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I've been watching the whole thing on BBC4, blimey but it really slides up and down the barometer from 'quality drama' to 'load of old bollocks' doesn't it? I have to say that the prime offenders in that latter category being the cowboy episode, The Girl Who Was Death (did someone inform The Avengers that one of their scripts had been stolen?) although admittedly very funny, and Free For All which, rather than being a story about freedom both personal and political decides to bollocks everything up with some sort of bizarre brainwashing story.
Sadly, the most intelligent thing I've seen so far in the script was in the second episode with Leo McKern's Number Two when Number Six points out that he's as much of a prisoner as the rest. After that it descends into something of a mess. Almost every week the authorities wave someone in a skirt at Number Six to get him involved in whatever daft plot they've come up with this week (I mean, shall we drug him with truth serum to find out why he resigned, or shall we make him think he's a fucking cowboy?!) at the end of which the girl is always remorseful that she got involved.
I liked The Schizoid Man although it's very handy that for one week only Rover turns homicidal and actually kills Number Six's double leaving Six to almost escape. How annoyed they would have been if it really had been Six that was killed! Do Not Forsake Me, admittedly forced upon them by outside reasons is stupid however, revolving around a traditional idea in these tv shows that the hero is the only person who isn't a cretin. I'm not sure why he's brainwashed into forgetting the previous year in The Village, maybe as everyone else in the Village is docile the people in the hospital just really like brainwashing Number Six whenever they can? But the clear impression you get at the end of the episode is that although Number Six has helpfully informed the authorities that the Professor has escaped in the other man's body they just let him fly away and are apparently helpless to stop him.
Everyone gets to leave, except Number Six. And even by halfway through he's largely conformed to an accepted status as an outsider in the village, playing chess with the oldies, reading stories to the kids that have suddenly appeared in the village, It's Your Funeral is a case in point, I don't believe him when he says that the murder of the old Number Two will cause the authorities to punish the Villagers, after all they know who has done the deed and punishing the Villagers disrupts from it's function as a holding colony for subversives and ex-spys. But secondly, why would Number Six care about the Village or the Villagers? Anything that increases the level of chaos in the Village would be helpful to him leaving, and it's clear from early episodes that he regards most Villagers as contemptible for relaxing into their incarceration. In Hammer and Anvil he easily causes chaos in control by pretending to be a spy, but doesn't use this to escape.
The most positive thing I can say about the whole process is that Number Six is a total bastard. He's cold, aloof, often uncaring, brutal. He's an old boy, has the right school tie, went to the right clubs, was going to marry the bosses daughter for goodness sake. His feeling in the early episodes is not so much outrage that a place like The Village exists, but that he, HE! was sent there. The gatekeeper doesn't like it when he's locked in his own prison. I don't think we are supposed to like him, just accept that his desire for freedom is the right one. Sadly after a few months (and presumerably once Patrick's intended scripts have run out and we have the ones made up to make up the numbers) his character is softened and he becomes more heroic. I can barely remember what I read of Joseph Campbell and his schema for the heroes journey but I think one of the stages is that the hero gets some special knowledge or insight. In The Prisoner he doesn't. In fact at the one point he learns something he didn't know, the identity of Number One, he backs away from it, and that's why, in the end, he doesn't escape. He's flunked the final exam.
And the different Number Twos are different people. It's not just a revolving door policy because Patrick and the Butler are the only constants, you do get the idea that the Authority is sending different people with different strengths and weaknesses and ideas to try and break Number Six. Some Number Twos are terrified of their master, Leo McKern speaks to him at the start of the penultimate episode almost as an equal. But do they want the droneish conformity of The Outer Church, or do they, as the parade of Number Twos suggest, prefer individuals who know their place?
It's an interesting show but it really hasn't aged well and deserves to be left back in the Sixties where it came from. |
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