads like the introduction--well written, but with little or no humour. I suspect "...escapes to Montego Bay but later realizes he hasn't left Miami when his deceivers neglect to account for the time difference" will make little or no sense to anyone who's not familiar with that episode of The Prisoner. I think much of your article depends very heavily on the reader being very familiar with the series. That's not necessarily a problem, but it's there. "In Miami, Number Six...."--I found the reference to safety and danger in regard to Anwar amusing, but don't think I did until I read the description of Burn Notice. "...Madeline Westen...."--this part may well be funny to those who don't know about the original Rover, but much funnier to those who do (like me). I don't get, though, "...Number Six's mother, played by Sharon Gless, after seeing a weather balloon float over the set..."--how does a weather balloon relate to Gless or Six's mother? As before, I find the "Miami" section well-written but with very little humour. Closing Credits "...Madeline Westen, a large, white, balloon-like middle-aged woman...."--here you explain the joke that had its punchline in the Miami section. I would have liked it better if I'd read this part first. Differences from the original "I like the "...American Capitalism and not, as the original was, by British taxpayers." bit and how that meant more money was spent. "Number Six's name was John Drake and it was never explicitly given"--personal, you're right "John Drake" was never said. The birthdate information in the first episode was Patrick McGoohan's info. If I recally correctly (I may not), he couldn't use "John Drake" anyway as someone else held the copyright. I had several debates about this point. All right, back to my review. I do wonder why you said "John Drake" was American. "Hey, you want to pick the name, you gotta go to the meeting."--I liked this. "quitter....too British....good, American name."--like this. This is the kind of humour I'd like to see in the beginning sections. "The character Rover in The Prisoner...."--this section was funny to me because I know what Rover was. A non-fan likely wouldn't get this. "Will Ferrell replaced Dick York...."--this is very insidey--you have know both about the remake and about Dick York/Dick Sargeant. Even though I do, I had to read this a couple times before I got the joke. "Number Two...defecation"--I liked this joke. Although the sentence seemed a little long--you might want to shorten some sentences throughout. I'm not seeing it right now, but it seems like there was some place where you implied that the characters in the U. S. version used names not numbers, yet you use numbers (I'm not sure I remember that right, though).
Concept:	8	You seem to have a clear idea of your concept, and follow it. I think it's a good one, but does have the disadvantage that, to get many of the jokes you have to be familiar with both series and I think relatively few readers will be (although I think knowing The Prisoner is enough on the last sections).
Prose and formatting:	8.5	I found your prose very good, but again you might want to shorten some sentences. It was clearly written and to me had a nice, narrative flow. Also, did I point out no grammatical errors? If so, that's a first for my Pee Reviews.
Images:	9	You obviously did a lot of work on the images, and it shows.
Miscellaneous:	7.625	Average of above.
Final Score:	38.125	I avoided reading any judge's comments as I didn't want to be influenced by someone else's opinion. I do know this has gotten a lot of positive VFH votes. Personally, I suspect this is because your article was read by a lot of The Prisoner fans. As you can see, I gave it high ratings throughout, except for humour. If you added some more to the first sections, especially some humour that's not as insidey, I think this could be much better.
Reviewer:	King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  03:16, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

Bit busy at the moment to really synthesize this, but I figured I'd respond to a few things.

1. Why John Drake (and therefore Number 6) is American - Patrick McGoohan is American-born and has American parents, even though he was primarily raised in England and Ireland. As a result, for a Brit, he has something of an American accent even though to an American ear, he has something of a British accent. In the original plans for Danger Man, they decided to take advantage of this and make John Drake an American even though he was working for the Brits. In the early episodes even, McGoohan takes on a ridiculous extra-American accent. They kind of began to ignore this after a while, much like how Fiona drops her thick Irish accent by the second episode of Burn Notice.

2. The continuity error re: naming - I know about this and still haven't decided how to fix it. It comes from my having written the ending before I had fully developed the ideas for the beginning.

3. Virgil is a character who appears in a few episodes but is fairly well-developed and popular. I think Wikipedia hid him somewhere in the characters page. But anyway, like I said, that's a joke that only BN watchers would get.

:) I'm honestly not too worried about not getting a lot of readers who've seen both shows; Burn Notice is like the #3rd ranked show on TV right now with 5mil viewers in the US and a fairly wide international distribution. Considering kids today, I'm more worried about people not knowing about The Prisoner. Hell, when it was referenced in The Simpsons, a large chunk of the audience went crazy WTF over it.

I'll take this review to heart and try to figure out how to reorder the article so the jokes are clearer, but not tonight. Thanks! --monika 03:57, October 28, 2009 (UTC)