Thoughts and Observations on The Prisoner
Mar. 30th, 2025 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annavereSo I have finished The Prisoner and it is indeed the granddaddy of all cult TV shows. It is exceptionally weird, and at once extremely 1967 and incredibly ahead of the curve. Patrick McGoohan set out to break the rules of rational television in seventeen episodes, paving the way for all your favorite weird cult sci fi/fantasy shows, and I don't think it's overstating it to say that. Consequently, I would warmly recommend this show to anyone who loves freakish TV for its own sake.
Also, the unusually long title sequence actually forms a pretty awesome clue as to what not to expect.
Number Two: "We want information."
Number Six: "You won't get it."
Further thoughts under a cut.
I would also recommend it to anyone who is especially keen on its fiercely cherished theme of the individual versus the collective, because make no mistake, that theme (represented through the staunchly unbending Number Six) is the beating heart of this show. The Prisoner is indifferent to such pleasant distractions as developing subplots and recurring characters, and therefore has limited fannish appeal (to me, at least, and AO3 stats back me up as over half of Prisoner fics are actually crossovers). There is only one story here, which is the increasing lengths of mind fuckery those controlling the Village will go to in order to break Number Six, and his own determination to remain a free man.
There is only one other truly developed character in this show, and that is The Village itself. It is my favorite character. Filmed on location in the gorgeous Welsh seaside hotel-town of Portmeirion, it is enchanting and unusual. The interior set design reveals a landscape of liminal spaces: Secret passages, hidden rooms, cave systems, and uncanny architecture that extends beyond the circumference of the supposed buildings which house them. There's a stone boat built into the waterfront and levels beneath levels under the town. The main attraction of this show is neither character nor plot, but setting.
Another aspect of the show I love is the riotous use of color. Current monochrome trends aren't even hinted at here. There are lava lamps in every sconce, and I don't care how dated that is. Villagers dress in bright stripes and blocks. For ten minutes my mind rebelled from this harlequinade, but it soon became part of the charm. Where color is absent, shape remains integral, such as the white balloon menacing the population (and its inverted image in Number Two's spherical black chair which also rises from the depths). Everything is a mixture of retro-futurism, Wonderland and spy chic.
Although holding to a rigidly repetitive structure in which the Prisoner tries and fails to escape, the show actually does an excellent job of varying the formula. Once Number Six exhausts his options for conventional escape, he switches tactics and tries to simply exist as the spoke in the wheel, a role at which he excels.
The episodes also apply liberal doses of mind screw which (impressively, considering the whole premise is predicated on failure as the only option) rarely become predictable. This show is ready and willing to try almost anything, including a dream episode, an evil twin episode, bodyswap episode and grimdark western AU (if this wasn't an influence on the "we'll try anything once" Buffyverse writers, I will be disappointed). McGoohan even invented his own sport involving trampoline wrestling - which in no way figures into the plot of any episode, but nevertheless shows up twice, and looks ridiculous.
I say they try almost anything. There is absolutely no romance on this show, unless it is implied. Patrick McGoohan was a staunch Catholic who refused to carry on with his costars. There's what amounts to a production gag snuck into the bodyswap episode where they finally get around McGoohan's unwillingness to cooperate with such scenes. No McGoohan, no problem. Apart from that, this is possibly the most sexless genre show I have ever seen. Not a criticism, just an observation of tone and priority.
I was a bit worried when the first episode showed female characters purely as pawns or sexy bait, but there's a new Number Two in almost every episode and the three women in that position are sharp and effective (or as effective as anyone can be when trying to break Number Six). Women show up as prisoners, decoys and wardens in fairly equal measure, and I found them just as complex and untrustworthy as the men, so that was a nice bonus.
There's also something very satisfying about watching Number Six get a complete character arc (depending on what order you view the episodes in). He begins as a hopeless captive constantly being outmaneuvered, whose escape attempts are clumsy and simplistic. He is treated as an indulged child by his all-seeing captors, who are themselves absolutely certain he will break any day. Then he begins to have some small successes, and to push the limits of their patience as he morphs into a particularly gracious troll, calmly demolishing every small attempt they make to predict his behavior. He grits his teeth through every social engagement, yet another change slowly comes over him as he gains understanding of his surroundings, and begins to show protective concern for his fellow captives. Number Six is a fairly cold fish all around, with sensible trust issues given his situation, but he does have protective instincts and can sometimes form connections with fellow prisoners, which I would have loved to see develop, but it's not that kind of a show.
Eventually, as he remains defiant, the constant changeover of Number Twos begins to look less like an effort to undercut him (after all, it's hard to fight an unfamiliar opponent) and more like an ironic about-face as he turns out to be the one breaking their minds. He is the anvil shattering every hammer that descends upon him, and this opens up the vista even further as his reputation begins to precede him and he begins to be approached by saboteurs and variant factions for the precise reason that he won't break - however, his trouble with authority figures creates unexpected outcomes even for those trying to leverage that trait. A human warning not to play with fire.
So, for downsides, the biggest one is also what lends the show a greater WTF vibe. McGoohan envisioned a run of seven episodes to tell his story, and (how times change) the executives meddling with his show actually pushed for more episodes, inflating the number to seventeen. By late in the run, not only did the star have to be absent (filming Ice Station Zebra in order to finance the operation) but they were clearly chafing at the Village limitations. On the one hand, this creates wild genre and setting swerves on par with the Buffyverse. On the other hand, it does spoil the purity of the show's themes, and sandwiching all of those extra-weird outings together before the finale increases a sense of viewer fatigue.
There is also the total missed opportunity to craft an ensemble cast. They don't even try, since this would diminish Six's isolation and dilute the Individual vs. Collective theme. I understand the motive, but how much more of a gutpunch would it be if some of the early betrayals came from characters we'd seen Number Six interact with? And how much higher stakes if the Villagers he came to feel protective of were allowed to be recurring? As it stands, only a handful of the controllers are allowed to become familiar faces.
The biggest problem is the lack of a proper episode order. Neither production nor broadcast order are remotely accurate, so I ended up cobbling my running order together from a couple of Reddit lists. It adds a layer of homework to experiencing the show, and makes it slightly harder to recommend than it needs to be (especially since the show is nuts, and most fun to approach without excessive spoilers of the sort you might find on Reddit boards). To be honest, I'm not sure my order was correct, either.
Then there's the infamous ending, and I'll put my spoiler-heavy thoughts on that under another cut.
So this was a proper mindscrew, a complete off-the-wall experience. I don't know what I was predicting, but it sure wasn't that. I thought the sudden fetishization of Number Six by the leaders of the Village was an inspired flipside to already established principles - as collectivist thought creates the cult of the individual to lead them (Stalin, Mao, and so on). It also reveals how incredibly poorly run such experiments in "peak human efficiency" tend to be, and while this undercuts the scariness of the Village, it's also accurate to bumbling bureaucratic incompetence.
While I found the penultimate episode, 'Once Upon a Time,' a chore to sit through, I did like the confusing death of Number Two. He asks for an explanation later (it's that kind of show) and doesn't get one (because it's that kind of show). He appears to die simply from fear, and by unquestioning adherence to following the orders he delights in. He believes in the numbers and once Six learns to leverage that, Six can wrench number two away from its owner and swap designations. Number Two dies because he's Number Six. It's weird but it works.
So Number Six is crowned, might making right. He sits, listens, smiles and keeps his early promise to run "like blazes, first chance I get." He embraces anarchy, after every civilized effort failed. It is the nuclear option, as it were, hence the rocket launch (which might as easily be a supervillain escape plan, so of course we don't get told which it actually is).
The flipside to this alleged triumphant overthrow is how those in charge push Number Six to become a killer all through the western AU 'Living in Harmony,' until they've piled so much misfortune on his head he finally breaks that boundary (though only in the safe realm of fantasy, they say). However, the fantasy subsumes the other players, who return to their roles in reality and promptly fridge themselves (or not; it's that kind of show). Number Six does the same thing, it just takes him a little longer. They succeed in making him a killer. Does he win? Does he lose? Is it both?
Once he's fled, the world he so easily returns to seems to merely be a larger, more sophisticated Village. He has not truly escaped anything, hence the final image of him is the one at the beginning of the show, driving, determined to be free within the confines of existence. The indominability of his spirit, which makes him dance inside his moving cage.
Which, now that I type that out, actually means it doesn't wander as far off from my useful grief metaphor as I first thought.
It's kind of genius. It's also kind of balderdash, a capsule of groovy sixties countercultural overthrow. It's also kind of a "fuck you" to the television world at large. It is anarchic glee, offering no answers to your questions, and only one question of its own: So now what?
It lived up to my expectations. I wanted weird, it gave me weird and I am happy I took the time. It's all available on Youtube, link to the whole series is here: The Prisoner
Also, the unusually long title sequence actually forms a pretty awesome clue as to what not to expect.
Number Two: "We want information."
Number Six: "You won't get it."
Further thoughts under a cut.
I would also recommend it to anyone who is especially keen on its fiercely cherished theme of the individual versus the collective, because make no mistake, that theme (represented through the staunchly unbending Number Six) is the beating heart of this show. The Prisoner is indifferent to such pleasant distractions as developing subplots and recurring characters, and therefore has limited fannish appeal (to me, at least, and AO3 stats back me up as over half of Prisoner fics are actually crossovers). There is only one story here, which is the increasing lengths of mind fuckery those controlling the Village will go to in order to break Number Six, and his own determination to remain a free man.
There is only one other truly developed character in this show, and that is The Village itself. It is my favorite character. Filmed on location in the gorgeous Welsh seaside hotel-town of Portmeirion, it is enchanting and unusual. The interior set design reveals a landscape of liminal spaces: Secret passages, hidden rooms, cave systems, and uncanny architecture that extends beyond the circumference of the supposed buildings which house them. There's a stone boat built into the waterfront and levels beneath levels under the town. The main attraction of this show is neither character nor plot, but setting.
Another aspect of the show I love is the riotous use of color. Current monochrome trends aren't even hinted at here. There are lava lamps in every sconce, and I don't care how dated that is. Villagers dress in bright stripes and blocks. For ten minutes my mind rebelled from this harlequinade, but it soon became part of the charm. Where color is absent, shape remains integral, such as the white balloon menacing the population (and its inverted image in Number Two's spherical black chair which also rises from the depths). Everything is a mixture of retro-futurism, Wonderland and spy chic.
Although holding to a rigidly repetitive structure in which the Prisoner tries and fails to escape, the show actually does an excellent job of varying the formula. Once Number Six exhausts his options for conventional escape, he switches tactics and tries to simply exist as the spoke in the wheel, a role at which he excels.
The episodes also apply liberal doses of mind screw which (impressively, considering the whole premise is predicated on failure as the only option) rarely become predictable. This show is ready and willing to try almost anything, including a dream episode, an evil twin episode, bodyswap episode and grimdark western AU (if this wasn't an influence on the "we'll try anything once" Buffyverse writers, I will be disappointed). McGoohan even invented his own sport involving trampoline wrestling - which in no way figures into the plot of any episode, but nevertheless shows up twice, and looks ridiculous.
I say they try almost anything. There is absolutely no romance on this show, unless it is implied. Patrick McGoohan was a staunch Catholic who refused to carry on with his costars. There's what amounts to a production gag snuck into the bodyswap episode where they finally get around McGoohan's unwillingness to cooperate with such scenes. No McGoohan, no problem. Apart from that, this is possibly the most sexless genre show I have ever seen. Not a criticism, just an observation of tone and priority.
I was a bit worried when the first episode showed female characters purely as pawns or sexy bait, but there's a new Number Two in almost every episode and the three women in that position are sharp and effective (or as effective as anyone can be when trying to break Number Six). Women show up as prisoners, decoys and wardens in fairly equal measure, and I found them just as complex and untrustworthy as the men, so that was a nice bonus.
There's also something very satisfying about watching Number Six get a complete character arc (depending on what order you view the episodes in). He begins as a hopeless captive constantly being outmaneuvered, whose escape attempts are clumsy and simplistic. He is treated as an indulged child by his all-seeing captors, who are themselves absolutely certain he will break any day. Then he begins to have some small successes, and to push the limits of their patience as he morphs into a particularly gracious troll, calmly demolishing every small attempt they make to predict his behavior. He grits his teeth through every social engagement, yet another change slowly comes over him as he gains understanding of his surroundings, and begins to show protective concern for his fellow captives. Number Six is a fairly cold fish all around, with sensible trust issues given his situation, but he does have protective instincts and can sometimes form connections with fellow prisoners, which I would have loved to see develop, but it's not that kind of a show.
Eventually, as he remains defiant, the constant changeover of Number Twos begins to look less like an effort to undercut him (after all, it's hard to fight an unfamiliar opponent) and more like an ironic about-face as he turns out to be the one breaking their minds. He is the anvil shattering every hammer that descends upon him, and this opens up the vista even further as his reputation begins to precede him and he begins to be approached by saboteurs and variant factions for the precise reason that he won't break - however, his trouble with authority figures creates unexpected outcomes even for those trying to leverage that trait. A human warning not to play with fire.
So, for downsides, the biggest one is also what lends the show a greater WTF vibe. McGoohan envisioned a run of seven episodes to tell his story, and (how times change) the executives meddling with his show actually pushed for more episodes, inflating the number to seventeen. By late in the run, not only did the star have to be absent (filming Ice Station Zebra in order to finance the operation) but they were clearly chafing at the Village limitations. On the one hand, this creates wild genre and setting swerves on par with the Buffyverse. On the other hand, it does spoil the purity of the show's themes, and sandwiching all of those extra-weird outings together before the finale increases a sense of viewer fatigue.
There is also the total missed opportunity to craft an ensemble cast. They don't even try, since this would diminish Six's isolation and dilute the Individual vs. Collective theme. I understand the motive, but how much more of a gutpunch would it be if some of the early betrayals came from characters we'd seen Number Six interact with? And how much higher stakes if the Villagers he came to feel protective of were allowed to be recurring? As it stands, only a handful of the controllers are allowed to become familiar faces.
The biggest problem is the lack of a proper episode order. Neither production nor broadcast order are remotely accurate, so I ended up cobbling my running order together from a couple of Reddit lists. It adds a layer of homework to experiencing the show, and makes it slightly harder to recommend than it needs to be (especially since the show is nuts, and most fun to approach without excessive spoilers of the sort you might find on Reddit boards). To be honest, I'm not sure my order was correct, either.
Then there's the infamous ending, and I'll put my spoiler-heavy thoughts on that under another cut.
So this was a proper mindscrew, a complete off-the-wall experience. I don't know what I was predicting, but it sure wasn't that. I thought the sudden fetishization of Number Six by the leaders of the Village was an inspired flipside to already established principles - as collectivist thought creates the cult of the individual to lead them (Stalin, Mao, and so on). It also reveals how incredibly poorly run such experiments in "peak human efficiency" tend to be, and while this undercuts the scariness of the Village, it's also accurate to bumbling bureaucratic incompetence.
While I found the penultimate episode, 'Once Upon a Time,' a chore to sit through, I did like the confusing death of Number Two. He asks for an explanation later (it's that kind of show) and doesn't get one (because it's that kind of show). He appears to die simply from fear, and by unquestioning adherence to following the orders he delights in. He believes in the numbers and once Six learns to leverage that, Six can wrench number two away from its owner and swap designations. Number Two dies because he's Number Six. It's weird but it works.
So Number Six is crowned, might making right. He sits, listens, smiles and keeps his early promise to run "like blazes, first chance I get." He embraces anarchy, after every civilized effort failed. It is the nuclear option, as it were, hence the rocket launch (which might as easily be a supervillain escape plan, so of course we don't get told which it actually is).
The flipside to this alleged triumphant overthrow is how those in charge push Number Six to become a killer all through the western AU 'Living in Harmony,' until they've piled so much misfortune on his head he finally breaks that boundary (though only in the safe realm of fantasy, they say). However, the fantasy subsumes the other players, who return to their roles in reality and promptly fridge themselves (or not; it's that kind of show). Number Six does the same thing, it just takes him a little longer. They succeed in making him a killer. Does he win? Does he lose? Is it both?
Once he's fled, the world he so easily returns to seems to merely be a larger, more sophisticated Village. He has not truly escaped anything, hence the final image of him is the one at the beginning of the show, driving, determined to be free within the confines of existence. The indominability of his spirit, which makes him dance inside his moving cage.
Which, now that I type that out, actually means it doesn't wander as far off from my useful grief metaphor as I first thought.
It's kind of genius. It's also kind of balderdash, a capsule of groovy sixties countercultural overthrow. It's also kind of a "fuck you" to the television world at large. It is anarchic glee, offering no answers to your questions, and only one question of its own: So now what?
It lived up to my expectations. I wanted weird, it gave me weird and I am happy I took the time. It's all available on Youtube, link to the whole series is here: The Prisoner
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Date: 2025-03-31 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-01 01:15 pm (UTC)