Day 4001: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: The Girl Who Was Death

Thursday:



Is this REALLY "The Prisoner"? I'm not sure it's even TELEVISION!

Daddy Richard, however, thinks it's AWESOME.

information

The Prisoner appears in a tale from his life as a secret agent. The eponymous "girl" is impossibly modish in all-white attire and all-white make-up, stringing the Prisoner along through near-fatal escapades while he pursues her father, a mad scientist with a literal Napoleon complex, pastiching in passing "The Avengers", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", "Mission: Impossible", "James Bond", "Sherlock Holmes", Hitchcock and, um, "Danger Man" aka "Secret Agent" making "The Girl Who Was Death" possibly the single most Sixties thing ever!

what's your number, please

Everyone but everyone places "The Girl Who Was Death" as the fifteenth episode, just before the concluding two-parter. So what on Earth has possessed me to persuade Alex to let us put it here?

Well, the reasoning for everyone else placing it fifteenth appears to be "well, everyone else does", and that's not a particularly strong argument. Generally held to be barking mad – and, to be fair, it is – it is felt not to fit with the continuity of the series – which really isn't the case. In fact it fits very nicely with the other two "out of Village" episodes, except that it's vastly superior to either of them. As with the other two, there is a framing device to "allow" the Prisoner to be outside of his usual haunts which concludes with a return to the regular Village and a humiliation for Number 2.

From the Village's point of view, this seems almost tame: merely placing him in an "unguarded" situation and seeing if he will let anything slip. On the other hand,

In a way this is a nice mirror of "Living in Harmony": there it was a story that they were putting into his head; here it's still all in his head, but he's the one telling the story. The revelation that he is the one telling the story this time is what sets this above the other two. He has seen through the Village's latest attempt and this time he's actively fighting back, subverting the story and writing comedic and derogatory caricatures of Number 2 and his assistant into the narrative.

The most telling moment is the cheeky tag, where the Prisoner addresses his captors with a "Good night, children… everywhere."

But the observant will notice that Number 2, frustrated at the failure of this ploy, turns off the monitor.

Meaning that the Prisoner must have turned it back on again. He is beginning to take control of the machinery of the Village…

the new number two

Once again they employ the technique of a fake Number 2 voice for the – thankfully restored to full length after the previous two episodes – title sequence in order to hide the "twist" ending, and thus denying Kenneth Griffith his turn in the spherical chair.

Now this is interesting: Kenneth Griffith was a mate of Patrick McGoohan which is probably why he – like Alexis Kanner who also pops up here, though uncredited – will be back for the, ahem, big conclusion. However, before we get there, there are a couple of weeks' gap in the schedule of "The Prisoner" because production fell behind, so they dropped in the final two episodes – and only colour episodes – of "Danger Man". And the last episode of "Danger Man" also stars Kenneth Griffith.

And in it, a British agent abruptly resigns so John Drake takes his place to find out why, only to have the trail lead him to a sinister abandoned island. Honestly, it's hard to think people noticed the difference. And on top of that "The Girl Who Was Death" was adapted from an unmade "Danger Man" episode too! No, seriously!

Griffith gets a dual role here: within the story-within-a-story he is "Dr Schnipps" the aforementioned mad scientist with a rocket disguised as the Beachy Head lighthouse; while in the "real" world of the Village he is Number 2. As Schnipps, dressed as Napoleon, he is a rather sympathetic, melancholy figure: a villain in the "why capital? am I surrounded by idiots?" mould of Dr Evil, who'll trigger his Moonraker-esque plan and only then think to make sure his papers are saved for posterity. What is clever about his portrayal is that in his brief time as the "real" Number 2, he manages to retain your sympathy; his sharp critique of the latest plan "he wouldn't drop his guard with his own grandmother!" coveys a sharper intelligence but the same sense of "why am I surrounded by idiots" and convinces you that Schnipps was an, admittedly grotesque, genuine parody of this person.

He doesn't get a lot of screen time – the episode is owned by his "daughter" – but he's a lovely little supporting role that adds charm to what could have been… okay lets be fair, is… a ridiculous ending.

One intriguing little moment: as he and his daughter share a "family" moment, he remarks "if only our dear mother could be here". The subtitles clean this up to "your dear mother", but it's clearly delivered to suggest a hint of incest. It might explain why they're both so potty. But how shocking in front of the children!

follow the signs

It's not like they don't show you what's going on: the framing device of a children's picture storybook held in the hands of an invisible narrator. And it's not like it isn't funny. It is in fact full of deliciously black humour throughout. But they never choose to go for the laugh. Instead they "go for the surreal".

The entire episode is filled with bizarre juxtapositions, weird cuts, jump-zooms and other camera tricks and oddly, even grotesquely framed images.

We start as we mean to go on: bafflingly, with a cold open on a cricket field where "the Colonel" is exploded by a substitute cricket ball.

So far so nuts, but the execution is even stranger. The reveal of a high calibre rifle in a kit bag is almost run-of-the-mill in this sort of thing, but the first appearance of the Girl Who, apparently, is Death is quite extraordinary. Her appearance, highly made up – so white she's almost an anti-goth – and dressed for a party, not the cricket field, is quite, quite out of place. And the camera focuses on her parasol and, almost fetishistically, on her feet. There's a moment of "Thunderbirds"-like hand acting as she exchanges the cricket ball. Then there's an excitable three-stage zoom on the colonel as he faces the fatal delivery. And to cap it all, a quite indescribable extreme close-up of the bowler grinning like a maniac into the lens and held for seconds… The entire sequence is an exercise in estranging the audience.

And then the Colonel is dead. Now, unless he's a Time Lord who keeps regenerating, this is not the same "colonel" who was played by Kevin Stoney in "The Chimes of Big Ben", Donald Sinden in "Many Happy Returns", nor Nigel Stock in "Do Not Forsake Me…". Though it would be nice to think that it was, and that this rounds off a kind of character arc.

This colonel, though, was assisted by the always-marvellous Christopher Benjamin as Potter. He's been in this series before – as the psychoanalyst who spikes the Prisoner's tea in "Free For All" – and in "Danger Man" before too. As a character called "Potter". Anyway, Potter makes contact with the Prisoner Secret Agent and directs him to a happening record store, booth 7 (not 6?). Notice the shop window dummy at the start of this scene dressed as the Girl Who Was Death; by the end of the scene she actually is the Girl, suggesting that teleport ability that the Number 2's sometime have, or even spookier magic powers.

At the record store, a voice on a record gives our Secret Agent a "mission" (whether or not he chooses to accept it) to find out what happened to the colonel and trace Dr Schnipps. The record, incidentally, appears capable of answering back. Which is novel.

And "Standard disguise", by the way, appears to mean full-on Victorian whiskers.

We then get a shot for crazy-shot remount of the cold open, except with McGoohan at the crease. Having taken over the colonel's batting position, though, the Secret Agent avoids the sticky wicket and returns the deadly delivery to the boundary, hoping perhaps to bowl the maiden over. Instead he gets an invite to meet again. Let's try the pub…

The gag about having McGoohan drink the entire length of the bar works so much better as a sketch in this story rather than making it the whole raison d'être of "Living in Harmony".

patrick mcgoohan only rides the tunnel of love with mrs mcgoohan

The Secret Agent continues to follow the clues that the Girl leaves for him, first to a Turkish bath and a scene lifted directly from "Thunderball". Then to a boxing ring where for once his skill with fisticuffs does not lay out the opponent flat. Finally to a long and extraordinary sequence at a funfair as she literally takes him for a ride. This location sequence is filmed almost as a silent comedy, a style that the Goodies would use over and over in the Seventies, in part because the music can be used to add to the derangement of the audience without the need for expensive location sound recording and dialogue re-dubbing, and in part because McGoohan blatantly isn't there. They intercut sequences of McGoohan standing in front of a back-projection of the location doing "looking this way and that" shtick, and then cut to footage of a man who clearly isn't McGoohan striding away from the camera after the Girl. And they keep doing it for a good five minutes!

Add to that the magic realism that sees the Girl again exerting that teleportation-like ability to suddenly be back on the ground watching as the log flume or the waltzers carry him away again. And they repeat twice a joke of him approaching a woman dressed all in white only for her not to be the Girl so that on the third time, when it is her, he wrongly backs off. A simple rule of three, and also a very fairy-tale approach, but putting it all together it starts to look deliberate.

Either they genuinely didn't think that the audience would notice or they are trying to do something consciously Brechtian to remind you that this is a story-within-a-story, to make you question what is real.

This reaches its apogee at the end of this sequence where the Girl flees in her car, for the traditional action-spy-drama car chase, pursued using more back-projection, by the Secret Agent – it can hardly be said to be McGoohan; it's almost like they're not even trying any more.

And then, as they chase down country lanes around Borehamwood, she turns to face her pursuer – or the screen on which he is projected anyway – points a finger and… he starts to rotate, in fact the whole image does, turning upside down, rolling round and round. As Alex puts it, it's like she's becoming director of her own story, fighting David Tomblin for control.

After this, the car chase ends with her leading him into a back lot. Rather like "A. B. and C." this is rather knowingly a back lot, making a point of saying "this is a set".

This is also the end of the first act, indicated by a second appearance of the narrator and his storybook. This time the picture is ominously labelled "The Village" and features prominently a bell tower with a green dome. As does the back lot set – she's going to machine-gun him from it later.

It's about as subtle as McGoohan racing up to the screen and shouting "Look at the fourth wall!" in your face. It flaunts its artificiality; it wants you to get that this is an allegory of the Village so that you will think about how the Village itself is artificial.

sometimes a rocket disguised as a lighthouse is just a rocket disguised as a lighthouse

On the down side, this is also what we might call the "Scooby Doo" moment. At first, the Girl speaks to him and her voice seems to come from everywhere. Until he espies a wire leading to a barely-concealed speaker. And there's a noticeable change in the sound treatment of her voice at that point, from omnipresent to public address.

Once he spots the wires, her magic seems to go from that point on.

The second act sees him defeating a deadly assault course, through the shops of the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker, of course, before he finds himself trapped in a garage with a bulldozer in a scene that you would think was pastiching "The A-Team" if it wasn't a decade-and-a-half early.

The second act concludes with her thinking the Secret Agent is dead and departing in, with another nod to the Village, her helicopter.

The third act sees him carried to the villain's secret underground lair™, clinging to the skids of the chopper.

They land in a field (also near Borehamwood unless I miss my guess) where McGoohan, actually on location this time, peers over the "cliff" to see some stock footage of the White Cliffs and the lighthouse.

Yes, it's big and pink and explodes at the climax; I'm rather afraid we've rather moved on from Vagina Dentata (or a bomb in the tunnel of love) to Phallic Symbolism as the script has his male power overwhelm her female treachery. Sigh.

That lighthouse turns out to be not only a massively-overcompensatory "rocket" but also a complex full of Napoleons. Six Napoleons, in fact (not counting Dr Schnipps himself) which is obviously another Sherlock Holmes reference.

Needless to say, by this point the Secret Agent is well on top, easily able to turn their own weapons against them, rigging guns to backfire and stick grenades to explode in their hands and, ultimately the "rocket" to explode on its launch pad.

At which point, the "narrator" closes the storybook and, revealed to be the Prisoner, tells the children to whom he's been reading:

"And that is how I stopped the mad scientist destroying London."

It works as a much more successful framing device than that "Living in Harmony" mainly because they set it up from the beginning, and repeatedly refer to the storybook motif throughout, but also because the whacked-out surrealism of the story as it is told is just so weird, so deliberately artificial that the explanation becomes an "oh, that's what's going on" moment, rather than them trying something out of left field and chickening out in the end.

Her strange powers over the story become his powers as the storyteller; the use of repetition and reiteration within the narrative become symbolic of the oral tradition; and the implausible coincidences and unbelievable mistakes become commentary on the art.

And clearly, this is all pre-figuring "Fall Out": the big spy finish with the rocket being discarded for a reveal that is one part unexpected to two parts insane. Alex takes it as an explicit warning not to expect the series to end with a "traditional" spy story twist / climax, although where "Fall Out" will be… whatever it is, "The Girl Who Was Death" just comes out and says "Spy stories are childish".

It is very blackly funny, but as a spy spoof it doesn't have many "gags". In part this would have to be because "The Avengers", the precursor and great rival to all these ITC serials, had already gone there with witty badinage and knowing commentary. Not until they discover Jason King, the High Lord of Louche, will ITC be in a position to do post-modernism, with a character who deconstructs and debunks the story around himself. What "The Prisoner" is doing here is much more about getting at the "engineering" of the story, because McGoohan is more interested in commenting on the society that watches spy dramas, rather than the incestuous reflection of the drama on its own nature.

Bluntly, he uses "The Girl Who Was Death" to test the spy adventure to destruction.

And if you watch closely, you might just spot the point where he goes right round the twist in the process.

It could be said that this story in three acts reflects the three phases of the conflict between the Prisoner and the Village: the first, psychological; the second, more intrusive and technological; the third where he turns the tables on them.

Or it could just be bonkers, with a side helping of psychedelia turned up to eleven.

who is number one?

Who else can it be? Justine Lord is completely compelling for at least the first thirty minutes of the story, appearing like an apparition in shot after shot. The gag at the funfair is entirely built around her iconic image, her ability to pose like a silent movie star. And at the end I'm sure she Joker-kills Alexis Kanner's photographer with a kiss of her deadly lipstick.

It's a shame that she becomes more mundane in the second half. And subject to a man rather than exercising her power over them. She becomes less visually interesting, too: transforming from an ethereal Mary Quant to an evil Emma Peel – the white leather catsuit may not be an exactly "ordinary" look, but in this genre it means she looks less out of place, less like a thing from an entirely other world. Even so, with her little World War One German helmet and Maxim gun, and the occasional "goodbye, lover" she still manages to hold her own in battle with McGoohan and dressed up in wig and gown as his Josephine she's equally good with Griffith. It's only the last scene back in the Village when she becomes merely Number 11 that lets her down, by giving him all the meat and leaving her to drape herself over the penny-farthing.

She's the last of the really powerful women in the series and together with Mary Morris ("Dance of the Dead") and Georgina Cookson ("Many Happy Returns") she forms the third part of a Village triad the symbols of one sort of female power, the Kindly Ones: Maiden, Mother, Crone. They are the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, who control men's lives with their spinning and measuring and cutting just as the Village seeks to control the warp and weft of the Prisoner's existence. (A point that would be even better if the Girl's given name had been Moira (meaning fate) rather than Sonia (meaning wisdom)).

If anything would convince me that this ought to be the penultimate story (before the two-part finale), it would be the symmetry of this Kindly One with Mary Morris's in "Dance of the Dead" added to Georgina Cookson appearing in the middle of the series, if only the other evidence could be bent to fit the picture.

Of course it's typical of the Village's twisted logic that while Clotho is incarnated as – forgive me Mary – the Crone; and Mrs Butterworth practically asks "Shall I be mother?"; here Atropos is the Maiden: hence the "Girl" who was "Death".

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

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Day 3994: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

Thursday:



Still trying to watch an episode of "The Prisoner", this week my Daddies appear to have stuck in a disc of time-travelling rom-com "Dr Watson and the Amnesia Machine" instead by mistake.

Hang on, why's it named after the theme from "High Noon"? I thought the Western was last week!

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Dr Seltzman, inventor of the mind-swap machine, has disappeared. And only the Prisoner knows where to find him.

The Village's solution? Use the machine to stick his mind in the body of one of their agents ("The Colonel", Nigel Stock) and follow him. What could possibly go wrong?

They guess – rightly as it happens – that if they give him a new face, stick him back in his old home in London, give him back his fiancée – yes, I said fiancée – that he'll go completely out of character and concentrate on finding the missing doctor to get himself swapped back. Rather than, you know, escaping, which is his usual concern.

One question: The Village can now put the mind of the person in bed A into the body of the person in bed B while putting the mind of the person in bed B into the body of the person in bed A. But they don't know how to reverse the procedure. Have they not considered swapping the beds?



The episode starts promisingly with an unexpected pre-title sequence, intriguingly suggesting more than is ultimately delivered.

As a premise, the mind-swap or body-swap is almost as obvious as the "evil doubles" episode that every genre series manages to do at one time or another, and in a way it's just the flip-side of that idea. Doctor Who sticks the Doctor's mind (or possibly his soul) in Freddie Jaeger's body as early as "The Savages", or there are as many Philip K Dick books as you care to throw sticks at.

Here it is deployed because, as almost everyone knows, McGoohan was double booked, and so spent this week filming "Ice Station Zebra" instead of "The Prisoner", so his character here is represented by a selection of Stock footage (I'm sorry, the pun is irresistible).

In a series so bound up in the question of identity this ought to have been a standout episode, indeed it's surprising they hadn't already used the idea.

Unfortunately it is done in the laziest manner possible, breaking the conventions and continuity of "The Prisoner" in so many ways as to suggest the writer was unfamiliar with the series… except that it's Vincent Tilsley who also wrote "The Chimes of Big Ben", one of the most on-the-button episodes there is. According to the imdb trivia: "he gave up writing for television, and became a psychotherapist, when his six-hour drama 'The Death of Adolph Hitler' was cut down to less than 2 hours". I guess writers in the Sixties were just like that.

what's your number, please

Well, this is awkward, because "Do Not Forsake Me" is clearly set just about a year after the Prisoner's abduction. It's a plot point that he attends his fiancée's birthday party. But in trying to convince her of his identity he describes a dress that she was to wear to the party and she replies "but that was a year ago".

For this reason, other list-makers have placed this as episode twelve, thirteen or fourteen on the "one month to an episode" principle. Although the fact that it is almost exactly one year on would surely pin it to twelve.

I assume that the reason for this "one year on" was connected to the suggestion that this was by way of a pilot for "Prisoner 2.0" where the Village now send him on missions as an agent. Quite how that's supposed to be possible what with him being totally opposed to the Village's authorities, philosophies and indeed existence utterly passes me by, but there we are.

But never mind that because as we discovered in "Many Happy Returns" he's been away for more than a year by then already.

Really, this is impossible to reconcile. "Many Happy Returns" makes no sense if he's been allowed out of the Village before. The entire psychological effect hinges on him finally being given a taste of escape and for it then to be proved an impossibility.

Equally, "Do Not Forsake Me" features long stretches with him back with his old employers, but he doesn't once try to get them to act against the Village and they don't seem that interested in knowing where he's been this last year. True, he's mainly trying to convince them he's who he says he is, but surely a trip to Portmeirion would at least support his case that there are these numerologically obsessed baddies who've been messing with him. It has to be that he's already tried that once – in "Many Happy Returns" – only to learn that his own side at least already know of and most likely are in cahoots with the Village.

Of course, the Amnesia Room could be used to cover a multitude of sins. We are shown the Amnesia Room – helpfully labelled "examination room", thank you crystal clear Blu-ray – in a very Chekov's Gun way before the mind swap, and then when he first wakes in London it's certainly open to the interpretation that he's forgotten his entire year in the Village – at least until he catches sight of his new face and has an unconvincing flashback sequence consisting of clips from "Arrival" and "Free For All". After this he seems at least semi-aware that a year has gone astray.

But wiping his memories is a drastic intervention which, along with the Village casually scooping out his marbles and plonking them in someone else's head using an unreliable experimental machine, must mean this is set later than episodes like "The Schizoid Man" or "A. B. and C." where it's important to them – and to Number 2's personal wellbeing – that his mind and memories not be damaged.

Ultimately, however, as we'll see, the continuity of this episode is shot to buggery anyway.

We place this second in the "out of Village" episodes because the Village suffers a bigger setback than in "Living in Harmony" but, like in that story, it's not really the Prisoner's doing.

From next time, we'll start to see him get pro-active.

the new number two

This week we have Clifford Evans playing an avuncular and largely forgettable Number 2. It's not his fault; in fact Number 2's role as antagonist is principally filled by John Wentworth as Sir Charles Portland, a remarkably similar avuncular piece of casting; it could have been used to cleverly suggest an equivalence but the opportunity is sadly wasted. Number 2 is mainly there to Basil Exposition "the Colonel" up to speed on how and why his body is going to be inhabited by the Prisoner for most of this story.

He's even denied the traditional "I am the new Number 2" speech as the title sequence is cut short at the point where the Prisoner reawakens in the Village, instead getting his moment in that badly edited flashback sequence, tacked on to the similar moment from "Arrival" where the Prisoner demands who are you of the first Number 2 (and the film footage very obviously doesn't match, making the insert stick out like a sore thumb).

And he pops up again at the end to be made a fool of by Dr Seltzman.

He is, I'm afraid, probably the least impressive Number 2 of the entire series, lacking even the presence of such "failed" Number 2's as Colin Gordon or David Bauer. More of a comedy stooge than a foe, his only exchange with the Prisoner is when – back in his own body – the Prisoner explains how the wool has been pulled over Number 2's eyes. At which the supposed Village mastermind just gawps stupidly. Rather than, say, calling the control room and having them bring the helicopter back.

Ultimately, he defeats himself. Only the Prisoner's generally passive role in the proceedings leaves us to rank this outside of the greater victories over the Village to come.

patrick mcgoohan only kisses mrs mcgoohan

The most shocking thing about "Do Not Forsake Me" is the romantic subplot. It's shocking because it has a romantic subplot.

McGoohan was infamously staunchly opposed to that sort of thing. His character, whether as John Drake or the Prisoner, was chivalrous but never lecherous. It's been one of the great strengths of the series because it's enabled women to be shown in a variety of roles, some strong, some weak, but never reduced to an appendage as "the hero's girl".

And suddenly, here he has a fiancée. It's utterly preposterous. Never mind that he's utterly failed to make any reference to a fiancée in any other episode – the very idea that he would be marrying the boss's daughter being utterly out of character. He's flirted with Mme Engardine, and gone head-to-head with Mary Morris; pity poor Zena Walker, playing Janet is a horrible, horrible part, but this drab little character wouldn't even arouse his pity.

And she's not helped by vanishing – Dodo-like – half-way through the narrative after one snog and delivering the next plot coupon – a receipt for a vital tray of holiday snaps.

It's unfortunate that we can't pretend that she's really the Colonel's fiancée, but she can't be. Not least because she's come to the Prisoner's house having recognised the Prisoner's car and – staring straight through Nigel Stock – asks if he is here. Her failure to intuit that the man awkwardly trying not to tell her that he is her betrothed dressed up in the wrong body somehow makes her come across as obtuse. To be fair, Stock's performance is nothing like the Prisoner and together they have less chemistry than noble gasses frozen to the surface of an inert Kuiper Belt object, but we the audience know who he's supposed to be and "television logic" says that if she's his soul mate she ought to know too.

And if nothing else why wouldn't the Village at least try pointing a gun at her head and demanding he tell them why he resigned?

follow the signs

The McGuffin of the episode, featuring in the unique pre-title sequence and setting the whole bonkers scheme going, is a roll of film, developed as slides, which Sir Charles Portland, high up in, presumably, British Intelligence (never so blatantly a contradiction in terms) and coincidentally the Prisoner's old boss, believes may contain a coded message.

Ultimately, this proves to be correct as the Prisoner uses a (simple) letter/number substitution key to select the correct four slides and some special lenses conveniently placed about his home (why didn't the Village come across those when clearing out the house for "Mrs Butterworth"?) to read the invisible message written across them.

This really isn't that secure. Sir Charles's assistants complain that with thirty slides there are too many combinations to check, but that shouldn't stop them analysing each slide under various lights and filters and discovering the "invisible" ink after which the combination should be obvious. Unless of course there are random letters on all the slides and only the right four make up a legible message. But that's not what they say. In fact, they say they don't even know if there is a message. Which just shows they're not really trying.

So what's the point of the clue in the slides?

The implication, surely, is that they are a message to the Prisoner from Dr Seltzman, to arrange a meeting. And yet, if you've gone to the trouble to encoding the location for your secret rendezvous, would you then hang around for a year – indeed, set yourself up as the local barber – if your contact failed to turn up? Or would you, rather more reasonably, assume he'd been nobbled and run for your life?

So perhaps it's that Seltzman is telling the Prisoner the location where he has gone into hiding in case… what? The Prisoner should ever find himself in need of a bodyswap? It's not really a very safe way of keeping your safe house safe, if you're going to tell people where it is. Rather more sensible would be to have a forwarding address or the spy classic "dead letter box" where contacts can leave messages without knowing where you are.

Later on, the episode seems to imply that the Prisoner helped Seltzman set himself up in this hidey-hole. Which leaves one even more puzzled over why he needs the slides. Does he not remember? Oh yes, the Village may or may not have erased some or all of his (precious) memories. So he, what, prepared the slides in the event of his getting brain wiped? In which case how does he remember how to decode them?



So on the one hand we have a romantic subplot that has no place in the Prisoner and on the other we have a spy plot so cack-handed that it hinges on the Prisoner hiding Dr Seltzman's hideaway behind a code so ingenious that neither his superiors nor the Village can crack it, but overlooking the possibility that they might just follow him there.

And yet, underneath this, crushed by the awfulness, there is a very Prisoner-esque attack on Descartes.

"I Think Therefore I Am" is a proof of your own existence. It proves it to yourself. It is possible to doubt your own existence but, crucially, you have to be thinking in order to do the doubting.

Where Descartes really struggles is to prove that anyone else exists, and eventually he has to fall back on "god isn't a bastard".

In "Do Not Forsake Me", the character played by Nigel Stock thinks he is the Prisoner. And we get to hear – thanks to McGoohan's literally telephoned-in voiceover – the inner monologue that proves that he's thinking therefore he is.

But can he prove that to anybody else?

Apparently not, because as his old boss Sir Charles says, he could be a fake who only learned what the Prisoner knows by extracting it from the real Prisoner.

In fact it's worse than that. The existence of the Seltzman machine means that he can never prove who he is. Even if he turns up in his own body, Sir Charles can say "ah ha, but you could be an enemy spy who has been body-swapped into our man's body. And if your people broke him and learned everything he knew, then you could know everything he knew."

Ultimately, this is now a world where nobody could ever prove they were who they said they were. And spying ought to break down overnight.

(Though fortunately for the Prisoner, this is also a world where your handwriting is as individual as your fingerprints and therefore a world utterly without forgery…)

Which leads us to the existential question: is Nigel Stock really playing the Prisoner? Or is he still the Colonel with a mixed up print of the Prisoner's memories and whatever else – like a fiancée – that the Village have concocted for him?

In a way, this would make the whole ghastly mess make a lot more sense.

For all Number 2's suggestion that they could use the Seltzman machine to turn returned spies into moles (as though returned spies aren't instantly pensioned off anyway, precisely because their own side can never be sure they've not been turned), a machine that extracts a person's memories would be infinitely more useful to the Village. They claim already to have an "amnesia" machine – which would mean half the old dears stuck in the Village because they "know too much" ought to be allowed out with a mild brain scrub – but how much more useful for them if they could just download all those tasty secrets first and then format the ex-agents brains like a redundant hard drive.

And how very irritating for them if Seltzman's machine doesn't work and insists on copying those annoying personality quirks like resistance and stubbornness across too.

Under those circumstances, what you get is a Colonel who thinks he's the Prisoner, while the real Prisoner remains safely locked up. Then all the funny business with the – obviously fake – fiancée and the slides is all part of the mind games to try and get him to trip some part of those copied memories into giving them what they want. He's not behaving out of character by falling for their obvious ploy because this isn't the Prisoner and we don't know what would be out of character for the Colonel. He is a Village agent.

The "twist" ending would have been the Colonel, overcome by the Prisoner's feelings, letting Setlzman get away, and finding himself in the Village alongside the Prisoner as another "Number 6". After all, he knows too much now too.

who is number one?

It would be nice to say that it's Nigel Stock, since the entire episode hangs on him, to say that he passes himself off as the Prisoner and that we don't miss McGoohan. But he doesn't and we do.

Zena Walker is given very little character to work with as Janet and does very little with it; John Wentworth as her father is really too wet to be a senior spy; and Clifford Evans' Number 2 is a cypher. And a smug prat too.

I'm tempted to give it to a very young Jimmy Bree as Villiers, just because he's actually entertaining and it's funny to see him as a security chief. (See Doctor Who's "The War Games" if you don't already know why!)

But in the end, and it is in the end, it has to be McGoohan again, who has barely more than a single line, and yet the moment he sits up to deliver it he lights up the screen and shows you just why you cannot do this series without him.

(Something ITV will take six hours to prove all over again in the 2009 remake.)

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

.

Day 3987: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Living in Harmony

Thursday:



Daddy's put the wrong disk in the DVD player.

He says that this may LOOK like a Western but really it IS "The Prisoner" after all.

I say it's STILL the wrong disk… I wanted GOLDFINGER!

But apparently we're going to watch THIS…

welcome to harmony

A sheriff rides into town, storms into the Marshal's office and throws down his badge and gun. As he walks away, he is surrounded by toughs who knock him down and carry him off to a small town in the old West, a town called Harmony. D'you see what they did there?

There's no getting away from it: this week, "The Prisoner" goes completely bonkers, substituting an entirely alternative universe version of itself, where McGoohan uses his American accent a lot and punches people also a lot.

Harmony contains all the clichés of the Western: the saloon bar with the whiskey in straight shots and the girl in silks and feathers; the jailhouse; the lynching; the corrupt city official with the black hat; the shootout with the sinister sharp-shooter; even the Mexican bandito!

What it doesn't have is anything particularly interesting to do with all these tropes once it has collected them.

As usual on these occasions, real men can drink prodigious quantities of whiskey without suffering the slighted impairment to the quick draw.

silver dollar saloon: prickly pear beers

We are now into the third phase of "The Prisoner". Previously we have had "Arrival", "Dance of the Dead", "The Chimes of Big Ben" "Checkmate" and "Free For All" as the first phase when he was "new here"; and then, in our revised order, "The Schizoid Man", "Many Happy Returns", "The General" and "A. B. & C." in the second phase.

We now have six more episodes before the final two-parter. Arguably all six see the Prisoner scoring victories over Number 2, but in three of them –"Hammer into Anvil", "It's Your Funeral" and "Change of Mind" – there is a distinctly personal nature to their conflict. Perhaps not coincidentally, these are the most Village-centric episodes. In the other group – "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling", "Living in Harmony" and "The Girl Who Was Death" – we have what could be called the "out of Village" episodes, as all of them see the Prisoner in unfamiliar environments outside of Portmeirion (a jaunt to the continent; a Western town; and what Alex might call Englandland, a hyper-real "Avengers"-type version of the Home Counties).

We think that it is reasonable to infer that the former group belong later in the sequence, because they feature the Prisoner becoming proactive against the Village, reaching the height of his power against Number 2, able to use the machinery of the Village, turning it against and overthrowing Number 2 almost at will. In contrast – although we might make an exception for "The Girl Who Was Death" – the "out of Village" episodes still see a Village that is powerful, using its most blatant mind-control experiments with the Prisoner still on the defensive.

Let us therefore assume that our next episodes are the "out of Village" ones, because increasing drugs and mind-control feels like a logical extension from the events of "A. B. & C." We then have a choice of "Living in Harmony" or "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling". We're going to put "Living in Harmony" first because it seems like the Village contrives its own defeat as much as the Prisoner scores a victory over them compared to "Do Not Forsake Me…" where, even if he cannot escape himself, he can arrange for another inmate to get properly away.

Placed immediately after "A. B & C.", "Living in Harmony" might feel like a bit of a jump. In "A. B & C.", Number 14 described the process as untested and experimental, whereas in "Living in Harmony" the seemingly much more elaborate illusion is said by Number 8 to have worked before.

But it seems – from the outcome – that this process is more risky for the Village agents requiring their active participation, with accompanying risk of psychosomatic feedback, compared with the passive observation of "A. B. & C." which suggests a more extreme and therefore later attempt.

Alex suggests the creditable resolution to this conundrum. The process in "A. B & C." involves infiltrating the Prisoner's actual dreams, that is these are his real memories that they are influencing, whereas the events of "Living in Harmony" are an entirely created dreamscape, supported by props and actors. We might infer, therefore, that Number 14's experimental procedure in "A. B. & C." is actually a refinement of the drugs and brain-washing used more routinely here.

Because of the dangers involved, they've held off on this process until now. But once the milk-drinking Number 2 has exposed the Prisoner to the possibility that they can do this, they quickly move to use the technique in its proper guise rather than allow him time to compose a defence.

the Judge

David Bauer will, for me, always remain Mr Morten Slumber, proprietor of "Slumber Inc" crematorium and garden of remembrance in the James Bond film "Diamonds are Forever". When talking to Bond he's gloriously unctuous and totally, deliciously fake (he's almost certainly a member of the diamond smuggling pipeline masquerading as the real Mr Slumber in order to collect the diamonds from Bond's – improvised – method of smuggling them inside a convenient corpse) and later put upon, harassed and somewhat cross to discover the smuggled diamonds are fakes.

There's some of that in each of the two distinct turns he gives in "Living in Harmony".

As the Judge, he is assured and sinister, a powerful understated performance, with the nice touch of him seeming more interested in his games of Patience than his nefarious plots. In a way, he is the most blatant representation of the establishment using his position of power to arbitrarily change the rules on a whim so that he can get what he wants. His kangaroo court where he suddenly puts Kathy on trial in order to blackmail the Prisoner with her fate is case in point.

But then once he's revealed as Number 2, he's a much less impressive figure. He's not a little reminiscent of Colin Gordon's performance in "A. B. & C." possibly suggesting a well-founded fear that he will go the same way. Clearly trying to shift the blame and cover his own arse, he seems less in charge of the scheme, rather more that he has been persuaded to go along with a plan of Number 8's. He genuinely seems ill-prepared for the psychological feedback from the scenario they've been playing out, and shaken by the outcome, though not as disturbed as Number 22 (or, as it turns out, Number 8). But then that might be because his character was the only one to "survive" the climactic fight to the death.

I wish it had been real

"Living in Harmony" was written, directed and produced by David Tomblin, and it might well have been very funny for him to force McGoohan to play the Prisoner as a man who drinks too much and won't do his job… but for the rest of us, this is less entertaining.

It is by turns bafflingly mental, actually quite nasty and for the most part surprisingly boring.

Once you've got past the "it's 'The Prisoner' if the genre was swapped from 'Spy' to 'Western'," high concept – which takes all of two seconds – then not a lot happens, interspersed with a very disturbing lynching and some even-more-disturbing sexualised violence and murder.

In a typical episode of "The Prisoner" – and let's for the moment not dwell on the fact that from here on in there are no "typical" episodes – you would expect the Village to come up with some scheme in an attempt to get the Prisoner to crack. Here the entire scenario is the attempt, which may be why someone forgot that if this was the "The Prisoner as Western" then there ought to be an attempt to crack him within that "episode" too. It's not like you would have an episode in Portmierion that just had him sat around not being a spy, with Number 2 occasionally saying "be a spy!" at him and having him beaten up.

What is particularly odd about this, as Alex pointed out to me, is that this is not the usual modus operandi for the Village. Ever since "Arrival", either as an end in itself or because they've been convinced that they can crack him if only they can get him to answer, the question they've been obsessed with is "why did you resign", until here where suddenly they seem to be wanting him to "un-resign".

If nothing else this is a bit obvious in giving away that they are "our" Village. It's not "why not come and be Sheriff for our side"; it's clearly "come and be our Sheriff again".

On the one hand, this allows them to appeal to his sense of dereliction of duty, not something they've tried before, suggesting that he's "letting the side down" or that he should be doing it "for England" or to defend the people or for his honour.

On the other hand, they actually don't really try that. They ignore his patriotism or his humanism and instead go after him again through his chivalry, falling back on the make-it-about-a-woman kind of blackmail that they really have tried several times. They ought to know by now that he doesn't fall for that sort of thing. Except this time it seems he does. Perhaps it's because Kathy doesn't try to form a relationship with him, but instead has her own personal tragedy – her murdered brother. Having said that, it's not really the "give him love, take it away" that Number 2 sneers about once the scheme is blown. McGoohan doesn't play it remotely romantic. Without that line from Number 2, the script might be suggesting he thinks of himself as a substitute for her murdered brother. But with it, that isn’t strong enough; or is verging on the icky. If anything, it's a paternal care he shows to Kathy, and it's the wrath of a grieving father that pushes him over the edge.

Which brings us to the fact that this is the first time we have seen the Prisoner actively kill someone, and in particular in so crude a way as to shoot them. McGoohan had a particular horror of gunplay, and made a point of his heroes using fisticuffs rather than pistols, a point possibly satirised by the number of times that his character in "Living in Harmony" picks a fist fight with someone.

But to then have him pick up a gun and shoot someone is jarring and deeply unpleasant.

So there's this deep sense of confusion about the symbols of the Village. For example, the episode clearly wants to equate the Prisoner's refusal to wear the Sheriff's star with his usual refusal to wear a "Number 6" badge, but these things aren't equivalent. The star empowers the Sheriff; it enables him to do his job. Wearing the star is about actively doing something unlike the "Number 6" which is about passively accepting society's labels.

It must be possible to read more into this episode, because something got it banned in America.

Ostensibly it was the reference to drug use, but this is fleeting and no more than a McGuffin to allow the story to step outside the usual parameters. It's certainly not a heavy-handed "bad trip" metaphor. And if anything the person who is given the drugs is the one least traumatised by his "trip" to Harmony.

The other suggestion is that this was read as an anti-Vietnam story: the corrupt authority figure and the hero refusing to take up his gun just like those kids in universities… Except that he does take up his gun and the only Kid here is a psychopath. Once again, this isn't about patriotism, it's about small-time bullying.

If it's an attack on anything, it's on the American myth of the West and of the power of the gun. If anything might have persuaded McGoohan to do this script it is this: the best gunman is a madman; the hero doesn't get the girl and the minute he picks up the gun he is bound to get killed; technically the black hat wins, but by shooting the hero he actually loses in the "real" world. Ultimately the guns corrupt and destroy everyone who touches them.

Or maybe it's just a big metatextual sign to say "it's all a story": look, look, it's on a set and they're all actors! In which case, "A. B. & C." did it first and did it better.

At best "Living in Harmony" is a pastiche of other Prisoner episodes (it's certainly not an "allegory" whatever the Wackypedia might think, since it no more "explains" the series than any other episode does; at a pinch you might call it an "analogue" of other episodes).

And, ultimately, the episode bottles it, with the revelation in the last ten minutes that it was all a drug-induced hallucination within the "normal" framework of the "real" Village. It's the equivalent of "it was all a dream", tossing aside the surrealism of the experiment for the crutch of an "explanation". It shows a lack of confidence in the audience and in the strength of the show. Surely, the idea is that "The Prisoner" is such a powerful idea that you can translate it into any genre.

the ace of spades

Well, that would be Alexis Kanner in a special boxout in the titles as the Kid.

Kanner is an unusual actor, appearing in several roles across three episodes of "The Prisoner" but famous for almost nothing else. In a way, even though he's never a Number 2, he's the "face" of the latter half of the series, as his speciality would seem to be "being crazy" and as the series goes rapidly round the bend so it seems apposite that he crops up more and more in differently demented ways.

As with David Bauer as the Judge/Number 2 (or for that matter Valerie French as Kathy/Number 22) Alexis Kanner plays two distinct roles in "Living in Harmony": in Harmony, he plays "The Kid", a mute gunslinger and frighteningly accurate pistol shot, who has formed a dangerous obsession with Kathy the saloon girl; while in the Village he is Number 8, clearly the brains behind the current scheme, and apparently the least affected by the sudden crushing failure. Where Number 2 is visibly shaken, and Number 22 is in tears, Number 8 remains collected enough to essay a post-mortem on their efforts.

With that failure of their scheme, the first appearance is that it's down to Number 2 panicking and shooting the Prisoner dead in the dreamworld, thus breaking the spell. That's certainly the story that Number 8 is selling.

The final shootout is itself precipitated by the murder of Kathy and again the Judge/Number 2 could be said to culpable for this, having incited the unstable Kid to abduct her.

Except of course that analysis hangs on the assumption that the Kid is not an independent actor in this scenario.

The conclusion sees the psycho-drama repeat itself. Number 22 is seemingly drawn back to the backlot where the town of Harmony was staged. She returns to the saloon and curls up on the stairs where, as Kathy, she died earlier. Then, in one of the nastiest moments in the series, Number 8 suddenly appears in the gap between the treads of the stair. Number 22 is terrified and tries to flee only to end up being strangled for real.

As the Kid, he uses the character's silence (playing the Kid as a mute was apparently a choice) to create a childlike innocence – he cries easily and openly – that makes the sexual element of his menacing of Kathy all the more disturbing and wrong.

It's not a "naturalistic" performance, but in a dull episode it is an eye-catching and oddly sympathetic one.

In a way, his short scene as the "normal" Number 8 is more striking, because he plays it as normal, when anyone familiar with the series will be more likely to remember him as a crazy person.

So in spite of him being quite the most dangerous and frightening person in the Village this week, you sympathise because it is clear that he, not the Prisoner, is the one who has broken and gone mad. In the strange and ugly world of "Living in Harmony" it seems apt to pity the victim of his own dangerous experiment.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

.

Day 3980: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: Many Happy Returns

Thursday:



I REALLY like the bit where the MILKMAN breaks into the SECRET BASE in order to bundle the important PRISONER into an aircraft and make off with him!

Oh, no, wait! I've been watching James Bond in "The Living Daylights"!

My Daddies have been watching a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT bonkers spy adventure. It does have a Colonel James in it though…

information

The Prisoner wakes to find, without any explanation, that the Village is utterly deserted, saving only a solitary black cat.

If "A. B. & C." is the archetypal episode of "The Prisoner" then this one is textbook enigmatic.

The opening half hour, with almost no dialogue beyond a grunted name called between gunrunners or an unintelligible gypsy dialect, and so very reminiscent of "Arrival", is carried entirely by McGoohan as he finally escapes from the Village.

He must realise, even as he builds his raft and sails away, that they are manipulating him, and he spends most of the story waiting for the other shoe to drop.

what's your number, please

Well, the title itself suggests an annual anniversary, so are we a year into our sojourn in the Village?

Last time, I discussed how after watching "A. B. & C." I reappraised our viewing order and decided that "Many Happy Returns" should have been the seventh episode rather than the ninth, revising the order to allow for "Mrs Butterworth" to reappear in "A. B. & C.".

The rule of thumb is a month to an episode, so that would suggest that at least six or seven months have passed since "Arrival". But we may have to revise or abandon that.

On the one hand, he meets the new occupant of his old home, a Mrs Butterworth, and tells her that he used to live there "about twelve months ago".

On the other hand, he seems surprised to learn that it's the day before his birthday, as though he didn't realise so much time had passed.

(So was the "twelve months ago" a guess or a "clever lie", an improvised cover story like his claim to be "Smith… Peter Smith" the "nameless" exile? Even if he is making it up, he's trying to make his story consistent with hers so twelve months would at least have to seem plausible to him.)

He also mentions that there were six months left to run on his lease but he's not saying that it's less than six months later and his lease should not have run out, rather he is trying to convince her of his bona fides.

If this were just over six months after "Arrival" it would be a little tight, but not impossible, for the lease on 1 Buckingham Place – of course he lives at Number 1 – to have run out and been snapped up by a new tenant.

But she seems too settled, too confident in her home, to have just moved in. And she seems to have had time to redecorate. We don't get to see the room we are familiar with from the titles and "Arrival", so it's hard to tell, but he seems to be struggling to recognise his way around the study and some of the chintzier porcelain doo-dahs on the shelves don't look very him either.

It seems very odd that she's moved into a new home with her late husband's things, though.

(Subsequent developments, however, will provide an alternative explanation.)



One thing this does scotch is the theory that "The Schizoid Man" and "Many Happy Returns" take place over consecutive February/Marches a year apart.

We say that after this episode the Prisoner gives up trying to escape, so the escape attempt at the end of "The Schizoid Man" means that "The Schizoid Man" has to come first.

But if "Many Happy Returns" is only "about twelve months" after "Arrival" (and not two years), then "The Schizoid Man" would have had to take place within days of his abduction, which is clearly nonsense.

We do, however, have every reason to believe that this episode genuinely ends on 19th March, the Prisoner's birthday – and that of, as you surely know or can guess, Patrick McGoohan too.

Unlike "The Schizoid Man" which is self-contained within the Village where they can make every day 10th February if they want to, here they let him roam about freely – well to a certain value of freely – in London.

Of course, we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that it's all in his head, that they are directly manipulating the Prisoner's senses and experience. Although "A. B. & C." seems to suggest their power to control his dreams is quite limited, as we'll see when we get to "Living in Harmony" this may by no means be the limit of their abilities.

But if they can do that, then they can do any damn thing, so let's accept Descartes's Second Maxim and assume that the rest of the world is real.

In which case there are simply too many variables to control to stop him, say, dashing into a newsagent and checking the front page of The Times.

As Sir Humphrey once said: never conceal anything that someone could easily find out any other way.

Lying to him about the date is an unnecessary risk in such a carefully controlled plan. So they're almost certainly telling the truth, just this once.

He spends, according to his own log, at least eighteen days on the raft, arguably reaching England early on what would have been day nineteen (which he is told is the 18th, the day before his birthday). This would mean he awakes to find the Village deserted on probably the last day of February.

That's less of a problem if we're accepting that "The Schizoid Man" is now the immediately preceding episode. It might even suggest, contrary to everything I've said previously, that if you're willing to believe the events of "The Schizoid Man" can take place in a couple of weeks then one of the 10th Februarys in "The Schizoid Man" might be the real one.

But it's more likely that it's just been 10th February in the Village since Christmas – a timelessness that also explains his surprise at it being the day before his birthday.



Here's another little thought, though.

In describing the Village to his superiors, he tells them about the Village council and says that he could have been elected as it's "democratic". Now, obviously, he's echoing the words of Number 2 from "Dance of the Dead", but it seems slightly odd that he would claim he could have been elected in the light of the events that take place in "Free For All" when he tries to do exactly that.

(Well, not exactly that, since he stands for the "post" of Number 2, not for the Council as such. Nevertheless, one taste of Village "democracy" would surely shake the confidence of even the most stalwart candidate.)

So could "Free For All" actually take place after this? Well, up to a point, yes it could.

If we can't have "Many Happy Returns" as the centre episode, then another turning point episode like "Free For All" would be preferable. The use of potentially-damaging drugs and brainwashing on the Prisoner in "Free For All" would seem like more of a development from "A. B. & C." The Prisoner's escape attempt amounts to seizing control of the control room in the Green Dome, more in line with the "conquest/overthrow" phase of the series than the "escape" episodes. (Although taking control isn't something he tries to do when he finds the Village deserted, suggesting he already knows it's futile.)

But as a bridge between "regular" and "barking mad" episodes, you couldn't ask for a better one; "Free For All" is definitely the one where it all goes nuts.

Except… the reasons for placing "Free For All" in the "early" phase, the fact he's still unfamiliar with the workings of the Village, still hold. And we are told that the elections are annual – something he doesn't seem to doubt, so it cannot have been disproved to him. That fact told us that "Free For All" must take place less than twelve months after "Arrival", which means "Many Happy Returns" must take place later than that.



Wherever you place it in the running order, there is a clear sense of "end of an era" here. The way that "Many Happy Returns" mirrors the events of "Arrival", the fact that "Return" ultimately suggest "Arrival Again", set us thinking that this is if not the conclusion of the series, at least the anti-climax, the dramatic midpoint.

The Prisoner finally escapes, returns to England and to his home. And – fairly major spoilers – the conclusion sees him returned to the Village. They never really let him go.



(And clearly it would have been much funnier if we had watched this one with a year's gap on either side rather than the General).

the new number two

When a keen-eyed observer notes the episode opening with a male voice not listed in the guest cast delivering the "new Number 2" speech, and with no cutaway to the guest star in the famous ball-shaped chair, then they might very well think that something is up.

And they'd be right.

So there is no avoiding the spoiler when I tell you that the episode ends with the "twist" reveal that Mrs Butterworth was Number 2 all the time.

This, of course, is the "alternative" explanation for her swift occupation of his old residence. In the ultimate violation, the Village have taken possession of his home.

As the new resident of his furnished apartment, she appears to be wryly amused by the tramp-like figure the Prisoner presents, but has no difficulty in believing his prior claim on her home and car (well, why would she?). Cleverly, though, she turns her knowledge of his backstory into a trusting and generous nature. She is always completely charming and helpful to him. She clothes him and feed him, even promising to bake him a birthday cake – a promise she actually keeps.

There is only one instant where maybe the façade slips as he seems about to walk out without her help and she panickingly cries out that he can't. It's a disconcerting moment, because you think she might have given herself away. She recovers, but you might expect that she will now move to thwart the Prisoner in some way. But no, instead she becomes more helpful – she even gives him back his car.

And that's it. She apparently plays no further part in the proceedings, allowing him to trot off back to his superiors to try to convince them about the Village. Her place in the story is given prominence by the length of the scenes and that they take place in the studio rather than as filmed inserts, but superficially she is no more important than any of the other characters that he encountered along his journey.

But her performance is so central and memorable that the revelation that she was Number 2 feels absolutely right.

What is interesting, genius even, about her character is that she never stops being motherly. It's brilliant that they play it against every cliché of "Woman is Wickedness!" untrustworthy ladies; she’s not even an ice bitch. But also it's brilliant that it never stops. Even Eric Portman's avuncular Number 2 in "Free For All" sheds his benevolent façade once he's floored the Prisoner with his moonshine. Here, you get the feeling she thinks that what is best for him, that she genuinely believes that breaking him is a birthday gift.

And thus she kills him with kindness.

In a sense, she is the Village incarnate, the ultimate evolution of the "society above the self" model that it represents, to which the Prisoner is the extreme antithesis.

It is the old maxim comparing the dictators, the venal capitalist with the messianic socialist. The evil of the former is less because ultimately his desires will be satiated. The latter believes that they are doing it to you "for your own good". So they will never, ever stop.

In that way, Number 2 is what Tony Blair always wanted to be: a socialist Margret Thatcher. She's even got the hair.

And you get the sense that the Prisoner trusted her. She didn't ask anything of him, appeared to believe him, and fed him with cake. In a way that little betrayal is the biggest blow. Ironically, by making no efforts to question or detain him, she beat him.

follow the signs

"You can never escape… even when we let you."

There is still room for ambiguity.

The Village have the Prisoner's pilot – Brian Worth playing the Group Captain – replaced by their own man – who then ejects him over "Portmeirion" with a cheery "Be Seeing You".

A throwaway line raises eyebrows with the news that the police roadblock he ran into was: "looking for an escaped convict, old man. Nothing to do with you."

The final exchange between Donald Sinden as the Prisoner's old friend the Colonel (surely not the same one as Kevin Stoney's character "Colonel J" in "The Chimes of Big Ben", although he is called "James") and Patrick Cargill as Thorpe, the man who doubts everything about the Prisoner's story, is open to no end of interpretation.

"Who was he?" asks Thorpe.

"An old friend, who will never give up," replies the Colonel.

That could be praise; that could be regret; that could be an assessment of whether this attempt to break him is going to work. If you read it as a eulogy – that the Colonel is not expecting the Prisoner to return – then the Prisoner's friends and allies are complicit: the Village is our Village. But if you read it as recognition that the Prisoner will doggedly stick at this until he's found the place again, then the Colonel could be innocent and the Village might be "their" Village after all.

To muddy the waters further, Thorpe is played by Patrick Cargill and he's another one who's going to be back later working for the Village as a Number 2. (See "Hammer into Anvil"; we'll have to see how the two characters reconcile – if at all – when we get there.)

We see the Village's pilot disguised as a milkman – yes, just like Necros in "The Living Daylights" but without the exploding milk bottles – before he enters the pilots' changing room. If it is our Village, why would he need to be disguised? This would seem to exonerate at least someone on our side.

You might think that it's the Group Captain, but since we don't see him knocked out or dead on the floor he might just exchange clothes with the ringer. If he's in on the plot, why the disguise? Well, it might not be for his benefit, but to get the pilot past Thorpe and/or the Colonel. Why replace him at all, you might ask, but you can counter that with "need to know" about the Village's real location.

Yes, the real location of the Village. Because, as becomes clear, since it's all a Village game we cannot even be completely sure about that. It would be a doddle for the Village pilot to have tampered with the navigation equipment on the plane, and it's clear that they're keeping close watch of the Prisoner's travels by raft too – the timing is too perfect for it to be otherwise; when it looks like he might still be adrift on the important birthday, the gunrunners Gunther and Ernst propitiously turn up to provide him with a motor launch.

(For Doctor Who fans, by the way, Ernst is Jon Laurimore, fabulous as Count Federico in "The Masque of Mandragora", although sadly this time he doesn't get to large it up around Portmeirion, while Gunther is Dennis Chinnery, one of the "nice Nazis" from "Genesis of the Daleks" who get exterminated by, well you can guess. He's also unlucky enough to have been in "The Twin Dilemma" too.)

Given that they can spirit away the entire population of the Village overnight – and their rematerialisation in the closing moments suggests that Number 2's ability to teleport now extends to everyone else in the Village – the ability to take his raft from the Welsh coast and drop it off in the Bay of Biscay while he's asleep is unlikely to be beyond them. Assuming they haven't just built another entire duplicate of Portmeirion somewhere off Morocco.

This ambiguity, about where the Village is, about which side it is on, is it should go without saying, the point. If the Village could be anywhere then the Village is everywhere.

Maybe the most telling point is the music. As the Prisoner finds himself in London, the incidental music takes the usual tantara of the Village's bombastic reveille and mutates it into a swinging London theme. London too, it seems, is the Village.

"You can never escape… even when we let you."

The Wackypedia entry for this episode suggests that "…his taste of freedom was nothing more than a carefully controlled birthday gift".

That's clearly more insane than anyone sent to the Village.

This is the most powerful blow that the Village ever strike against the Prisoner. If there's one thing that isn't ambiguous it is this: this is where they win. There is no escape, there can be no escape.

This is the episode where the Village says: "you can never escape… even when we let you."

And, tellingly, he never tries again.

They do it to him on his birthday.

Tradition and expectation tell us a birthday should be a day of celebration. A happy day.

But how many people actually enjoy their birthdays the way that we are supposed to?

We feel that the universe owes us a special day, but whatever we do the mundane still creeps in to undermine us, and it always seems so much more unfair that it happens on that day, even if it happens on every other too. Nostalgia makes us pine for golden birthdays of childhood, or remember the horrors of birthdays at school – for me, every time, it was the games field in winter, thank you oh ye gods of ill-omen, you really know how to put a kid off! And it's a marker of entropy, the irresistible force of dissolution, as we count off the calendar one more year closer to the dread inevitable.

The whole point of everything the Village does to him is to give him back home, Britain, hope, freedom, self, and all on his own special magical day…

…and then smash his dreams to flinders at the moment of maximum psychological impact.

The tortures from now on will become more bizarre and more cruel. But they'll never do more damage.

"You can never escape… even when we let you."

For some reason, I was sure that the episode would end with all the faces from his journey – Gunther and Ernst, the gypsies, the policemen from the checkout, the substitute pilot – all waiting for him in the Village. That's the obvious thing to do, to show us that he was in their power all along. And yet they don't. This is the point. They do not need to. The Village is so powerful, so all-pervading that wherever you are, they still have you.

Home is the Village. Britain is the Village. Hope is the Village. Freedom is the Village.

In the end, they want him to believe that self is the Village.

The whole of the rest of this series will be an exercise in proving that it is not. That I is greater than 1.

who is number one?

Who else could it be? When you can destroy Patrick McGoohan with a birthday cake and a look and a shimmy of your hips, it must be Georgina Cookson's force of nature that is Number 2.

She is one of the great Number 2s, clearly a believer in Al Capone's old maxim "you can get more with a kind word and 20mgs of sodium pentothal than you can with a kind word alone…", she uses kindness and cake the way Vlad the Impaler used to use sawn-off tree trunks.

She clearly relishes her rôle as Mrs Butterworth, having as much fun pricking her "maid's" pomposity as she does wrapping the Prisoner in knots.

The black cat reminds us of Mary Morris's Number 2. Georgina Cookson is not quite as much fun as Ms Morris's pixie performance in "Day of the Dead", and does not get to dominate the episode as much simply because there's only so much of it that she can be in.

And yet the last scene silently tells us that she has scripted this entire performance, made the Prisoner dance to her tune and when the game was over, once he knows his place, folded him up and put him back in his box.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

.

Day 3973: THE PRISONER 42nd 44th ANNIVERSARY: A. B. & C.

Thursday:



Oh very fluffy dear.

You MAY remember from the DISTANT past that Daddies Alex and Richard were going to watch the sensational Sixties Spy Serial "The Prisoner" all the way through.

That didn't ENTIRELY work out. So they tried again…

And last year's attempt at a revival didn't really come to much, either. Much like ITV's attempt at a revival, really.

But we can never escape!

So we return to the Village once more…

information

Almost certainly the quintessential Prisoner episode, this may even be the first I ever watched, and it captures everything that makes "The Prisoner" iconic, being at times an action-spy drama, a commentary on the tropes of television and a musing on the nature of reality and freedom.

After his failure in "The General", Number 2 is under pressure from his unseen superiors and decides to try a dangerous new technique on the Prisoner. Number 14 has developed a drug that will allow her to induce a highly specific dream state into the subject, and equipment to allow her to watch those dreams on a big screen in three acts as though on commercial television. Only trouble is, more than three doses will be fatal. So they only have three chances.

It is Number 2's belief that the Prisoner will break if only they can get him to admit why he resigned, and Number 2 is convinced that he was selling out. All he needs to know is to whom. So he uses the Village resources to narrow the suspects down to just three, his three chances, whom he labels "A", "B" and "C".

"A" is Peter Bowles in a tightly sprung moustache as an old friend of the Prisoner who infamously – well, it made world news – defected to the "other side" a couple of years ago. His interest is predatory verging on the homoerotic and he'd rather indulge in a little light kidnapping than take no for an answer.

"B" is Annette Carell as an enigmatic foreign agent of the Mata Hari school. In fact, implied of Mata Hari's family. Although they are mildly flirtatious, she and the Prisoner seem to respect one another, at least until Number 2 tries to force the situation along by having Number 14 manipulate "B"'s voice directly.

"C" is a mystery person – this is a bit of a cheat by 2: I guess "A" Peter Bowles, "B" Annette Carell or "C" anyone else in the World! – but the Prisoner's most psychedelic dream yet seemingly unmasks Madame Engadine, the society hostess, as "C", only for her to reveal that she really works for yet another mystery person.

What Number 2 does not realise is that his own heavy-handedness has tipped the Prisoner off, and that by following Number 14 during the day, he has discovered the secret lab and weakened the third and final dose of the drug so that he, rather than 14, is in charge of his final dream. Meaning Number 2 is in for a rather nasty surprise twist.

there's been a slight misunderstanding

Well, we placed "Many Happy Returns" at the end of this four-episode sequence because it is every bit as big a turning point as "Free For All" was, and it seemed right to make it the end of phase two and, as the ninth episode, the dead centre of the series. Except, and this may be a bit of a spoiler for "Many Happy Returns" but Georgina Cookson plays a significant role in that story as "Mrs Butterworth" and blow me if she doesn't turn up here in the "C" dream sequence – significantly, the one most under the Prisoner's control.

Now, as we talked about under "The Schizoid Man", it is the Nineteen Sixties and para-science phenomena are in, but the series never comes out and flat admits to the possibility of telepathy. So it's wildly unlikely that the Prisoner has suddenly developed precognition, prescience or any other paranormal ability to see into the future. Faced with the fact of her appearance, she must be someone he remembers.

It is of course possible that he remembers her from one of Mme. Engadine's parties. We know are full of spy types. Perhaps he spotted her as someone who might reasonably show up working for the Village; perhaps they just happen to recruit her from the same small pool of people that he knows.

Though of course there is the catch that he effectively implicates her as a member of "C's" organisation.

But since he doesn't remember her in "Many Happy Returns" (although we can't rule out the usual brainwashing that the series has started inflicting on him by now, though there's no evidence to support that regarding her) then "A. B. & C." almost certainly ought to come after "Many Happy Returns".

The continuity of Colin Gordon's Number 2 is pretty incontrovertible, which means in fact that "The General" must come immediately before "A. B. & C." and so after "Many Happy Returns" too. In fact, that could be seen to fit: as we will see next time, "Many Happy Returns" is a powerful victory for the Village and – more spoilers – convincingly proves escape in any meaningful sense cannot be achieved by conventional means; and "The General" is the first episode where the Prisoner makes no effort at all to escape and is the first episode where he appears to come out ahead of the Village.

(And when I say "first" here, it is because we distinguish episodes of "The Prisoner" into three clear phases of "just got here", "barking mad" and "the middle one". He tries to escape in all of the "first phase" stories and none – barring "Fall Out", and arguably not even then – of the "late phase" stories. There are only the two "middle phase" stories "A. B. & C." and "The General" that could be the "first" where he doesn't try to escape and, as I've just said, "The General" has to be first of those two.)

Another first, incidentally: this would be the first time since "Arrival" (not counting the reprise in every title sequence) that we have seen the Prisoner outside of the Village (even if the set is just a redress of the Professor's residence from "The General"). And some actual not-stock film footage as Peter Bowles takes him to a nearby Dubious Foreign Embassy for a punch-up.

There's almost a case to be made for saying that "Many Happy Returns" should precede "The Schizoid Man": the Number 2 that appears in "Many Happy Returns" is as powerful and victorious as Mary Morris was back in "Dance of the Dead", whereas Anton Rogers' young technocrat is almost bested by the Prisoner and, as we've argued before, the series can be seen as having a definite through line as power shifts from 2 to 6.

There are however two good reasons to prefer them in the order "The Schizoid Man" then "Many Happy Returns".

The first and stronger reason is that at the end of "The Schizoid Man" the Prisoner tries another escape attempt, but, as I've said, following "Many Happy Returns" he has reason to give up even trying to escape.

The second, weaker, reason is the dates.

We said previously that "The Schizoid Man" starts on 10th February followed by a long enough period for the Village to electroshock the Prisoner into being left-handed and for the bruise on his fingernail to grow out; and then "Many Happy Returns" ends on 19th March after many days on a raft as the Prisoner "escapes" by sea. Now, there might – just about – be time for both of these stories to take place one after the other, and that would be in keeping with "one month to one story" rule-of-thumb for the series. We separated the two, acknowledging that there's really not space for four stories in this time span, but covering ourselves with the justifiable assertion that trusting the date to calendars in the Village is at best unwise. Putting "The Schizoid Man" and "Many Happy Returns" back together avoids the necessity of that fudge, though if you're still not happy with the time available for the two tales, you can still use it.

So, taking account of the "new" evidence of the Prisoner being familiar with someone who looks like Georgina Cookson suggests we should have a revised running order of:

"The Schizoid Man", "Many Happy Returns", "The General" and "A. B. & C.".

We will of course revisit this next time.

the new number two

Colin Gordon returns, drinking more milk that ever and now apparently living in terror of a big red telephone.

That telephone is new, though we'll be seeing more of it, and it's an endlessly fascinating visual icon, its oversized semi-circular shape reminiscent of Rover providing director Pat Jackson with plenty of opportunities to photograph Number 2 through the phone, metaphorically trapping him, or catching him like a fish on a hook. Using the perspective to diminish Number 2 and make the phone – and by implication whoever is on the other end – bigger than him.

We neither see nor hear whoever is on the other end, nor are they named (or numbered). But it's almost impossible to avoid leaping to the conclusion that this, at last, is the hotline to "Number 1".

Oh, and either there are several of them or, like Number 2 himself, it can teleport around the place, as it somehow gets from the Green Dome to the secret lab without Number 2 appearing to bring it with him. In a further demonstration of possibly super-natural powers, the moment that Number 2 realises he's done for, even though it's still the middle of the night, it rings. Because unseen evil bosses always know.

But let's not get distracted from the fact that this is obviously "Part Two" of a two-part story. And for the first time, the series chooses to be about Number 2 rather than the Prisoner.

The episode opens with Number 2 in his control room – as remarked under "the General" it is unusual to see this Number 2 in there – and most of the scenes, in fact all the scenes set at night, are from his point of view rather than that of the literally-unconscious Prisoner, in contrast to the couple of sequences set in the day when we follow the Prisoner about.

His chief henchperson this week is Number 14 – two up from "The General's" Number 12? Or two down? – but his bullying of her seems more desperate than his previous sardonic sadism, more lashing out, or trying to do to her what is being done to him.

Finally, in a cunning reversal, granting Number 2 the power to look into Prisoner's mind actually reduces his status from "omnipotent observer" to impotently shouting at the television. Yes, we've all been there.

follow the signs

Lightning flashes and a storm breaks over the Village on the night of the first experiment, as though nature herself rebels against this "unnatural" act, which again may symbolise this is the first real "violation" of the Prisoner's mind. More prosaically, of course, it brings to mind Dr Frankenstein and "mad scientists" as we are introduced to the otherwise perfectly nice Number 14.

(Actually, with her dispassionate professionalism she reminds me very strongly of Doctor Who's Dr Elizabeth Shaw, particularly in her moments of sarcasm to her overbearing boss such as "you'll have to call him 'D'," on learning of a mysterious fourth person vying for the good the Prisoner has to offer).

Ever so slightly, one has to wonder how much Number 14 "lets slip" in order to drop her boss in it. She doesn't need to turn up at the café flaunting her Tally-Ho with its headline questioning Number 2's competence. And she's, at best, careless to repeat the words she spoke to the Prisoner in the afternoon when putting them into "B's" mouth in the second dream. Did she deliberately allow herself to be followed to the secret lab so that he could discover what was going on and arm himself against the third night's dreams?

And the heady mix of dreams, magic potions and mistaken identities might make us think of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", though there it was Oberon who fooled his Titania, not the other way around.

Dreams also might make us think of Dickens' "Christmas Carol", together with its three act structure, and there is just a hint here of past, present, future in that "A" is past friend, "B" someone he's comfortable just to be with for the present and "C" ends with his future in the Village.

(See also Doctor Who's "The Trial of a Time Lord" for a rather blunter take on this sort of thing.)

But Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, also reminds us of stealing the secrets from the "gods", and that is simultaneously what Number 2 is trying to do here to the Prisoner and what he suspects the Prisoner of having been doing when he resigned. So we have three possible candidates for our "Frankenstein" though, ironically, the reveal that his "secrets" were no more than holiday brochures leaves the Prisoner as the "Victor". (Forgive me, the pun was irresistible.)

In fact, McGoohan is more likely to cast himself as the hero of the flipside of Frankenstein, the anarchist creator god of Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound". See also "Fall Out".

By this point the series is getting pretty unequivocal that this is "our" side's Village. Number 2's appropriately dualist approach is very "them and us"; he believes the Prisoner was going to sell out "us" and go over to "them". All three of the agents, "A", "B" and "C" are working for "the other side". "A" is explicitly a defector (and clearly "studied at Cambridge" to coin a euphemism); "B" is "vaguely foreign" which is the none-too-subtle code in these things; and "C" has "fooled us for years". This may not be immediately clear – it wasn't to me! It's certainly possible to misinterpret Number 2's early remarks as questioning which side the Prisoner is going to defect to. But that makes no sense; there are (at least in 2's mind) only two sides and the Prisoner is already on one of them.

So everything here points to Number 2 believing that the Prisoner and the Village at least nominally are working for the same side.

(We might as well take the path of least resistance and assume that the Prisoner used to work for British or the more vaguely general "Western" Intelligence. Or whoever it is that John Drake was supposed to work for. You can mull over the possibility that he was actually a Russian agent in London and that Number 2 believes he was coming over to the West. But that still means that 2 thinks the Village is a Russian Village and that they were still both on the same side.)

Or they used to be. Number 2 believes that the Prisoner wanted to go over to the other side; the Prisoner believes that the existence of the Village betrays everything he thought his side stood for.

But let's get down to brass tacks: this is the episode that explicitly says that the Village wants to steal the Prisoner's dreams.

A man may be made of memories but his dreams are what give him freedom.

In that sense there is a terrible irony that the Prisoner's dreams – when not tampered with – appear to be of his resignation.

And should you be of the school that takes all of "The Prisoner" to be taking place inside what passes for McGoohan's brain, then the fact that it's actually an endless loop of the title sequence, which itself repeats every week, lends evidence to your cause.

Or even worse, there's an infinite regression, of Prisoners dreaming of Prisoners!

On the other hand, his dreams reveal that the Prisoner will not compromise, even in his imagination.

As I mentioned above, this is the first time we've seen him outside the Village, even if only in drug-induced flashback ("Chimes of Big Ben" was faked and doesn't count). And this may be the only freedom that he'll ever see. But even this he refuses.

In a way, this episode is addressing one of those quintessential Sixties existential questions: can we believe what we think is real or could it all be faked, false sensory impressions fed to a brain in a jar? The modern reader might consider this "The Matrix Question".

A pragmatist might accept that you can never know, and accept the "freedom" offered in the dreamworld as a better escape than none. But the Prisoner is, as has been frequently said, an idealist – in the almost Aristotelian sense. His quest is for Truth with a capital T. For him somewhere there is an "ideal form" of "John Drake", a "Number 1" towards whom he constantly strives even as he rejects him.

But then we're getting into almost Buddhist interpretations of reality: the dream is only a shadow of the greater "Truth" and the World is only a veil of illusion.

In this sense it is obvious that Number 2, well this Number 2 anyway, cannot defeat the Prisoner. Number 2 is compromised because he will compromise, cut corners, take short cuts, in essence because he is pragmatic. Obviously he gets crushed between the two implacable forces of the Prisoner's Truth and Village's Truth.

And finally the one everyone remarks on: the moment in the third dream – where the direction has gone all groovy Sixties angles and the music, after waltzing delicately around being "After the Ball" in the first two dreams, evolves into an altogether more trippy Sixties rock'n'roll theme – when the Prisoner looks into a mirror and seeing it hanging crooked seizes it and as he sets it straight, the scene behind him rotates to the perpendicular too, as he literally seizes control of the world.

I'm sorry, did someone mention a god complex?

who is number one?

Much as I should like to reward the suave Peter Bowles for carrying off that astonishing moustache, I have to give the crown for this to Katherine Kath as the evanescent Mme. Engadine. She appears in all three dreams, making this almost a two-hander between her and McGoohan – or making her the dreamworld reflection of Number 14 as the Prisoner is the mirror of Number 2 – and she's quite the most three-dimensional character present, mocking every spy cliché, teasing the so-chaste-it-hurts McGoohan as a womaniser, but then turning mournfully serious when "revealed" as "C".

By playing the life and soul of the party – blowing kisses and exchanging salüts with guests we never see – Engardine sells us the illusion that these swinging happenings are really happening. And selling the illusion is, of course, central to what this story is about.

In a way, she is a traitor to the Prisoner's dreams and this may be why he uses her similarly in return when he turns the tables. Even though Number 2 is left discredited at the end, this may leave the real Mme. Engadine in an awkward situation. Having said that, the Prisoner is or was a very good spy and may genuinely have unmasked her as "C". And his gentlemanly chivalry has always turned to callous disregard when let down by a woman – just see how he walks away from the false "B".

Her name, incidentally, is repeatedly pronounced as a feminine pun on "En Garde!". Which might be a clue.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

Day 3602: THE PRISONER 42nd 43rd ANNIVERSARY: The General

Wednesday:


A year ago, my Daddies started watching THE seminal 'Sixties spy psychedelia: "The Prisoner". Or, more accurately, a year ago my Daddies missed a week because they were busy… and never looked back.

But you can never REALLY escape from the Village!

So, one year later*…

Coming again to "The Prisoner's" amazing title sequence, with its irresistible pounding Ron Grainer theme – and just six months after the General Election when most nights I was doing that very drive past the Houses of Parliament and into the Abingdon car park – I'm reminded just how perfectly composed it is. Just one example: as the Prisoner pulls up outside his home after resigning, the title card "Starring Patrick McGoohan" appears, and then he rises heroically into shot, perfectly framed, and then he leans back out of the picture and, still perfectly framed, reveals the sinister hearse arriving behind him.

It struck me, on this occasion that, with that sort of attention to detail, the casual-seeming appearance of the series' title over a scene of McGoohan hurriedly packing cannot, in fact, be as random as it seems. And it's not. This is a picture of a man trying to escape; he is a Prisoner, but the title sequence is telling us that he's already a Prisoner and the prison is his life.

information

A special announcement from the General's department presages the arrival of Speed Learn, a programme fronted by "the Professor" promising a three-year degree course in three minutes.

The Prisoner, observed by the sinister-seeming Number 12, is contemptuous and, typically kicking against the Village, refuses to sign up to their aim of 100% enrolment, 100% success, and goes for a walk instead. This leads to him coming across the sight of a man fleeing across the beach, pursued by Villagers. Going down to investigate, it turns out that the fleeing man is the Professor himself. The Professor is recaptured and dragged away, but not before the Prisoner has discovered (and concealed) a tape-recorded message from the man.

Warned off by the guards, and with the curfew falling, the Prisoner returns to his house and, intrigued, watches the Speed Learn broadcast. It appears to consist of no more than thirty seconds of a green light.

After the broadcast, Number 2 pays an unexpected house call. Ostensibly looking for the missing message from the Professor, Number 2 takes the opportunity to ask the Prisoner about the Speed Learn course, and presses him with a series of questions about the course which, to the Prisoner's surprise and horror, he finds himself answering correctly.

Returning to the beach after dark, the Prisoner finds the message gone before encountering Number 12. Number 12 returns the message to him, and reveals that it contains a warning about Speed Learn, and "the General".

The Prisoner determines to discover who "the General" is, and begins by attending the Professor's house, where his wife is conducting a free-form art class. He sketches her in a General's uniform. She is not amused. Slipping away from the class, he explores the house and discovers a collection of busts, before the Professor's wife discovers him and tries to throw him out. Instead, he barges his way into the Professor's bedroom and in a sudden strike attacks the man, only for it to turn out to be a wax bust in the bed. The real Professor, it seems, has been taken away for some therapy.

Back in his own living quarters, the Prisoner finds the lighting has been sabotaged, a ploy by Number 12, it would appear, to arrange a quiet tête-à-tête. Number 12 offers the Prisoner the opportunity to broadcast the Professor's warning in place of the next lecture, and arranges for the Prisoner to come to the Town Hall the next day.

With security passes and an alternative broadcast provided by Number 12, the Prisoner succeeds in reaching the broadcast suite, but is injured in a fight with the projectionist. The blood on his arm alerts Number 2, who aborts the broadcast and has his guards seize the Prisoner.

Coming to in the council chamber, the Prisoner is interrogated by Number 12, but Number 2 knows he'll never break and proposes they ask the General instead. Marching them through the Town Hall to the General's Office, where they find the Professor typing up his latest notes, Number 2 reveals that the General is, in fact, a giant computer.

Created by the Professor, used to program the Speed Learn broadcasts, it is, boasts Number 2, capable of answering any question. Number 2 intends to have the machine unmask the traitor in the Village, but before he can, the Prisoner challenges the assertion that the General can answer any question. Rising to the bait, Number 2 allows the Prisoner to program a question for the computer and has the Professor feed it in. The General, unable to answer the question "why?", explodes, killing the Professor and Number 12 and leaving Number 2 struck dumb.

what's your number, please

I've already explained how episodes of "The Prisoner" appear to fall into three distinct groups or phases: first he tries direct escape attempts and the Village treat him with kid gloves; then he has to hold up under increasingly psychedelic forms of mental attack; finally, he's the old lag, knowing many of the Village's tricks and conscious that escape is an illusion he seeks to bring the whole system down from within. Or more broadly: Resignation, Resistance and Rebellion.

The mind control theme – although never far from the surface in "the Prisoner" – is at its strongest in these middle period episodes: the identity-swapping of "The Schizoid Man" and the dream manipulation of "A, B & C" are of a piece with the implanted learning experienced here. Of course, it's not just learning: when asked the right question, people don't just know what the answer is, they appear compelled to regurgitate it, repeating by rote. It's less question and answer and more trigger and programmed response, post-hypnotic suggestion, and we're into "Manchurian Candidate" territory.

And although he says he's interested only in learning how to get away, the Prisoner's real interest here seems to have moved from escape to active subversion. There's a clear sign of this when Number 2 appears to offer the Prisoner his freedom in return for the Professor's missing message, and the Prisoner turns him down. They've both got bigger fish to fry now. Instead, alerted to a "danger" in the Village – in this case the power to implant thoughts in people's minds – the Prisoner investigates and eventually eliminates it. We'll see more of that sort of thing as we move into the third and final phase.

Under "The Schizoid Man" I discussed how the four episodes that we call the second phase have only really one possible order. The General is first mentioned in that episode, and appears here. Colin Gordon's Number 2 appears as "the new Number 2" here, and appears as "Number 2" in "A, B & C".

And in fact, "The General" was broadcast the week after "The Schizoid Man", although a week earlier than in our scheme, and followed by "Many Happy Returns", "A, B & C" having already been shown as the third episode.

But that order is barking mad (although, you might argue by looking at the series, that could almost be a point in its favour).

A small note on dates. As I mentioned before, only two episodes use dates, and they are "The Schizoid Man", which purports to begin on 10th February followed by days or more likely weeks of aversion therapy.

"Many Happy Returns" claims to end on 19th March after many days on a raft as the Prisoner "escapes" by sea.

In between those two, we have set this episode, "The General", which takes three days – starting on the evening of one day, the following day the Prisoner visits the art class and has his assignation with Number 12, and on the third day infiltrates the Town Hall and blows up the titular machine – and "A, B & C" which also takes place on three successive days (or rather nights).

Now it's just about possible that "The Schizoid Man" takes just three weeks, from 10th of February to 3rd March, followed by a week for the other two, making it 10th March and then a week-and-a-bit on a raft taking him to the 19th… possible, but wildly implausible, and breaking the (entirely unsupported by evidence) rule of thumb that one episode on TV represents one month in the Village.

The most logical explanation is that calendars in the Village are meaningless. They manipulate minds; altering the date is hardly going to tax them.

The alternative is that there is an entire year passes between "The Schizoid Man" and "The General".

But that would be absurd… [MM: tumbleweeds, daddy]

the new number two

This is the first of two (in our sequence, consecutive) appearances by Colin Gordon as the increasingly-twitchy Number 2 with a taste for drinking milk, presumably in an attempt to calm his dyspeptic nerves (it doesn't).

Interestingly, we don't see this Number 2 in the Green Dome: he's running operations from the Council Chamber, as seen in "Free for All", with its huge throne with watchful Illuminati eye, although we do see him popping into Peter Swanwick's observation room for a quick "orange alert!". (And next week, he'll be in and out of the special psychiatric unit instead of sat in the comfy chair too.)

He starts off supremely confident, casually strolling into the Prisoner's home-from-home and confounding him by, get this, asking questions which the Prisoner unhesitatingly answers (as I've already noted, this discomfits the Prisoner himself as much as it does the audience).

His slogan: "The freedom to learn – the liberty to make mistakes. Old-fashioned, Number Six."

His first appearance of nervousness is when he is on the telephone – not the big red special phone, but clearly to someone important – reassuring "someone" that the plan will work flawlessly.

It's not until he spots the Prisoner in the broadcast suite before the Professor's next broadcast that he is shocked from his complacency, but he is roused to anger rather than fear. He's quite smart enough to figure out that Number 12 gave the Prisoner the pass to get in, and vindictive enough to drag everyone over to "the General" to "prove" his suspicions by feeding the machine an obviously loaded question.

He's starting to tip over the edge into ranting Bond-villain as he explains the plot.

"You know what you'll get… a row of cabbages," accuses the Prisoner.

"Indeed," replies Number 2, with an admirable mad-eyed gleam, "knowledgeable cabbages!"

He's proud of turning people into cabbages.

So even now, he's so supremely overconfident in his giant adding machine that he foolishly allows the Prisoner to ask it the obvious solipsism.

Thus this Number 2 has the singular honour of being the first Number 2 to be roundly beaten by the Prisoner. Even Anton Rogers managed to come from behind to make a score draw in "The Schizoid Man", but here, 2 is left with his plans – not to mention his big expensive machine – in flaming ruins.

"Don't underestimate me, Number 6," said Number 2 at the head of the show… before immediately underestimating the Prisoner.

follow the signs

It could hardly be more Nineteen Sixties, with its "wonder technology" crossed with the evils of mind control and, what else, a great big computer behind it all. This being the 'Sixties, almost anything would have been a greater shock. When the Professor is pursued across the beach by the mob, it's hard to know whether they are warders or, in a surge of Beatle-mania, his hordes of adoring fans.

And yet, it's oddly superficial, as hollow as the wax cast of the Professor's head.

There are almost too many symbols, striving for 'Sixties "kooky" weirdness, exemplified by the undertakers costumes with sunglasses worn to the Town Hall, or the novelty ghostly hand that grabs the "security pass" tokens, and of which the director is entirely too fond. Yes, we get it!

The room of busts at the Professor's house is clearly trying to be heavily symbolic of… something. Though I admit I really enjoy McGoohan's triumphant flourish when he thinks he's unmasking the General… and it turns out to be a bust of, ah, Number 1.

This week, the cheeky holiday-camp tones of silky seductress Fenella Fielding are replaced by the accents of an American, with all the 'Sixties coding of crassness and commercialisation that comes with it. To make matters worse, he has the temerity to appear on screen, in the person of a smarmy little man with a nasty 'tache; rather than the implied superiority of an invisible, all-present radio announcer, he is, shudder, a television presenter.

The episode is surely not very subtle with all of its implied criticism of educational technique that favours rote learning over applied thought, but with this… salesman fronting the operation, there's a sense of saying there is something grubby and mean about a process that makes learning a commodity. McGoohan, you can feel sure, would have no truck with Tuition Fees!

Then there's some rather heavy-handed stuff about man's relationship with machines very quickly glossed over in a line about the Professor both loving and hating his creation, no doubt tossed in to try to explain the Professor's confused actions rather than explore the dichotomy.

And equally, the Prisoner's solution couldn't be any more 'Sixties either: on the brink of the information revolution, people can cope with the idea of machines that can "think" but not the way that they will "think". That is to say that they assume that computing machines will be thinking at all, and that they will therefore necessarily do this better and faster than humans (just as the machines that "work" have superseded their human builders). The General blows up because, as a machine, it has no soul and therefore can't cope with a sudden rush of existential ennui. Rather than simply replying: "bad command".

It's almost funny, because Number 2 – of all people – clearly does get the idea that what you get out of the computer depends on what you put in, when he composes a "question" for it: 1. There is a traitor; 2. Number 6 got a pass; 3. Passes come from administration; 4. Number 12 works in administration. You hardly need to be Deep Thought to join the dots, do you.

Number 2 boasts that the General can answer any question "given the basic facts", which is tantamount to saying it can answer any question to which it knows the answer.

But in fact it's the computers very ability of synthesis, this process of feeding in facts from which the machine will draw an inference, that is, I'm sure with deliberate irony, exactly what Speed Learn is taking away from people.


In a way, I suppose, it's handy to get the "machine in charge" trope out of the way here, so we can avoid the possibility that Number 1 is a robot brain.

Instead of the usual escape-of-the-week, this time the Prisoner is given a "mission" that he has to "solve". This makes it the first time that an episode of "the Prisoner" isn't really about the Prisoner.

Or does it?

It's not impossible that the whole affair is one big set-up. We see Number 12 observing the Prisoner before any of the events kick off. We can't know how much of what follows is staged for his benefit.

Who, for example, is the wax head in the Professor's bed supposed to be for? We might assume that it is there to keep Mrs Professor fooled while the Village have him away to the Hospital for some "therapy". Only it turns out that she herself made the fake head. So who are we fooling? The doctors at the bedside must be in on the act; Number 2 has clearly been briefed… we come to the conclusion the only possible person meant for this fraud is… the Prisoner.

We've no way of knowing whether the Professor's warning was genuine or scripted by Number 2. For that matter, we've no way of knowing whether the Prisoner hears the original message or one that Number 12 has switched for it.

Number 12's plan to sabotage the broadcast certainly plays out like it's all a set-up. He is blatantly in a better position to switch the broadcasts himself. If he's using the Prisoner as a catspaw, someone to destroy the experiment and take the blame, then he's really not very good at it, and Number 2 sees though him right away. But if he's a fake, why does Number 2 try to hang him out to dry?

Well, what would have happened if Number 12 hadn't been killed trying to save the Professor from electrocution? That is, what would have happened if Number's 2's ego hadn't allowed the Prisoner to feed the fatal question into the General?

I suggest that Number 2 would have had the "infallible" machine "prove" that Number 12 was a traitor… and therefore prove him as a trustworthy ally for the Prisoner, something we know he's been trying to find a way to determine ever since "Checkmate".

So was that the aim of the scheme? To fake the entire Speed Learn experiment in order to fool the Prisoner into thinking he had an ally?

Unfortunately, he seems to be trying much too hard to be too good to be true until he finally proves himself trustworthy in the usual way of "The Prisoner" by being mildly heroically dead!

I think I'm in danger of reading a more interesting story into the episode than the one that is there.


The observant will notice that Number 2 asks the Prisoner "Who was Bismark's ally?" (to which the answer is "Frederich of Augustenberg") whereas the Prisoner asks the telephone operator "Who was Frederich of Augustenberg?" (and is told he is "Bismark's ally).

It's only a little continuity error, but significant when Number 12 makes the point of asking: "what (not "when") was the Treaty of Adrianople", to which the Prisoner parrots the (wrong) answer: "September 1829".

But then Alex suggests that perhaps it's not an error at all, but a more subtle clue. Because Frederich of Augustenberg was Bismark's ally only for a brief period during which the Prussian Chancellor found him useful. That is, it was useful to promote Frederich's case as heir to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein as it led to the uprising that gave Bismark the excuse to invade and annex the duchies back to Germany. But after that, Bismark quickly removed Frederich from power. So "ally" is a bit of an over-description, and "patsy" might be a better word.

So the answer to the first question – "Who was Bismark's ally?" – is complete; but the answer to the second – "Who was Frederich of Augustenberg? – while technically correct, tells you nothing more than a tiny sliver about Frederich, which is at best misleading.

In other words, this difference points up the limitations of this parrot-learning, even when it isn't 'wrong'.

And it occurs to me that the form of the two questions is interesting: Number 2 poses the question about doing; the Prisoner asks a question about being. Compare the relative stances of Village and Prisoner: "Who was Bismark's ally?"/"Why did you resign?" as opposed to "Who was Frederich of Augustenberg?"/"Who is Number One?"

Of course, I shouldn't have to point out that everyone spends the whole episode discussing the infamously intractable Schleswig-Holstein Question; typically, no one understands it.

who is number one?

Well it's tempting to give it to the old man at the café, merely because he's credited as "Ian Fleming" but he's not that Ian Fleming, so I won't.

A more worthy contender would surely be a (very young) John Castle as brooding Number 12. His sulky glower (those lips! almost a pout!) makes him stand out from the saccharine happiness of the Villagers, and he's never uninteresting to watch. He plays enigmatic very well, and you can never be sure whether he's genuinely on the side of the Prisoner or the Village. We're never given any clue to his motivation for betraying the Village, almost as though he's an embodiment of the Prisoner's unanswerable question "why?".

Why is Number 12 killed at the end? (Or at least, why beyond "it's the end of the episode now" tidying up – if he'd survived, we'd have had to have him and the Prisoner overpower Number 2 and make an escape attempt.)

It doesn't actually make sense whether he's true or false: why try to save the Professor if he's spent the whole episode trying to bring the Speed Learn experiment to an end? Or why does he try to save the Professor if he's really a cold-hearted Village guardian and it's all a set-up to trick the Prisoner into trusting him?

(is he trying to rescue the Professor, too – he knows about the message, so did they secretly collude)

And if it's just simple human compassion that gets him killed (something he's kept well concealed up till now, though maybe that's his motive) then surely that runs against the whole spirit of the episode, that the cold-hearted machine is evil, but having no soul destroys it.

John Castle makes a great guest star, but ultimately it's all a little bit too obvious. Like giving him the Number 12 badge again, he's another double for the Prisoner. He might as well be carrying a placard saying "You can't trust me… or can you? Or can't you? Or can you?"

So actually, I'm going to name Betty McDowall who plays the Professor's wife. She has some rather wonderful moments scattered through her scenes: when she discusses her art group's wacky 'Sixties methods – blatantly nicked by Doctor Who, by the way, for "The Green Death" and the inhabitants of Professor Jones' Nut Hutch – her bubbling new-age enthusiasm is delightfully faked, but on top of that, is her anger when she finds the Prisoner prowling around her home also part of the act?

Like Number 12 – but more subtly – you can never be quite sure just whether she is complicit or compromised.

Ostensibly her motivation is love for her husband, and she does what she does to keep him in line so that the Village won't kill him.

And yet, there are times when it seems she's gone further than that. Her expression, when Number 2 casually suggests that the Prisoner has destroyed her masterpiece (the wax head? or the deception?) is enigmatic.

The final scene of the episode, almost a tableau, is possibly its best. Played in the now-empty courtyard of the Professor's house, it features just a long-shot of the Prisoner attending the Professor's wife. It has an air of epitaph to it, the warrior delivering the dreaded news; the victor honouring the fallen enemy. It's the only time we ever see him going to a woman at the end of an episode – the only time there might be room for an ellipsis. And like the Professor's wife it is enigmatic, ambiguous in its meaning. Does the Prisoner express regret? Forgiveness? Reproach? We can't see their faces and we are left to read our own ending into the story. Subtle and moving.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

*Well, one year and one week, actually, 'cos obviously even though Daddy Richard WATCHED this episode at the right time… and again a year later than the right time, he STILL didn't manage to get his review written for a week!
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