A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode seventeen — ICE STATION ZEBRA

What If Jimmy Page played a session with Stillwater? Our podcastin' inspiration Matt Gourley joins us for a Cinerama epic of an episode that we didn't plan to release on Father's Day week, but the cookie just happened to crumble serendipitously. Because our subject is a genuine, certified, no-foolin’ Dad Movie, Ice Station Zebra, based on The Guns of Navarone author Alistair MacLean's novel Ice Station Zebra.

The moderately thrilling Cold War thriller that Patty McG cheated on The Prisoner with is an all-star affair featuring Rock “The Dwayne” Hudson, Ernest “Resistance is Futile” Borgnine, Jim “One Night in Miami” Brown and the dirty half-dozen himself, Patrick McGoohan! And this episode is, like Roger Ebert’s 1969 review of Ice Station Zebra, a one-star affair... the star being Mr. Gourley, who nails it like Harrison Ford in Witness when he hails Ice Station Zebra as “a Saturday lawnmow.”

Ice Station Zebra

Directed by John Sturges

Screenplay by Douglas Heyes

Screen Story by Harry Julian Fink

From the novel by Alistair MacLean

Released October 23, 1968

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode sixteen — The Girl Who Was Death

Number Six must elude the tender embrace of a lady who probably uses pseudonyms at least as often as he does in a late-in-the-run-but-lavish filler episode that sends up the spy genre circa ’67 & burns plenty of Sir Lew Grade’s money. (He refused to finance a floated 90-minute version.)

Justine Lord and Kenneth Griffiths are your magnificent guest stars, and Patty McG appears to be having a grand old time in the relatively few scenes where he's onscreen. Apparently he was called back to Los Angeles for a few more weeks of shooting on Ice Station Zebra late in 1967, resulting in an episode that relies heavily on doubles, particularly in the location footage shot at the Kursaal Fun Fair at Southend.

"The Girl Who Was Death"

Written by Vincent Feeley from an idea by David Tomblin

Directed by David Tomblin 

Original airdate January 18, 1968

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirteen — A Change of Mind

Number Six's Public Enemy Number Six act is getting tired — and what is alternately referred to within a single scene as The Committee, The Council, and The Commission will tolerate it for only so long before they decree that their prize captive must undergo Instant Social Conversion. It's a procedure so chilling that Number Eighty-Six (the marvelous Angela Browne) must narrate it step-by-step, and very, very slowly, so as not to induce panic. John Sharpe is our unctuous, openly misogynistic Number Two. Happily, we get to see Six's homebuilt crossfit gym in the woods once again.

"A Change of Mind"

Written by Roger Parkes

Directed by Joseph Serf (Patty McG)

Original airdate December 15, 1967

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode twelve — It's Your Funeral

There's an assassination plot afoot in The Village, and Number Six must protect his oppressor to spare his fellow Villagers. Derren Nesbitt is our Number Two and Annette Andre is our Girl Friday. Neither one of them could stand their scene partner an (uncredited) director, Patty McG. Pink-blazered henchman Mark Eden didn't hate him, but he did resent his attempt to strangle him on camera.

This creative tension results in one of The Prisoner's most rewarding episodes, replete with crossfit and and Kosho and lots more. Plus, listener mail!

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode eleven — Hammer into Anvil

Pride Goethe before a fall. To boldy Goethe where no one has gone before.

Just how well do you know your Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? 

Patrick Cargill is back from "Many Happy Returns" and in Number Six's crosshairs after he drives a woman to suicide two minutes into the episode. And so begins Six's campaign of vengeance via psychological warfare.

Featuring Basil Hoskins as Number Fourteen, the man who challenges Six to an ostensibly (per the script) dirty, not-according-to-Hoyle game of... Kosho.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode ten — Checkmate

We are all of us pawns, my dear, in this quintessential Prisoner episode that some observers believe should've aired third in the run but didn't surface until much later. Wherever it belongs, what is undisputed is that it combines an underdeveloped chess metaphor with another conspiracy to escape The Village and an important life lesson for Number Six about how one should treat one's fellows. You might say the real jailbreak was the friends he utterly failed to make along the way. 

But on the plus side, Peter Wyngarde is this episode's Number Two, and his scarf is longer than that worn by any prior runner-up. This is a post-The Avengers, pre-Department S, pre-Jason King Wyngarde performance, and certainly worthy of further study. Which is why Glen briefs (debriefs?) us on his arrest record.

Also starring Ronald Radd as Brian Cox, Rosalie Crutchley as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Patricia Jessel as Bea Arthur, and Basil Dignam as Luke Wilson.

Written by Gerald Kelsey

Directed by Don Chaffey

Initial airdate: November 24, 1967

PLUS: A mildly embarrassing correction! A deeply embarrassing confession! Listener mail! A discussion of Wyngarde's brief career as a recording artist, and a possibly triggering play-through of his 1970 single "Hippie & the Skinhead." Plus an unexpected detour into one of the darker corners the career of Mr. Tom Hanks, America's Reasonable Dad!

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Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode nine — Dance of the Dead

It's Carnival in The Village, and Dance of the Dead — an episode that was nearly scuttled on account of Patrick McGoohan's disdain for it (and refusal to shoot at least part of its climactic scene) — offers a fascinating glimpse into The Prisoner's conflicting aesthetic priorities.

Marry Morris, our latest Number Two, is a memorable malefactor whom my podcastin’ pardner Glen admits he’d like to have as his mom. (He also laments the undisciplined nature of her color-coded-or-not telephone system, and goads me into railing against the cosmic obliviousness of umbrella-users.)

You also get a great heel turn by Aubrey Morris, a haunting performance by Alan White as a doomed former colleague of The Prisoner, an oddly flat showing by Norma West as The Prisoner's observer, and some of the most haunting visual imagery of the entire series.