Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I am not a number. I am an Evil Genius. And I am madly head over heels in love with A&E’s new DVD release of the first seven episodes of the landmark series THE PRISONER.
It’s actually just after 1:00 in the morning. Halloween is over, and after a full day of horror favorites (PRINCE OF DARKNESS, VIDEODROME, and several classics from Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics), I’m ready for something else. There’s a Harold Lloyd short on TV right now, "Never Weaken," but it’s just on while I gather my thoughts on the knockout job that A&E’s done in bringing McGoohan’s small screen classic to the DVD consumer. I knew these discs were coming, but I had pretty much put it out of my mind. In fact, when I went to Virgin tonight, it was to pick up the new U2 album and to see if they had Argento’s DEEP RED in stock. I ended up browsing new releases, and there they were, side by side. THE PRISONER VOL. 1 and VOL. 2, each with four full episodes of the series. One of the episodes included in VOL. 1 is an alternate version of an episode that’s included in its final form on VOL. 2, so there’s only seven episodes here. Still, that alternate version is well worth having for fans of the series, and it’s a great glimpse at the thought that went into the creation of each of these 17 gems, each one a mini-movie. They’re being released in the preferred viewing order for the series (more on that below), and so far these are the only ones that are out. It’s enough to remind me why I consider the show television’s finest hour, and it should be enough to convert new fans to one of the most cerebral riffs on the spy genre ever attempted.
Right now, it’s still expensive to buy any of the TV episode collections that are out. If you’re an AVENGERS or an X-FILES fan, you’re making a considerable investment when you start buying those shows. With THE PRISONER, there are only 17 episodes, so there’s a clear end in sight when you buy these first two volumes. Even if you have these on tape, it’s worth the money for any serious fan of the show to go out and get these DVDs immediately, if only for the stunning transfer that’s been done. This is most assuredly a show of the ‘60s. Like STAR TREK, there’s a surreal combination of the extremely artificial and location work that dates the show to a certain extent. I love the sense of style on THE PRISONER, though, and it’s amazing how obvious the influence this show has had becomes when you rewatch the episodes now. THE TRUMAN SHOW in particular should have a special "Thank You" in the closing credits of the film, since much of the vibe of Seahaven in that movie is lifted wholesale from this show.
When the series was originally run, it was shown in the sequence that the episodes were finished. There were certain production delays along the way that made it impossible to run the series as intended. When CBS imported the British show as a summer replacement series, the episodes were rearranged according to the wishes of McGoohan and co-creator George Markstein. That’s the order these episodes are being released in, and it certainly makes a difference in the rhythm of the show as a whole. I don’t know how many of you have been lucky enough to find the show in its various airings on PBS and in syndication over the years, but I hope it’s a good percentage. For the rest of you, I hope I can persuade you to take a look at the show and see if you fall prey to its distinct and particular pleasures.
ARRIVAL
Tonight, I showed Henchman Mongo the first two episodes of the series, and it was interesting to view it through fresh eyes even as I was geeking out on the rediscovery of this show I adore so much. Right away, the pilot is a grabber. This show went on the air in the wake of SECRET AGENT MAN, a successful spy thriller that had starred McGoohan. In the opening moments of the show, he appears to be playing that same character, a suave killer cast in the Bond mold. He races his little sports car up to the front steps of spy headquarters, then makes a dramatic entrance into the office of his superior, where he rants and raves, turning in a letter of resignation. As he leaves, he’s being watched, and we peer at him from passing cars, from the sides of streets. He rushes home, starts throwing clothes together, even as a mysterious tall man matter of factly starts pumping gas in through the keyhole. McGoohan passes out, and when he wakes up, we’re down the rabbit hole, on the other side of the rainbow, out the back of the wardrobe.
He’s in an odd little apartment, one of many in an odd little village that he begins to explore. The script by George Markstein and David Tomblin is incredibly witty, and it does a great job laying the groundwork for the complex mind games ahead, just as Don Chaffey’s direction of the episode establishes the particular aesthetic of this world. As McGoohan pokes his way around The Village, he is greeted by people with numbers on their lapels, all of them exchanging the common greeting, "Be Seeing You," no single background evident. There’s English, Russian, Czech, and Chinese guests of the The Village. There’s no guards that are visible, no phones to the outside world, no maps available. It’s only gradually that McGoohan is filled in on his status as the newest resident of The Village. He’s told that he no longer has a name. He’s told that he is Number Six. When he demands to know who’s in charge of The Village, Number Two tells him that he is in charge.
"Who is Number One?" he bellows angrily.
"You are Number Six," he is told again, emphatically. He is invited to visit Number Two at the Green Dome at the center of The Village, and their first encounter is tremendously important to the series as a whole. It sets up the game that will be played. The people behind The Village want Information. What, exactly, they want is something we’re never told. Information. That’s all. We’re never sure if these are the people he was working for, or if he’s been grabbed by some Enemy. The frightening thing is how little it matters. As one character mentions casually to another late in the episode over a chess game, "We’re all just pawns."
Right away, Number Six determines to escape from The Village. He lands himself in a hospital where he runs into an old friend from his spy days, another abductee, and the two of them trade impressions of the situation they’re trapped in. The old friend, Cobb, ends up killing himself by diving out a window, and it’s Cobb’s funeral that brings Number Six in contact with a mysterious woman who just might be his key off the island.
The paranoia that’s so pervasive on this show, the almost pathological distrust of women, the surreal heightened quality of the drama, the sheer strangeness of the Rovers, the giant white balloon sentries that protect the borders of The Village –- they’re all in place here, all part of the show from the start. Number Six fights for his freedom with an almost animal intensity, but this is just the start of a much larger chess game, and he’s slapped down with ease. It’s a humiliating ending for him, and you can practically feel the rage pouring off of McGoohan at the end of the episode. He’s just starting to glimpse just what sort of opponent he’s facing here. The same can be said for the other side, though. There’s no denying the spirit of Number Six right from the start. When he practically spits, "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! I am my own man!" it’s an existential cry, his life raft in the face of captivity. We see him set himself for the fight ahead, and there’s the sense right away that he’ll do whatever it takes.
FREE FOR ALL
This isn’t just a great episode to watch to get your further hooked on this show. It’s also an important piece to revisit this week, with six days to go ‘till the Presidential election. This is often shown as the fourth episode in the series, but it was always intended to be second, and it seems appropriate here. This is the week that Number Six realizes the scope of what these people are willing to do to him to get what they want. The episode itself also happens to be a particularly savage satire of the election process, and watching this just after my nightly dose of campaign coverage was like getting hit with a bucket of cold water. Sobering. Shocking, even.
We’re treated to the same opening as the first time, just trimmed a little tighter. We see him resign, then go home, then get gassed, then wake up in The Village. There’s a bit of ARRIVAL that’s been cut in at the end of the montage, though, Number Six’s defiant exchange with Number Two. It’s important to pay close attention to what dialogue McGoohan and Markstein chose to replay there. This entire series is an elaborate puzzle box, and it’s only through close observation that it yields up all its secrets.
This episode’s script is credited to "Paddy Fitz," a pseudonym for McGoohan, who also directed the episode. It’s considerably more adventurous than the first episode, and it starts right into its particular brand of verbal fencing right away. As the title sequence ends, we find Number Six in his cottage. His phone is ringing. Surly, irritated with everything about his life in captivity, he answers with a gruff "What do you want?"
A perky English woman answers, "Number Six?"
"I said what do you want?"
She’s unflappable. Without losing on iota of perk, she asks, "You are Number Six?"
I love how McGoohan’s just not having any. This guy makes Bruce Wayne look positively sunny. He practically growls his response at her. "That is the number of this place."
"Hold for Number Two."
On the TV Screen behind him, Number Two appears. It’s a different Number Two than we met in the first episode. Power is tenuous in this world, and failure results in harsh punishment, even replacement. When Number Two speaks, Number Six whips around to face the screen, startled. "Good morning. Good morning," Number Two says. "Any complaints?"
McGoohan glares at the television screen like he’s going to attack it. "Yes. I’d like to mind my own business."
"So do we. Fancy a chat?"
"The mountain can come to Muhhammad." Number Six slams the phone into the cradle and begins to storm away, only to be stopped by the sound of his front door opening.
"Muhhammad?" Number Six turns and finds Number Two already standing there, waiting.
"Everest, I presume." Number Six sizes the older man up as he enters the cottage, the door swinging closed behind him.
"I’ve never had a head for heights," Number Two says, affecting a casual air, smiling in a slight, wry manner.
"Do we play this according to Hoyle?" Number Six asks.
Number Two waves him off and shakes his head. "We’ll put all cards on the table."
There’s no simple conversations in the show. Everything’s a game. Everything’s a duel. There’s not a moment when Number Six isn’t pushing the people who are holding him, taunting them even as he smiles. And there’s not a moment they’re not running some sort of head trip on him. In this case, they share a breakfast as they discuss the nature of democracy in The Village. There’s something great and absurd about these two mortal enemies sharing a civilized meal as they spar. Number Two talks about the upcoming elections in The Village, and how his job is one of the positions that will be decided by ballot. He asks Number Six if he’d be interested in running. He says things have gotten boring, that he will win easily, and that having Number Six in the race would make it a real challenge. Number Six asks what he’d get out of it, and Number Two promises that all mysteries about The Village would be revealed to him if he were to win.
When Number Two introduces Number Six to the gathered crowd, he takes advantage of his platform to rant about being imprisoned, to dare them to rise up and support him in his efforts to "discover who are the prisoners, and who are the wardens." The campaign comes to life quickly, dragging Number Six along like a leaf in a stream. He’s a victim in this episode, totally out of his depth. I love that McGoohan created this episode, and he certainly isn’t the conventional "hero" of the proceedings. He gets beat up, hospitalized (twice!!), chased, deceived, and nearly drowned. The fact that this is also so sharp satirically, so pointed in its observations of how ideas and image are manipulated in a political race, is the unexpected pleasure.
I love it when the photographer and the reporter from the local paper ("The TALLY HO, you know") hop aboard Number Six’s golf cart and start grilling him. It’s another lightning fast exchange. Each question the reporter asks is met with a steely "No comment" from Number Six. In each case, the reporter simply makes up a response all the way up to the final question, when he asks, "How do you feel about life and death," to which Number Six spits out, "Mind your own business," which the reporter transcribes as "No comment." Very pointed. Very wicked.
The design of this episode is particularly striking. There are some lovely sets, and the use of color is often dramatic and memorable. The episode continues to set up the rules of this world, and there’s a lot of little details along the way that I love. In particular, there’s a moment when Number Six bursts in on a room where four guys in black goggles are busy gathering around one of the big white security guard balloons. It’s almost like an interrupted religious ceremony. They never go back to it. They never bother explaining it in the episode. It just happens. It suggests a much richer world than your average TV show. It suggests that these characters live away from the moments when we see them on television. It creeps me out, and I love that. I love that they never, in the entire run of the show, even come close to telling you what was going on there.
There’s a lesson to be taken from this episode about the futility of pretending there is any sort of choice in most elections. McGoohan seems to be saying that all candidates are puppets for someone with larger interests, someone behind the scenes. When they whip on McGoohan at the end of the episode, then drag him off to the hospital to recover yet again, he’s crushed, and even worse, he’s angry.
DANCE OF THE DEAD
Ahhhh... I’d forgotten how much I love to groove out on the opening of THE PRISONER. It gets me in the right mood for the show, what with the use of thunder crashes, the quick cutting, and that crazed ‘60s theme. I love it. Oops... they just X’ed out his face. He’s dropped in the "RESIGNED" file. He’s packing. There’s the gas. Everything’s... getting... fuzzy... whole world... spinning...
They make great use of silence in that opening sequence, punctuating it in all the right places with music and dialogue, introducing us to a new female Number Two for the exchange we’re growing used to by now. "Who is Number One?!" "You are Number Six."
This was originally shown eighth in the series, but moving it to this spot does a number of things that I think are important. First, there’s the way the episode opens. We get a good sense of how things are escalating. When we last saw Number Six, he’d been physically defeated, and he’d had one very brutal head game played on him. As the show starts, they’re experimenting on Number Six in his sleep. It’s evident that Number Two doesn’t know what they’re trying, and we’re told that there’s special instructions regarding Number Six: he is not to be harmed. They seem to be risking exactly that by strapping elaborate electric devices to his head, then having another prisoner call the still sleeping Number Six to try and get information out of him. Number Six resists, and his mental struggle seems to punish him physically. It doesn’t matter how hard they push him, though; Number Six is tough, and he holds firm, even as the experiment almost kills him. Number Two arrives just in the nick of time and shuts down the experiment. The doctors in charge argue with Number Two about what they’re doing, but her main concern is with keeping him healthy. "I don’t want this man broken. He must be won over." They need whatever he’s carrying around inside him, and if it requires subtlety, then that’s what they’ll employ. "There are... other ways," Number Two says menacingly.
Just like that, we cut to the cottage where Number Six is sleeping. He wakes up to the soothing sounds of classical music, seemingly fine, as if nothing’s happened. He seems to be settling into the idea of being under constant surveillance. He’s like Truman Burbank if he’d always known there was a show going on. As he gets ready for his day, he receives an invitation for the Carnival and Dance.
From the way McGoohan and Markstein portray group gatherings in these first early episodes, it’s apparent that they have a certain degree of loathing for conformist society. Number Six is the ultimate individual, the man against the system, and he’s always playing the game on numerous levels at once as he moves through the episode, always wondering what is real and what is for his benefit. Every interaction with other characters is marked by mistrust. Still, he wants to find an ally. He wants to trust someone. He reaches out to a woman he meets at the opening ceremony of the Carnival, but when he tries to follow her, she vanishes into City Hall. He tries to talk to the various women who come to service his cottage, but they’re hostile and suspicious in their own right. We’re not even able to trust a stray cat that Number Six brings home, thanks to the clever script by Anthony Skene and the sure directorial hand of Don Chaffney.
It’s also important to keep this episode early in the run of the series because of the way Number Six still insists on trying blatant physical escapes. There’s a nighttime run for the beach that plays like a strange, surreal dream. Number Six runs until exhausted, passing out there on the beach. When he wakes up, he finds that he’s no more than 30 feet from a dead body. A quick search of the man’s pockets turns up a strange small two-way radio.
When Number Six returns to The Village, there’s another gathering. The town is gearing up for their costume festival, and Number Six learns that others choose your costume for you. He opens the box that’s been delivered to him and finds a perfect replica of the clothes he’s already wearing. Before he dresses for the Carnival, he goes for a walk and tries out his two-way radio. He manages to hear transmissions in another language, then in English. Before he can decide what to do with the radio, he’s discovered by Number Two and the woman he met at the Carnival the day before. Number Two confiscates the radio, then walks away, leaving Number Six and the woman to talk. The two of them toss verbal jabs back and forth as Number Six circles her, leaning in close, sizing her up, trying to decide what she is.
She shakes her head. "You’re a wicked man."
"Wicked?" he challenges.
"With no values."
"You mean different values."
"You won’t be helped."
"Destroyed."
"You want to spoil things."
"I won’t be a goldfish in a bowl."
This sort of spin, thrust, parry, dodge style of conversation is one of the tradmarks of the series. George Markstein deserves enormous credit for the fine work he did bringing McGoohan’s desires to life. He gave this show a singular voice and style, one that really settles in by this episode. Here, McGoohan struggles with the idea of how well we really know anyone, even those we choose to love. It’s all about the disguises we wear, the different masks for different occasions. It’s a brutally sad episode. At one point, McGoohan tries to use a dead body to send a message to the outside world, beyond caring about the dead man, seeing him instead as just more driftwood, free to be claimed.
Dead men reappear, masks are donned by all, and Number Six goes wandering through a landscape that is straight out of EYES WIDE SHUT. Once everyone’s true nature is revealed, Number Six is left reeling, and The Village is that much closer to finally breaking this unbreakable man. It’s interesting to see these early episodes, where he’s still off balance, and compare them to the later ones, where Number Six is finally mastering the game.
Right now, I’m going to take a breather. I could easily gulp down VOL. 2 right after VOL. 1, but it’s going to be a little while until we see more of these in release, so I’ll savor VOL. 2 and review it next week. Hopefully some of you will take the plunge and experience this unique and wonderful program in this remarkable new edition. Until then... be seeing you.
"Moriarty" out.
