The Prisoner: Some Perspectives

This post will spoil the conclusion I am going to reach in my series of posts on Number 6 as a 'plant' in the Village and also the identity of Number 1.

I am absolutely certain that Checkmate can be made to fit into the theory that Number 6 is a plant in the Village, but nonetheless that post is so far refusing to come together. Instead, since as always watching The Prisoner brings all sorts of different things to mind, this post will be a hotch-potch of thoughts about the series while I am writing that post.

- I think viewers, US citizens in particular, can tend to be drawn to the narrative of 'I am not a number, I am a free man' as the core script of the show. I think this is one of the aspects of show which is nearer the surface, and there are other dynamics going on under the surface. In fact far from being the core idea of the show, I think the idea of being a 'free man' is subordinate to ideas like corruption, the state, internationalism, cruelty, morals, and so on. If you assume, as I have for this series of posts, that Number 6 hasn't resigned and is investigating the Village, it helps to bring these different dynamics out. Of course the show itself ultimately destroys the narrative that Number 6 is being imprisoned by the Village with the revelation that he is himself Number 1. So the point of the show is that Number 6 thinks he is a free man, but isn't and is his own warder.

- If Number 6 is a plant, even if self-placed, then he isn't a prisoner in quite the same way as the others; and if investigating the functioning of the Village, then what he is comes far closer to the role of what we would now call a whistle-blower. At least, someone sufficiently concerned to find out some facts and in fact does try to blow the whistle to the suthorities in London in Many Happy Returns, as well as The Chimes of Big Ben.

- The show makes the omnipotence of the Village clear by the way Number 6 is betrayed by the men he turns to in London. However the omnipresence of the Village is also shown by the repeated appearance of that major symbol of the show, the chess board or patterns which look like it, in other places, including in Number 6's own former home in Many Happy Returns.

- It's interesting that the Village authorities don't understand what he is about as a man or in any way. The example that springs to mind is the exchange with Number 2 at the end of Dance of the Dead where Number 6 tells her that they will never win, and she replies 'How very uncomfortable for you, old man.' Attention on this exchange tends to be drawn to the likely violence that will be inflicted on Number 6 by the Village in an attempt to bring him in to line. However I think the real point of this exchange is that Number 2 simply doesn't understand that the violence she can inflict on him is nothing to the 'moral injury' that would be inflicted on him by complying. That is the real point. They can question him until they're blue in the face but won't understand the answers because the real point here is that he is a man of principle. I discovered the phrase 'moral injury' just this week and realised that it describes the consequences of conforming or failing to blow the whistle perfectly.

- Similarly turning the series round on its head and seeing Number 6 as a whistle blower changes the relationship he has with the other inmates of the Village. He tends to talk disparagingly of them as cabbages, but I think the shock for him would be to realise that these people's relationship to him is former colleagues. Dutton is of course a literal colleague, even though he doesn't know anyone else there. But they were all involved in the same line of work and are suffering the moral injury that Number 6 fears: they are complying with the abuses committed against them. The contrast between his continual defiance and their compliance is right at the forefront of the show, but they aren't the real point, it's the nature of the person who complies that's the point. Another shock for Number 6 is perhaps to find, as an independent, moral man, that so many of the secret agents of the world are so easily compromised and passive. Again, he is in the position of the whistle blower, finding out that suddenly nobody else has seen any of the abuses and he's alone.

- One of the most useful things which has come for me from viewing The Prisoner coming from different viewpoints each time (The Village as Markstein's home for restired agents in 2013, allegorically and seeing John Drake as Number 6 in 2014, apartheid in 2016, The Village as an asylum in 2022, episodes paired as films in 2023; all these series of posts are on my original blog linked at the bottom of the page) is that I now think that no single explanation of the show is possible. In fact this comes across clearly in the way McGoohan and Markstein diverged sharply on what was going on, and also the way McGoohan tended to contradict every single understanding in interviews. The show is therefore not intended to have a single explanation but to be open to many different ones. What I would say about this is that what I have found every time I have applied a different understanding to the show is that different explanations apply to different episodes and every possible understanding tends to go off the rails towards the end in the 'filler episodes'.

- I am aware that I tend not to think about the science fiction aspects of the show at all (for example the impossibility of reproducing Number 6's room in a building which it doesn't fit strikes me) and may at some point go through the show from a purely science fiction point of view and see what that does to it.

- Understanding is complicated by the way that in addition to showing the marks of the conflict between geniuses Markstein and McGoohan, it also has the scars of the requirement imposed on McGoohan to produce further episodes. I feel it's typical of him to create the perfect bit of television in his head and then find that the TV people wouldn't make it because it was only seven episodes! Of course this gives us the further opportunity to think about what it would have been like if made as he had intended, while also making it more difficult to understand, because we're going to have to face it that apart from having Alexis Kanner as eye candy in it, Living in Harmony could well be disposed of.

I will of course be returning to the idea of Number 6 as a Plant shortly.

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