When Australian David Hicks arrived at Guantanamo Bay, he was designated "detainee 002." He was isolated from all contact with the outside world, constantly watched with no apparent chance of ever being allowed to leave. He has now spent four years enduring physical and psychological torture, his wardens becoming increasingly creative in warping his sense of reality in order to break him into a confession of events merely suspected.
In
The Prisoner, an unnamed man (
Patrick McGoohan) is drugged and kidnapped after resigning from his job as high level spy for the British government. He wakes to find himself in an unknown scenic coastal village. He no longer has a name, but a number: 6. Held prisoner by a mysterious group, represented by Number 2, who wants to know why he resigned. What follows over the next seventeen episodes is a battle of wills between Number 6 and a succession of 2s. Number 2 needs to know why Number 6 resigned, Number 6 needs to know who Number 2 works for, which side they are on, and to find a way to escape so he can come back and destroy the place. With information comes power.
The island was created to garner information only for those in control. Questioning authority is frowned upon and the questioner punished to the point of breaking, all in the cause of providing answers for the powers that be. The population of the village is either meek and subservient, or they are employees of the mysterious group running the island, thugs, operatives and scientists. The other residents have long been taught: no complaints, no questions, don't speak out, don't make waves; "a still tongue makes a happy life." They were once like Number 6 until finally being broken into obedience. An outraged Number 6 often lets his disgust show.
Number 6
Who runs this place?
Maid
I don't know, I really don't know.
Number 6
You never wondered? You never tried to find out?
Conceived by McGoohan during the death-throes of his successful stint as John Drake in
Danger Man,
The Prisoner is a classic example of instantly recognizable 60s-era British television. Where
The Avengers was style before anything and everything else, embodying swinging London with debonair Steed and his cool sophisticated offsiders,
The Prisoner was a critique of political and social hegemony with all the aesthetic style of the times. With themes reflecting the aims and attitudes of 60s counterculture,
The Prisoner can be read as an angry diatribe against conformity. The dehumanizing nature of technology, the relationship between power and knowledge, reality and torture, are far from a complete list of issues and themes dealt with by this challenging series.
Democracy, too, is questioned. In the episode
Free for All, Number 6 is elected to the position of Number 2, only to find himself powerless and manipulated by the very people he promised to subvert. The Village is the totalitarian society in microcosm. Constantly watched, the villagers greet each other with the salute, "Be seeing you!" It's a place where dissenting voices are crushed. In the Western-style episode
Living in Harmony, Number 6 is an ex-sheriff who rides into town and is forced against his will to take up his guns and face down the bad guys after his girl is murdered by one of the town thugs. Seen at the time as an anti-Vietnam allegory, the US government barred the episode from screening in the US. Life imitating art imitating life.
Throughout the series, Number 6 asks, "Who is Number 1?" Who is it keeping him prisoner? One answer to his question is that we are all our own jailers. We create limits for ourselves; we restrict our own actions and force ourselves to conform. This is one of the major discoveries for Number 6 as he watches those around him work as a group to force conformity. In the episode
A Change of Mind, it's not Number 2 that threatens his individuality, but a citizens' committee. After finding him "non-mutual," it's decided the only course of action is a lobotomy. Another citizen is tied into a chair and forced to undergo aversion therapy. Still another must make a public confession, his words fed to him by the court of the people: "Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me..."
The struggle of the individual versus the pressure to conform is constant in
The Prisoner. In an early scene, Number 2 explains to Number 6 that there's nothing they don't know about him as breakfast is served. Number 6 makes his cup of tea; milk with lemon, no sugar. Number 2 points to his dossier, gloating. Later during the scene, Number 2 sweetens his tea with several cubes of sugar - a deliberate attempt to mark himself defiantly as an individual, unpredictable, unclassifiable, unable to be filed, collated, numbered.
Often imitated, at times parodied and paid homage to,
The Prisoner spawned many paranoic series about shadowy organizations manipulating power and operating outside the dictates of government. This is a series that perhaps has more to say than any other about a world where "free democratic" countries hold people prisoner for years without charge or trial. Where secret networks of prisons operate around the world. Where governments tap the phones of its citizens on the off chance they may be doing something illegal. Where every second lamppost seems to have a surveillance camera. Where elections are illegally manipulated and where voicing a dissenting opinion is decried as unpatriotic.
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