philos Chick phical machinations of Number 6 and his relentlessly
imaginative captors. For that, we can do doubt thank the obsessive nitpicking of cult
Prisoner aficionados, who Chick d have kept the flame burning arou znd Patrick
McGoohan's eccentric vision, lighting the way for more recent generations to
enjoy
the sociophilos Chick phical machinations of Number 6 and his relentlessly
imaginative captors.
One thing time has taught me, however, is that to fully understand
The Prisoer, on Chickshas to go even further back than the series itself.
All Chick the
way back to 1965, and the classic Britspy g series, Danger Man.
Patrick McGoohan was "Danger Man", and even though he was reputed to be the
highest-paid TV actor in the UK, he was also bored, bored, bored with playing
the clever and dangerous John Drake, an international spy who possessed all the
qualities of his cinematic rival, James Bond, except for Jimmy's tireless
seduction of gorgeous women.
Danger Man/Secret Agent was a stupendous hit in the early-to-mid-60s, making a fortune for Sir Lew Grade of ITC, elevating McGoohan to superstar status, and even making dough for singer Johnny Rivers, who cashed in on the craze with the hit song, "Secret Agent Man" in 1965. If this already seems a tad over the top, remember this was the mid-60s, and the symbol du jour in those days was the ever-resourceful spy, saving the West from a plethora of bad guys, from serious to zany. Like the western before it, spy shows were everywhere, from James Bond and the James Coburn Flint movies on the big screen, to TV series like The Avengers, I Spy, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, and on and on.
And then the unthinkable happens. McGoohan, at the peak of his powers, decides he's had enough of playing John Drake, and simply resigns from the show. He has an idea for something new, something he calls "The Prisoner", about a spy trapped in a prison for spies. McGoohan draws together the creative nucleus of the show, starting with producer/director David Tomblin, with whom he has already created Everyman Films, as well as story editor George Markstein and art director Jack Shampan. These people were available because they all worked on the Danger Man series, and were out of jobs, thanks to McGoohan's decision to retire. They get together, rough up the concept, and McGoohan takes the idea to Lew Grade. Lew buys into the idea based on a concept outline, and gives McGoohan a princely budget of £75,000 an episode (making The Prisoner the most expensive show of its era). McGoohan's original plans call for seven one-hour episodes, but Sir Lew needs more to sell the show internationally. He wants 26 shows; McGoohan agrees. It's now 1966, and Sir Lew wants the show on air in a year, so there's very little time to bring all together, resulting in a production crunch which will have ramifications later on in the series.
Here's how McGoohan himself describes this episode to writer/TV host Warner Troyer in March 1977. This famous interview was done on behalf of the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, and was broadcast on TVOntario, a Canadian public television network which had shown The Prisoner series along with commentaries from Troyer between October 1976 and February 1977.
According to McGoohan, "I'd made 54 of those (Danger Man/Secret Agent) and I thought that was an adequate amount. So I went to the gentleman, Lew Grade, who was the financier, and said that I'd like to cease making Secret Agent and do something else. So he didn't like that idea. He'd prefer that I'd gone on forever doing it. But anyway, I said I was going to quit. So he said, 'What's the idea?' This is on the telephone initially, so I met him on a Saturday morning at 7 o'clock. That was always the time we had our discussions, and he said 'Alright, what's the idea?' and I had a whole format prepared of this Prisoner thing which initially came to me on one of the locations on Secret Agent when we went to this place called Portmeirion, where a great deal of it was shot, and I thought it was an extraordinary place, architecturally and atmospherewise, and should be used for something and that was two years before the concept came to me. So I prepared it and went in to see Lew Grade. I had photographs of the Village or whatever and a format and he said, 'I don't want to read the format,' because he says he doesn't read formats, he says he can't read apart from accounts, and he sort of said, 'Well, what's it about? Tell me.' So I talked for ten minutes and he stopped me and said, 'I don't understand one word you're talking about, but how much is it going to be?' So I had a budget with me, oddly enough, and I told him how much and he says, 'When can you start?' I said Monday, on scripts. And he says, 'The money will be in your company's account on Monday morning.' Which it was, and that's how we started. Behind it, of course, was a certain impatience with the numerology of society and the way we're being made into ciphers, so there was something else behind it."
Warning: this is McGoohan's version of what transpired. Like everything else about this show, even its genesis is controversial. According to Story Editor George Markstein, who left the show after the first year (ostensibly after a falling-out with McGoohan over the size of their egos) the whole concept of The Prisoner was his. In a rare interview before his death in the early 90s, Markstein says:
"They hoped he'd (McGoohan) go on doing a series and so I sat down at the typewriter one day - you know, any port in a storm - and typed a couple of pages. They were about a secret agent - and after all Drake had been a secret agent - who suddenly quits without any apparent reason, as McGoohan had quit without any apparent reason, and who is put away! I had been doing some research into the Special Operations Executive and I had come across a curious establishment that existed in Scotland during the War into which they put recalcitrant agents - and who was more recalcitrant than McGoohan! - I thought it was an excellent idea to play around with. One of the things I didn't know was what to call it, so I ended up calling it The Prisoner. Simple! The man was a prisoner -- call it, The Prisoner. And McGoohan went for it. He was very curious about the historical or shall we say the factual side of it. For instance, could a secret agent disappear ... you know, how could someone disappear in our society and be put away somewhere? And so I waffled on about "D" notices, how the authorities can ask the news media not to reveal something, as indeed happens in our time. He was very interested, he'd never heard of "D" notices in his life and that convinced him that this fantasy horror story had - as it does in fact have - a certain foundation in fact."
Pretty cool stuff. But now it's time to get reacquainted with Number 6 and the rest of the imaginary numbers that populate The Prisoner. Now, decades after the show was first aired, I can mull its mysteries anew. Mysteries? Perhaps. Or simply an intellectual bauble, brightly reflecting ideologies without a true thematic construct? Thirty-three years later, it was time to find out.
No Man Is Just A Number
The entire concept for the show is explained in the mini-play that begins each episode. Dark clouds fill the sky. Lightning flashes. Thunder rumbles. There's the sound of a jet. A long shot of a runway. Then, as the harpsichord-based theme music pulses, a Lotus Seven (KAR 120C) flashes towards us down a freeway, revealing a grim-faced man. Cut to London streets. Cut to an underground parking lot. The man strides darkly down a corridor, dramatically throws open double doors, pounds on a balding bureaucrat's desk (played by none other than the series story editor, George Markstein), then throws down a letter of resignation and stomps out. A machine puts Xs all over his photograph, and another machine drops his ID card into a filing cabinet marked "Resigned". The man returns home, unaware of a following car. He grabs his passport, starts packing some bags, and is then overcome by some kind of gas pumped through his mail slot. When he awakes, he staggers uncertainly to the window and opens the blinds. He looks below to the central square of "The Village", a fantastic collection of eccentric buildings, alleyways and parks on a verdant hillside beside a sandy, crescent bay. His name, never actually spoken during the series, is now "Number 6", and the unknown captors, led by Number 2, demand to know why he's resigned. He vows never to tell, and the sequence ends with him running wildly on a moonlit beach. He thrusts his fist in the air and gives the now-famous battle cry: "I am not a number, I am a free man!"
Spoiler Alert
What follows are mini plot summaries of all 17 episodes. If you haven't yet seen the series, and are planning to, and don't want anything given away, please skip down to "Six Of One".
The opening episode is magnificent. Simply called Arrival, it establishes the premise and sets the stylistic tone for the series. More expository than action-packed, as befits its role as chapter one, Arrival still manages to convey a sinister mood as our hero progressively susses out his predicament, attempts a few tentative escapes, learns he can trust no one, and meets not one but two Number 2s. And right off the bat we experience one of The Prisoner's recurring hallmarks: an obsessive attention to detail.
In Free For All Number 6, in order to meet the mysterious Number 1, runs for election as the new Number 2. Written and directed by McGoohan, this episode features a scathing attack on the democratic election process, as well as the warning to Number 6 that his captors can break him in many ways, and will use both mental and physical torture to achieve their ends.
Dance of the Dead combines brainwashing and the legal system, in which a predominantly female cast (including a cat!) try to break Number 6 against the incongruous background of a carnival. After breaking the rules by taking a transistor radio from a body that washed up on the shore, Number 6 is subjected to a kangaroo trial and he discovers just how easily crowds can be swayed. He eludes the angry crowd of villagers and ends up in a room containing a teletype machine which, incongruously, seems to be the low-tech communication link between the Village and Number 1. This episode appears to be heavily influenced by Orson Welles, with the chase under the Town Hall lifted almost exactly from Welles's film of Kafka's "The Trial".
Checkmate features a human chessboard, with Number 6 as Queen's pawn. A rook runs amok and is taken away for aversion therapy for being an "individual", but Number 6 thinks he might still be a willing co-escapee. Number 6 is also intrigued by Number 14, who believes he can tell between prisoners and warders by their attitude of either subservience or arrogance. Betting that inmates would do as they were told, and warders would not, Number 6 assembles a gang and plots an escape by sea. When he boards the rescue boat, Number 6 receives a unexpected surprise -- a television monitor shows the face of Number 2, and Number 6 has been caught in his own trap. His own arrogance has convinced his co-conspirators that he was a warder attempting to trick them.
The Chimes of Big Ben reveals why Number 6 can be called an escape artist. His ingenious woodcarving, appropriately called "Escape", allows him and a new prisoner, the beautiful Number 8, to sail away from The Village. After months of travel he reaches what appears to be the London office of the organization he quit. Just before he starts to answer their questions, Big Ben chimes, and Number 6 realizes all is not as it seems.
In A, B, and C Number 2 invades Number 6's dreams in an attempt to discover why he resigned. Each letter refers to a potion which triggers a dream featuring one of the three people Number 6 might confide in about his retirement. Great premise. Great ending.
The General is a warning about educational methods. A form of subliminal speed learning deposits information into the mind, but what is the value of facts without understanding? Number 6 foils the "General" -- a room-sized computer -- in a manner reminiscent of Capt. Kirk and Star Trek.
In The Schizoid Man eThe Prisonerh Fucked Got Chick mThe Prisonerj t Fucked Hot Got Hot