A free man? A quick guide to the Prisoner.

I’ve recently rewatched the cult classic series The Prisoner. This will be my third watch of Patrick McGoohan's iconic series. I imagine it may find a new audience with it’s drop to Britbox.

I’m not going to lie, whilst it is great fun to watch, understanding the series is not so easy. But maybe understanding is not required. Maybe you have to take away from it what you see it to mean. Maybe that is the genius of the whole series.

But for those curious or for those who just came out of fall out - and who maybe experiencing fallout, headaches and confusion, I’ve complied a little something to explain some of what this parable of the sixties might have meant.

Patrick McGoohan stars as a British government agent who abruptly resigns without indication and is immediately drugged and sent to a place known only as “the Village”. In the Village, no one is known by name. They are only known by a number, and Patrick McGoohan's number is Six. Throughout the series, the powers-that-be (namely, Number Two) of the Village continually try to find out why number 6 resigned, only to be thwarted time after time by number 6's steadfast refusal to give in.

Many of the interior shots of /The Prisoner/ were filmed at MGM Studios in Borehamwood, England (an amazing place with six large domed studios in a field surrounded by suburbia. I passed there last year and it is straight out of sixties sci-fi) , and the exterior shots were filmed on location at a place called Hotel Portmeirion, located on a bay just southwest of Penrhyndeudraeth in northern Wales. If you get the chance go there. It is incredible, but then I’m biased.

By the time the final episode “Fall Out” was being conceived, the tug-of-war known as Influence had shifted slightly over to the U.S. because of Vietnam. Most people believe the The Prisoner was influenced by the peace movement. Although you may notice that McGoohan's writing mood very different in the final episode, it can still be claimed that all the episodes share one theme in common, and that theme is rebellion.

The series focuses on the relentless attempt to be free from the tie-downs of society. It is the human quality in each of us to live independently, which is why The Prisoner appeals to many as a cult classic. It involves retaining one's own identity in a vast sea of peer pressure. Surely a theme that is more relevant today than it ever has been. We live in a society with over seven billion people, and it becomes increasingly difficult to exist as individuals in a society without other people telling us how to live.

McGoohan attempts to show us that, in a society where we must learn to rebel or conform, we have been conforming much more than we have been rebelling. We have let government ‘watch over us’ (point of reference - George Orwell book 1984) to the point that we have let it control our lives.

We have let other people's actions influence us to the point that we, as individuals, mistakingly conform to other people's ideals, and idolize these people as a result. At some point in you will see that McGoohan's message is to abolish this conformity. Maybe that is why the Prisoner at first glance appears to be such a wildcard. You have to drill down into your own psych to really understand the message.

By the end of the series, we have learned that we cannot rebel against society to the point of destroying it (number 48 for reference). We cannot coerce other people to ‘wear bells on their toes’ simply because it's a ‘rebellious statement.’ Moreover, seven billion people cannot exist in a political state of anarchy, if everyone was to rebel against authority. We will always follow the leader. The point McGoohan is trying to make is that we need to rebel against society, but it should be our own personal way of rebellion. We must not assume that everyone else has the same needs and desires as we do, so we must learn to retain our individualism by ourselves. Thus, rebellion is an inward struggle, not an outward struggle.

To be fair the intro music tells us quite a few things. We see that No 6 is infuriated by something. He hands in his resignation and thumps the table to make his point. Whatever he had seen he wants out and he’s going on the run.

He goes to his apartment and begins packing. But he’s captured by unknown forces. Now these forces could represent the British government, MI5, or maybe society. And society says no! You must be good, you must conform and we will make you.

The village is the model of conformity. It has a nightmarish feel of a British stepford wives. The quintessential English village, with its cricket and its concerts and its chess. Things the British have always loved, but maybe that is the past. Possibly it is suggesting that the future is all around and that future might make us loose the quiet gentility of the past. I’ve always thought that the village in hot fuzz and the motives in that movie are not a million miles away from the message the Prisoner carries. Youth in the sixties, and indeed now, were and have always been moving away from those traditions, but maybe even they as they or we rally against such anachronistic qualities we still want somehow to be a part of them. We find the past attractive. We find conformity and the enforcement of it attractive. We all conform in some sense even as we are affronted by the notion.

No 6 is tempted by all that is pleasant and yet there is a heaving darkness beneath all of it. The pleasant calm is hiding something other - the world here has stopped and runs on a loop that never ends. In order to progress we must fight against the norm, we must make our new world and the only way to do that is not to be the same as those that came before us.

I would at this point mark spoilers, but I actually believe it is impossible to have spoilers for the Prisoner. It is so open to interpretation that nothing I tell you here will make the viewing any less satisfying or indeed easy.

Much of the series is made up of separate stories, in some way number 6 is manipulated to believe what the others or the “they” want him to believe.

Every-time he rails against them, either in trying to escape his captivity or prove that their system is flawed.

Hammer into anvil is a beautiful example of psychological manipulation. Number 2 - the hammer - is determined that he will bang the hammer down. The anvil - number 6 - will be beaten into submission. I won’t tell you exactly what happens but number 6 turns the tables with so neat a flip you will be cheering by the end.

There are drug induced hallucinations, there is a political movement, there are honey traps and many happy returns.

In free for all I feel that number 6 has become part of the thing he hates the most. He is drawn into the game and has to run in the village elections against number 2. He is of course forced into this position but, like the unwilling geek in many an American comedy that has to run for School president, he becomes the thing he hates the most along the way. He becomes involved because he thinks he can make a difference. In the end all it does really is drag him into the thing he is trying to escape from. The reflection of number 2 and number 6 are clear here. Whilst his motive is to meet number 1 maybe; and this is a long held theory, he just did. By winning the election does number 6 become the thing he hates the most. Is he now number 1?

I’m going to just note the girl who was death as a psychedelic mind fuck of the best kind. But it is drawing closer to all that must be said in the end. It is a story read from a book, but does it actually show us number 6’s true fears? Is this his inner workings?

Once upon a time and fallout I consider to be linked. Once upon a time is a deep dive into what makes number 6 tick. Fallout is a superb dichotomy of chaos.

McGoohan implements a unique tactic. Rather than perhaps conceding it is some authoritarian government, which would appeal to the majority of viewers of the time, he claims it is Society /itself/ which is making Prisoners out of people. Such an action would anger viewers because they are an example of Society trying to force what they like on those at the other end of the TV signal.

Part of me has to question if this wasn’t the biggest screw you to a network that didn’t understand the full vision or scope of the Prisoner.

In fact McGoohan wrote the script for Fall Out within 48 hours of the shooting deadline.

Fall Out is enriched with a heavy amount of symbolic devices.

The first airing of “Fall Out” caused mass confusion in England and abroad.

The first sixteen episodes of the series have some sort of pragmatic functionality about them, prompting the show to be treated as a science-fiction series.

It is in my opinion an error to give Fall Out that same treatment. Rejecting Fall Out as a science fiction story is crucial to understanding the theory I'm about to present. At this point, maybe it’s best to only accept the idea that the final episode continues on with the same characters and attempts to wrap up holes left from the first sixteen episodes. Or, if I may indulge, accept Fall Out as a philosophical soapbox for Patrick McGoohan.

Rather than perhaps conceding it is some authoritarian government, which would appeal to the majority of viewers of the time, he claims it is Society itself which is making Prisoners out of people. Such an action would anger viewers because they are an example of Society trying to force what they like on those at the other end of the TV signal.

If we knew who or what “Number One” was, we can probably make sense of the rest of “Fall Out.” So, who's Number One?

It is Society's demand of Number Six. As director and producer, the way in which to reject conformity is to reject the Number Six character as the super-spy society assumes him to be.

As such, we see him blast this portrayal of himself into outer space. This is symbolic of McGoohan rejecting what the mass viewers wanted. The freedom he granted himself was freedom from this typecast.

Because we as a society tried to idolize No.6 McGoohan had to reject this very hypocritical view of the Prisoner. Sure, the show initially tried to portray our governments molding people, but having the TV viewers molding individuals is just as bad. (If Steven Moffat’s reading I’d point him to this) The Prisoner had a new evil to free himself from. At the same time, McGoohan wanted to teach TV viewers a lesson:

build your own kingdom; don't worship others.

I do think that playing all you need is love at full blast over the final battle sequence is a stroke of genius. Possibly a comment on how we see war on our screens but are blissfully ignorant of what it truly is. Or the comment that even though we say we want peace and love and freedom for all, in fact we are battling to make everyone see the same way as ourselves. Our desperation to feel a part of a group, to conform in one way or another.

Of course all of this is one interpretation of what the Prisoner means. You don’t have to conform to my view. And maybe that was the point of making it in the way it was made. It is a parable. Everyone will have their own interpretation of what it means. Some will never try to understand it. Others will agonise over it like it was lyrics to American pie.

Maybe then it is a perfect reflection of society. Chaotic, perfect, dangerous, confusing and ineffable.

One last note. If you watch the Prisoner you will meet the butler and you will meet Rover.

Certainly Rover is why the Prisoner is placed in the sci fi category, and many have agonised for its meaning. What or who it is. I would suggest fear.

But watch the butler. Because for me he, and maybe number 48 (fallout) are the true keys to this puzzle of nearly fifty years. Enjoy it to it’s fullest. We will never see it’s like again.

Germaine Mooney.