Promted by numerours threads and pictures over the years, I’ve always wondered what this bit of BriTV was all about.
So, can somoene spoil this for me?
Thread title edited to remove icky typos.
Here’s Unca Cecil’s take on the show (not that I agree with him…I personally feel that The Prisoner is one of the coolest things ever put on the teevee…we almost came to blows over the subject at the last Straight Dope Staff Autumnal Equinox Bacchanalia).
Be seeing you.
Can’t help you, mate. But I will agree with Unkie Cecil’s article. I got the first disc of episodes from Netflix, dutifully plodded through them, and cancelled the rest of the discs. Blech.
I am convinced that it is simply not possible to spoil “The Prisoner”. We could spend hours describing it, and yet fail utterly to give you the slightest hint of what it is about.
Who is Number One?
You are Number Six.
I am not a number!
I am a free man!
Spoil it?
Okay here goes…
The plot of the prisoner is simple this, oh, have a piece of candy.
[world fades away]
Good evening Number Six, I am pleased to introduce you to, Number Six.
I am Number Six [they both say]
Indeed, tell me Number Six, what do you know?
Know about what?
Exactly
[Unicycling midget rolls in with a dart gun]
Dear me, what a morning, I can’t believe last night at the fair.
Can you, Number Six?
Where am I?
Why, in the courtyard, where we spent a lovely evening.
Who are you?
I’m Number Fifteen, and if you’ll come over this way, you’ll see RUN RUN RUN FOR YOU LIFE!!!
[she runs away screaming. a giant white balloon catches her and suffocates her beyond the fence.]
Number Eight, what a pleasant morning, I can’t believe last night at the stairs.
I’m Number Six, who are you?
Oh, come now, Number Eight, I’m Number Fifteen, don’t you remember the view from the roof last night?
I’m NUMBER SIX!
Of course Number Eight, RUN RUN RUN FOR YOU LIFE!!!
[You look down and see a bug on leaf.]
Number Six, how delighted to see you this evening. Number Two speaks highly of you!
Yeah, that’s a typical episode or twelve.
Some really made you think. Other’s were just a big “Huh?” fest.
The Simpsons did a parody of the show, which was spot on!
I have to go now Number Six, see you yesterday.
[Your ice cream cone sprays sleeping gas at you.]
Let’s put it this way. Twin Peaks was The Prisoner without the man-eating weather balloon.
The best thing that The Prisoner has going for it is the sheer ambiguity of it. You watch it and you’re 
. You decide to watch it a second time and you’re :dubious: since nothing changed since the first time. You’ll watch it a third time because by now you are caught in the vortex. The third viewing will bring out the :rolleyes: reaction. You’ll think you’ve discovered some cheesey message that isn’t really there. After the fourth time it will be :smack: because you realize that your reaction was right the first time.
It is not possible to spoil this show.
There is not a person alive who understands it.
BytopianDream - Thanks… that was entertaining!
So, basically it sounds like 13 episodes of Dali meets James bond. :rolleyes:
Sounds like it still makes more sense than El Topo but that’s another thread.
Including Patrick McGoohan. It was vaguely a parable about a man being true to himself and refusing to break down and conform, but if you’re looking for a specific answer to it all, there is none.
It’s entertaining and interesting, but ultimately a bit silly. If number six isn’t a number, why doesn’t he just say at one point, “I am not a number; my name is John Drake!”?
Well, let me give it a shot.
Patrick McGoohan was a spy of some sort. One day, in his apt. he gets drugged to unconciousness and wakes up in this eerie village we see in every episode.
He is dubbed Number 6 and is continually “interrogated” about what he knows about something. I don’t think we’re ever let in on what he is supposed to know about or whether even he does or doesn’t. In fact, it’s never clear that he even knows what it is they’re after. We also don’t know where the eerie village is - whether it’s in England or in some far off place, or in an earthsphere. The seasons never change.
Furthermore, he (and we) are never sure whether the other characters in the series (seen and unseen) are his former employers or the opposition.
Each week he matches wits with Number 2, and always prevails, sometimes to the demise of Number 2. We see a new Number 2 for a few more episodes until he too is yanked (ostensibly by Number 1, who we never see.)
Sometimes he almost escapes, but is often immobilized by the water balloon. We’re often not sure whether they allowed this partial escape to find out something or whether he indeed failed in his attempt. His neighbors are either stepfords, actors or people like him who have accepted their fate. They change from episode to episode.
This was the allure of the series. It was always ambiguous and left so much to the imagination.
The last episodes of the series seemed to have fallen into Twin Peaks Syndrome. That is, it seems the creators had no idea where to take things and it got more and more bizarre.
The last episode involves a dancing midget, a train, and other disjointed silliness. But #6 has gotten free. We still don’t know anything we didn’t know at the beginning, excpet that the village appeared to have been in England.
I kind of enjoyed watching The Prisoner. Of course, the only times I’ve seen it were in the midst of a large group-- the whole series over a two day span while in college and two shows a week every week (for a couple of months) in grad school. The conversations afterwards alone were worth the price of the rentals.
Part of the issue with the series IIRC is that it was only supposed to be 7-8 episodes long. Partway through the filming the network was pleased enough that they ordered more shows. So, they were scraping around trying to find plots. Then the network canceled the extra episodes with little warning so McGoohan tried to cram everything in at the end-- kind of like the way Babylon 5’s season 4 went. Some prefer to just watch the 7-8 episodes McGoohan originally intended rather than all the others. And, naturally, those were not shown on the air in the order McGoohan intended. If you take those 7-8 episodes only, in the intended order, it hangs together a bit more.
Not a lot more, though.
Because he already knows, and that’s enough.
I spent a week in Portmeiron, where The Prisoner was filmed. Lovely, bizarre seaside town made from bits and pieces the eccentric designer scrounged from old estates being demolished.
The whole series is number two.
Well, technically they’re trying to find out why he resigned his secret agent gig. All he will tell them is that it was “a matter of conscience.” What’s still unclear is A) why they care so much, and B) why they don’t just ask the guy he gives his ranting resignation to in the opening montage. :dubious:
Of course, the whole question of what they wanted to know and why is just a McGuffin anyway . . . the important thing is that he’s a lone Everyman fighting to protect his principles against constant pressure from Society. More or less.
Actually, one of the coolest things about the series is that he doesn’t always prevail. He never willingly gives in to his captors’ demands, but in the earlier episodes he gets tricked, beaten, and humiliated several times over. Then as the series progresses and Number 6 becomes familiar with their tactics, he gets better and better at deceiving his deceivers, until finally he starts beating them at their own game. In one episode (“Hammer Into Anvil”) he turns the tables on Number 2 and basically reduces him to a paranoid, slobbering idiot.
Like I’ve said before, one of the reasons I actually liked the last episode is because it *doesn’t * provide literal answers, which would inevitably be disappointing and anticlimactic after all the allegory and surrealism of the earlier episodes. It’s only in “Fall Out” that you realize the entire series shouldn’t be taken literally – it’s all a dreamlike allegory, kind of like G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. True, McGoohan probably made most of it up as he went along, but it’s still fascinating to watch and sit around with your friends BS’ing about.
Oh, and even though I love the series, I’ve got to say that **BytopianDream’s ** summary is pretty much the most spot-on (and funniest) description of the show that I’ve ever read. Now RUN RUN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
It’s about not conforming, about being true to yourself and about being you own worst enimy. The only way to ‘spoil’ it is to worry too much about the ocasionally awful special effects and fight scenes. It is James Bond’s first acid trip.
Or as kunilou brilliantly put it “Twin Peaks was The Prisoner without the man-eating weather balloon”
If you’re looking for a single answer, you won’t find it. A lot of people contributed, trying to impose their visions on it, with the result that some episodes are weirdly symbolic and metaphysical, while others are rational stories (given the quirky setting). I tend to prefer the latter. So I really like
Arrival (the first episode)
**Chimes of Big Ben
Hammer Into Anvil
The Girl Who Was Death** and other such straightforward pieces. I’m not very fond of, for instance, the last couple of episodes. And some aspects, like the martuial-arts game played on trampolines, look like the writers were on drugs. Or in a huury to meet a deadline. Or both.
A friend of mine who was a fan of Danger Man/Secret Agent from 'way back (and who had never seen The Prisoner before introduced it to him) came up with an interesting explanation – All of this is taking place in John Drake’s mind. He was asked to do something morally repugnant and against his personal code of ethics, and this is his mind’s way of fighting out of the contradiction. Makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard, and explains the really weird episodes. Call it the Hall 9000 Theory.
(And, yes, I know they’ve said that The Prisoner isn’t Drake. Substitute another name in there if you want. But it’s hard not to think of them as the same. McGoohan loved playing secret agents. Look at his Columbo episodes.)
Ah yes, The Prisoner. Like some of the other posters, really enjoyed the first few eps, got thoroughly lost on the last few. I’ve tried to navigate the closing two-parter several times but simply find it unwatchable.
Basic plot is simple: field operative for a British intelligence organization goes rogue, demands to be released, his unseen masters decide he’s a too much of a liability to let go, so drug him and spirit him off to a secret prison where highly sophisticated psychological tactics are used to break the captives down. The specific information they are looking for is never stated, but as this was the height of the Cold War, it’s not hard to guess that the concern was that Number Six might be preparing to defect, taking his knowledge of the inner workings of his employer with him. I suppose it would have made more sense just to bump him off if that were the case, but that would have made a verey short series indeed.
All that, of course, is just a framework on which to hang various, highly allegorical musings on what constitutes ‘freedom’, the nature of identity, and the frequent inaccuracy of our assumptions about reality. Some of it surely WAS made up as it went along, and some was simply nonsensical tripe. I still loved the thing, however, for it’s audacity, for McGoohan’s mostly superb performances, and for the following classic sets and images:
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The opening (and series closing) shots of a grim McGoohan rocketing over the Scottish moors in a Lotus Seven
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The automated system ‘x’-ing out Six’s ID card, then carrying it down an endless corridor to be dropped into one obsure filing cabinet out of hundreds
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The Village itself, with its gingerbread architecture and air of vaguely sinister cheerfulness
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Rover (the ‘man-eating weather balloon’)
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Number Two’s control room; a vertable museum of '60s modern design
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The closing theme and credits, as the high-wheeler bicycle slowly assembles itself
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The little throwaway that ended each episode, as an image of McGoohan’s head hurtles toward the screen, only to be stopped at the last moment by a set of prison bars crashing shut in front of it.
Certainly interesting, if not necessarily as meaningful (IMO) as some consider it to be.