By Tom Nix

The Prisoner is the greatest 17 hours of television ever produced. In less than what one season of TV would run in today’s market, Patrick McGoohan was able to tell both the single most transcendent story ever broadcast to people’s homes and cement a legacy among a world of would-be prisoners.

As one of the comments on an earlier post pointed out, it took some kind of genius to come up with The Prisoner. The highest paid actor in the UK in the late sixties for his series Danger Man, Patrick McGoohan put in his papers shortly after the fourth season began shooting. His reasons were artistic. In the same meeting about his resignation from his secret agent show, he pitched the idea of The Prisoner, a show about a secret agent who resigns and is taken to a prison disguised as a holiday resort. What resulted was a show that not only pointed an accusing finger at the governments of the world, but the media, the corporations, the broadcast companies – and every single viewer who would turn on their TV every week.

It was the first time that a continued narrative TV show ever had something to say. And what it said was “turn off your TVs.” It was, and remains, a radical show. It is still a topic of debate, over 40 years after its original broadcast. It has inspired countless television producers, film directors, authors, comic book creators, musicians, and artists in that time period. The State of the Arts, as it were, would simply not be in the shape it is today if Patrick McGoohan had never charged into the Village’s control room to tell the nameless man in the chair that he is not a number.

It is all in the power of McGoohan’s delivery and demeanor. In any lesser show, the character being persecuted would have yelled it in defiance of the higher power. They would seek to overcome, and to be an individual again. Not so, here. McGoohan delivers his most famous line with the conviction of a deity. He is not decrying his status in the face of an authority. He is simply declaring it – letting them know that there is no point crushing what cannot be crushed. He is the spirit of freedom in all of us, and no matter what they do to him, he will never fight, and scratch against it. He will simply persevere because there was never any other option.

He plays the role with an intensity rarely seen in anything other than melodrama. He movements are quick, precise, and fierce. Number Six fights information with information. While there are certainly the classic sixties brawls seen so often in Bond films from time to time, Number Six is more content to use his brain against the revolving door of Number Two’s, the de facto leader of The Village.

Number Two’s sole task is to gather as much information about why the now Number Six resigned as possible. When one fails, another is brought in to top the previous job. The s never a mention of where the old Number Twos go. Perhaps this is all for the better.

Everything is attempted to get this information, by hook or by crook. Number Six is subjected to faked escape attempts, sentient man-hunting balloon droids, drug-induced states, hypnosis, body doubles, even a full brain transplant. This is heady sci-fi for the time, and most of it still effective.

At the end of the day, The Prisoner was not about following the exploits and adventures of Number Six as he consistently overcame and outsmarted the system. We were never supposed to root for his eventual escape and understanding. McGoohan wisely, and unconventionally wanted us to see ourselves as Number Six, struggling against the systems of our every day lives. His vision was not that the governments and media and authorities keep us locked up in or own quasi-realities. It was to show that we allow this to happen to ourselves.

Entertainment has rarely dared to be so obtuse, and yet so specific at the same time. Parsing the story of The Prisoner is no easy task – 40 years on, and there is still no definitive answer. Patrick McGoohan kept completely mum about the true underpinnings of the series all the way up to his death on January 13th, 2009. That’s just the way he wanted it. He didn’t invent The Prisoner to tell us about the nature of humanity. He invented The Prisoner to force us into telling ourselves about us, and the societal standards we so dearly cling to.

It could be the most counter-culture programming in the history of TV. Not only rallying against the machine, The Prisoner was decrying the individual itself, and the lack of motivation and determination to truly exercise what individuality means. To all the people who are tuning into the remake tonight, to all the people who will be watching football today, to all the people reading this article right now: Patrick McGoohan is telling you “You’re doing it wrong.” His was a character on a television show. It’s you who are the prisoners.

The Prisoner was such a bold, artistic vision that it inspired a legion of people to demand the extension of the series from 10 episodes to 17. And when the series failed to wrap itself up in any easy to digest way, it inspired those same people to bang on Patrick McGoohan’s door until he decided to exile himself from London permanently. Thankfully it inspired enough others to solidify its status as a classic of the medium.

No Longer a Number continues tomorrow with Part II: The Legacy of The Prisoner
and for an introduction to the series click here

In the meantime, please consider watching this extensive breakdown of The Prisoner‘s opening credit sequence as interpreted by Jim Emerson. Emerson is Roger Ebert’s web editor, and his SCANNERS blog contains some fascinating articles on what makes cinema such an unforgettable medium to create within.

“We Want Information!” The Arrival of The Prisoner from Jim Emerson.

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By Ryan Brlecic

As we ease into the fact that a new prisoner is set to plan his escape, we wanted to take a quick look back on the original “Free Man”.

The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series broadcast in the UK from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968. Starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan, it combined spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory, and psychological drama.

The series follows a British former secret agent who is held prisoner in a mysterious seaside village where his captors try to find out why he abruptly resigned from his job. Although sold as a thriller in the mold of McGoohan’s previous series, Danger Man (called Secret Agent in its U.S. release), the show’s combination of 1960s counter-cultural themes and surreal setting had a far-reaching effect on science fiction/fantasy programming, and on popular culture in general.

I will go out and declare this show literally the best thing the medium of television has ever produced. So much so that it makes perfect ironic sense that so few even know of it or rather of it’s star Patrick McGoohan. The Prisoner first came up for me in a clip show celebrating old greats of SciFi and Fantasy on television; those couple of quick scenes formulated into a need to find more. As luck would have it, the A&E Network had just begun reruns teaming The Prisoner with The Avengers. Needless to say I watched every episode and then after buying the mega set the network subsequently released, I re-watched every episode.

Even today, I still find the occasional surprise or begin to look at the plot/message of an episode in a new way. McGoohan created a show that evolved television, evolved your way of thinking, and evolved as a message the more you watched it. To say the series had depth would almost amount to an understatement. From the moment the music plays over the film like title sequence (so uniquely packed with symbolism, to be expanded upon in a future post) you are enthralled in one man’s struggle. A struggle that as the series goes on becomes clear is a struggle we are all in, but to realize this we must first acknowledge our own personal village.

McGoohan’s statement was simple, “No”. It was the inflection that counted. Never before and sadly never again will you hear a man possess that kind of conviction and tone while uttering that word. It was the same for the famous phrase, “I am not a number, I am a free man.” He found a way to say it not just as an actor and not even as a man just expressing conviction, but as a man so sure of the power and truth of his words that not even God could tell him otherwise.

The message was also simple – there was no definite message. You just had to accept it. When Lost ends there will be people who swear they saw the ending coming the whole time. Those people will be the same ones who thought Twin Peaks had a point. Both of those shows, albeit watchable, are in my humble opinion good for nothing but blowing smoke up one’s arse. Both shows also owe their existence to the ground The Prisoner tread decades before. McGoohan famously denied an ultimate answer to his masterpiece and often served the statement that there could be a 1,000 people with a 1,000 different interpretations; that if anything was the point.

It is my opinion that the village is a metaphor for what is trying to destroy the individual by every means possible; trying to break our spirit. We are own jailer and thus our own prisoner. The penny farthing (Editor’s Note: The penny-farthing is an old time bicycle that serves as The Villages unofficial symbol) represents to me, that the big wheel (that which tries to force us to submit and not question) would cease to function if the small wheel (you and I) simply said “No”. We allow ourselves today to limit our options and be prisoners even while seeing ourselves as the ultimate rebel. When you get to the end of the series, when the questions simply beget more questions, and “All you need is love” by The Beatles blares it becomes obvious at least to me, that “you are number six”.

Be Seeing You.

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There will be an introduction to the series posted later tonight. An in-depth look at the series will follow tomorrow. For now, we’d like to welcome the uninitiated into the world of The Prisoner with the classic opening credit sequence.

A sequence, a statement, and a lesson for us all that begins with “NO”.

Share your love for McGoohan below!

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There are nerds. And there are science fiction nerds. And then there are American fans of Doctor Who — those who dare to combine the exquisite dweebery of Anglophilia with the delicious dorkdom of old-skool SF. I’m of that last tribe, a real Who-head. I can tell you what Tardis stands for (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space), and, more important, I can say “Tardis” over and over again — not just with a straight face but with reverence. Bargain-basement BBC production values? Alien monsters made from trash cans and toilet plungers? Anachronous kibitzing with Shakespeare and Dickens? That’s my flavor, mate. It’s the sort of thing that’s hard to find on this side of the pond (especially now that Syfy has foolishly ceded new Who episodes and specials to BBC America). I suppose US culture simply isn’t advanced enough to appreciate the longest-running, most successful (and, yes, also the cheesiest and chintziest) science fiction series in television history. And by advanced, I mean defeated. Luckily, that may be changing.

Before you brand me a Benedork Arnold, let me explain: There’s a fix I just don’t get from mainstream American science fiction, perhaps because of its grinding obsession with the imperialistic (and its depressive sibling, the dystopic), not to mention its wearisome push for ever-shinier effects. Like its not-so-distant cousin American religion, American sci-fi is fixated on final battles, ultimate judgment (particularly on questions of control and leadership), and an up-or-down vote on the whole good/evil issue. Even the most morally restless imaginings — the Losts and Battlestars — eventually prolapse into Bruckheimer-esque excerpts from the Book of Revelation. As an antidote, I turn to the Doctor — a fussy 900-year-old neurotic who’s part Ancient Mariner, part Oxford don, with a whimsical fashion sense, a close acquaintance with defeat and futility, and a tendency to rattle on. He subscribes to no Force-like creed. No enlightened military Federation stands behind him, photon torpedoes at the ready — indeed, his race, the Time Lords, is more or less extinct. His signature gizmo isn’t a blaster or a phaser but a souped-up screwdriver. His Millennium Falcon? The Tardis, which looks to the unschooled like an old telephone booth. It’s actually a police call box, a relic from the ’50s, and the ship’s most spectacular feature isn’t artillery; it’s feng shui: It’s bigger on the inside.

Read the rest of the article over at Wired.

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“Absolutely terrifying, one of the scariest things we’ve ever done.” - Russell T. Davies

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