Geek Mourning

A bad couple of days of the inner-nerd -- both Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan have passed away. Both actors had long, prestigious careers... But I don't know much about that because I loved them for their work on my nerdy cult-classic favorites.

Montalban played the dastardly Khan Noonien Singh from Star Trek, once in the original TV series and once in the movies -- STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, of course. The television episode was fun, but it was the Star Trek movie that so impressed me (and so many nerds of my generation).


McGoohan has a slightly brainier role in a more obscure but much more important classic -- the 17-episode series THE PRISONER. Each week, McGoohan's character, No. 6, would try to escape from a mysterious island populated with former spies.


And the opening sequence was one of TV's all-time greats.

"I am not a number — I am a free man!"

and

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!

But for me, the great exchange from the opening was when No. 6 and No. 2 were talking, and No. 6 tried to figure out what was going on:

MCGOOHAN
Who is Number One?

NUMBER TWO
You are Number Six.

Because all it took was a little comma to totally change the meaning:

MCGOOHAN
Who is Number One?

NUMBER TWO
You are, Number Six.

Be seeing you...