Nowhere Man
Oct. 26th, 2012 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckro"My name is Thomas Veil, or at least it was. I'm a photographer, I had it all: a wife, Alyson... friends, a career. In one moment it was all taken away, all because of a single photograph. I have it, they want it, and they will do anything to get the negative. I'm keeping this diary as proof that these events are real... I know they are... they have to be..."
One of the best shows on UPN, and I think their highest-rated show before they went all-Blaxploitation. The general concept was The Prisoner crossed with The Fugitive: Thomas Veil is on the run across America, trying to hunt and being hunted by a mysterious organization that has erased his identity, and who are trying to both screw with his head and get his negatives of a photo called “Hidden Agenda”.
It’s not a work of highest art: There are some really stupid episodes; Hertzog et al. write women as caricatures and set-pieces rather than as people (though, admittedly, the men aren’t much better); and Greenwood’s acting is uneven and often overdone (though, to his credit, it was never once phoned in, and he was pretty much every scene of the show). For mindfuck TV, you’re better off going back and watching The Prisoner. But it has a bunch of interesting ideas, questions about identity, and a fluid enough metaplot that I could overlay a gigantic fanwank on top of it.
The show is also an interesting commentary on its time (1995-1996). Despite not having a valid ID or existing in government databases, Veil manages to secure all manner of minimum-wage work and bus/hitchhiking/rental car travel all over the country. It’s a pre-9/11, pre-Homeland Security, pre-internet world. Computers are treated as a mysterious thing used by geeks and governments; cell phones make occasional appearances in the hands of high-ranking conspirators. Many of the plots simply wouldn’t work today, though I’d question their ability to even work back then if Tom wasn’t a 30-something white guy. (If he’d been black, the series would have ended 15 minutes into "The Alpha Spike" when Tom reported a dead white student to the local small-town sheriff.)
Jethrien’s biggest complaint about the series is that Tom doesn’t seem to grow as a character over the first dozen episodes, and his competence level varies wildly. Both problems are likely artifacts of the show’s development cycle: They went from first pitch to shooting the first episode in under a month, and that first dozen episodes are by half a dozen different writers. But the latter is also a good reason to watch The Prisoner instead of this: Number Six was always believably a competent adversary to Number Two and the powers behind The Village. Whether or not Number Six was John Drake (Danger Man/Secret Agent, the actor’s previous role), he was certainly a well-trained and resourceful spy. Tom Veil seems to pull his skill set out of a hat with every new scene.
This does improve as the series goes on, also. The first 12 episodes have a theme of “Tom tracks some element of his previous life or a lead from the pilot and stumbles on a conspiracy,” which only work middlingly. The next six (“the Palmtop arc”) involve Tom actively tracking the conspiracy, and include some of the strongest episodes of the series, because Tom generally spends them being clever and competent—he knows he’s walking into trouble, and is ready for it. Five of the last seven episodes are a series of very involved attempts by the conspiracy to hunt down and break Tom, and then the finale is Tom learning the truth.
Overall: Should you rush to Amazon to try to find used copies of the out-of-print DVD set? Not really. But it’s a fun show, and I had a good time watching and speculating about it. Creator Larry Hertzog notes on the DVDs that they weren’t out to make highest art, they wanted to make decent TV and have fun doing it. I think they succeeded at that.
One of the best shows on UPN, and I think their highest-rated show before they went all-Blaxploitation. The general concept was The Prisoner crossed with The Fugitive: Thomas Veil is on the run across America, trying to hunt and being hunted by a mysterious organization that has erased his identity, and who are trying to both screw with his head and get his negatives of a photo called “Hidden Agenda”.
It’s not a work of highest art: There are some really stupid episodes; Hertzog et al. write women as caricatures and set-pieces rather than as people (though, admittedly, the men aren’t much better); and Greenwood’s acting is uneven and often overdone (though, to his credit, it was never once phoned in, and he was pretty much every scene of the show). For mindfuck TV, you’re better off going back and watching The Prisoner. But it has a bunch of interesting ideas, questions about identity, and a fluid enough metaplot that I could overlay a gigantic fanwank on top of it.
The show is also an interesting commentary on its time (1995-1996). Despite not having a valid ID or existing in government databases, Veil manages to secure all manner of minimum-wage work and bus/hitchhiking/rental car travel all over the country. It’s a pre-9/11, pre-Homeland Security, pre-internet world. Computers are treated as a mysterious thing used by geeks and governments; cell phones make occasional appearances in the hands of high-ranking conspirators. Many of the plots simply wouldn’t work today, though I’d question their ability to even work back then if Tom wasn’t a 30-something white guy. (If he’d been black, the series would have ended 15 minutes into "The Alpha Spike" when Tom reported a dead white student to the local small-town sheriff.)
Jethrien’s biggest complaint about the series is that Tom doesn’t seem to grow as a character over the first dozen episodes, and his competence level varies wildly. Both problems are likely artifacts of the show’s development cycle: They went from first pitch to shooting the first episode in under a month, and that first dozen episodes are by half a dozen different writers. But the latter is also a good reason to watch The Prisoner instead of this: Number Six was always believably a competent adversary to Number Two and the powers behind The Village. Whether or not Number Six was John Drake (Danger Man/Secret Agent, the actor’s previous role), he was certainly a well-trained and resourceful spy. Tom Veil seems to pull his skill set out of a hat with every new scene.
This does improve as the series goes on, also. The first 12 episodes have a theme of “Tom tracks some element of his previous life or a lead from the pilot and stumbles on a conspiracy,” which only work middlingly. The next six (“the Palmtop arc”) involve Tom actively tracking the conspiracy, and include some of the strongest episodes of the series, because Tom generally spends them being clever and competent—he knows he’s walking into trouble, and is ready for it. Five of the last seven episodes are a series of very involved attempts by the conspiracy to hunt down and break Tom, and then the finale is Tom learning the truth.
Overall: Should you rush to Amazon to try to find used copies of the out-of-print DVD set? Not really. But it’s a fun show, and I had a good time watching and speculating about it. Creator Larry Hertzog notes on the DVDs that they weren’t out to make highest art, they wanted to make decent TV and have fun doing it. I think they succeeded at that.
