handsome man
dressed in black drives a Lotus sports car into underground parking. He’s
next seen striving forcefully down a dim hallway until he flings open an
office door. Pacing angrily back and forth, he hurls down a letter of
resignation and bangs the desktop for emphasis. He drives
back to his flat, where he begins packing. Meanwhile, a black hearse pulls up out
front. An undertaker emerges and approaches the door. Gas fills the man's
apartment. When he awakens, he is in some place called the Village, filled
with cheerful people seemingly incapable of providing a straight answer to
his questions. “Where is this place? Who runs it? How do you leave?”
The man is invited to breakfast with someone known as Number 2. He asks
who might be Number 1. That would be telling. He is Number 6. What do
they want? Information about why he resigned. If he tells them what they
want to know, life could be very comfortable for him in the Village. The man who refuses to be called a
number--the Prisoner--tells his captors:
“I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be
pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my
own. ... You won’t hold me.” To which Number 2 sardonically replies, “Won’t we?”
Thus begins “The Arrival,” the first of 17 television episodes originally
broadcast in Britain in 1967. Subsequent shows seem to support that Number
2 (a role played by a different actor in each episode) is right--the
Prisoner can be held. Indeed, each program ends with a set of jail bars
closing over the Prisoner’s face. But what they--whoever they are--can’t
do is defeat him. For the Prisoner manages to triumph despite his hopeless situation because
of his unrepentant refusal to sacrifice his ideals and self-identity.
A Kafkaesque SF spy story
What’s remarkable about a television show steeped in the zeitgeist of the
'60s is how well it holds up 34 years later. Indeed, it’s particularly
refreshing in today’s current ethos of moral relativity to encounter a
character with an unbending ethical sense.
Much of the credit must go to series star and creator Patrick McGoohan
who broke a few rules himself in setting artistic standards for television.
In his previous series, Danger Man, McGoohan played urbane spy John
Drake. In fact,
some contend the Prisoner is Drake. (The series was titled Secret Agent in
the U.S., with a Johnny Rivers theme song that presciently included the
refrain "they've given you a number, and taken 'way your name.”)
That repeated viewings are worthwhile is a tribute to the show’s
originality, both visually and thematically. The first boxed set offers a nice combination of the apparent
and the abstruse, offering in addition to “The Arrival” a fairly
straightforward satire of election politics particularly pertinent to the
recent presidential balloting, “Free for All” and “Dance of the Dead,” a
symbolic meditation on physical and spiritual death. The DVD version also
includes an alternate version of “The Chimes of Big Ben,” in which the
famous clock reveals the reality of escape, shown only in its initial U.S.
release.
“The Chimes of Big Ben” official version is in Set 2. Other episodes
are “Checkmate,” in which a human game represents metaphysical
manipulations; “A, B, and C,” an experiment with mind-altering drugs (this
was the '60s, remember); and “The General,” where an insidious process of
computerized indoctrination is undermined by pondering the unanswerable.
Despite its limited run, and without any sequels, spinoffs, or action
figures, The Prisoner enjoys an enthusiastic fan following. They
will welcome its latest incarnation on DVD. While there is also a VHS
version, it lacks the DVDs' trailers and production stills, interactive
Village map and trivia game.
