Talk:The Prisoner/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Llywrch (talk · contribs) 06:18, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Can't believe no one has accepted this article to review! Adding it to my workqueue. -- llywrch (talk) 06:18, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

After picking this article to perform a GA review on, I discovered that the nominator retired the week after nominating it. Although I could use this fact as a basis for a quickfail, this is a strong article, & had the nominator still been active on Wikipedia I feel that with a little work it could have passed the GA requirements. So I'm taking the time to list some of the places where it could benefit from more work.

The lead. For the most part the lead is good work; I envy Wikipedians who can write good leads to articles. But I have two concerns.

1. While the AMC sequel is mentioned -- which is loosely based on the original tv show -- the 1988 comic book sequel is not; I feel either both should be mentioned -- or neither.
2. Misuse of the word "allegory". This bothers me in part because this is only mentioned in the lead & not developed further in the article. More importantly, the word is misused here. Allegory is, strictly speaking, a genre where people or things are used to represent other things, usually abstractions such as "goodness", "sloth", "freedom", etc.; there is no sustained allegory in The Prisoner. There is no systematic symbolism in any of the episodes. What I think this word is supposed to indicate is the meaning behind the narrative, to the theme of individual versus an oppressive government or organization, or the theme of technology used to suppress individual freedom. (To name just two.) The best solution would be to remove this word & have a section about the story themes, but at the minimum remove this word entirely from this article.

Leitmotifs This brief series is known for a number of touches -- which I am somewhat inaccurately calling "leitmotifs" -- that give The Prisoner its distinctive feel: the unusual type face, the penny-farthing, "Be seeing you", the wireless phones & other high-tech details. One early criticism of the series (which I remember reading in a contemporary issue of TV Guide) was that the show failed to supply answers to enough of its questions to be good Science Fiction; its ambiguity grated on its late 1960s audience, yet is part of the atmosphere of each episode. A related issue concerns Rover: there is one theory that Rover does not physically exist, but is some kind of hallucination implanted by the Village staff psychologists; this theory is not mentioned, yet is plausible.

Development The start of this section is muddled: There is an opening paragraph that states there are two accounts of who was the primary creative force behind the show, but seems to come to a conclusion at the end of the paragraph. The reader is then surprised to find two lengthy paragraphs discussing each account in detail. A bit of polishing of the opening paragraph would fix this.

Unproduced episodes There is no mention of these unproduced episodes in this article. Their existence would support the account that as many as 36 episodes had been planned, but the show abrupt termination left only those 17 actually produced.

None of these are insurmountable problems. And were the nominator still active on Wikipedia, I would probably not mention the missing items under "Leitmotifs" above -- although I would insist on them for this article to achieve FA status. But to repeat myself, this nomination has been abandoned, so I regretfully have to close this review as a Fail. I'm hoping another editor will see how close this article is to GA class, be motivated to address its shortcomings, perform the last bit of work needed to get it across the line, & resubmit it for review. -- llywrch (talk) 07:03, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

See below for Patrick McGoohan's view that The Prisoner is, in fact, an allegory. And, on the whole, he should know. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:12, 19 June 2020 (UTC)