Who are the other people in the Village?
Are they all fellow prisoners who've already given up on trying to escape or are they all part of the elaborate ruse to noise up Number 6?
shareSometimes prisoners, sometimes part of a ruse, sometimes both. Number Six can never be entirely sure, which is exactly how The Village wants it. There are episodes where other prisoners sincerely want to help Number Six but are being used against him all along without their knowledge. Once the paranoia is in place, it does a lot of the work for The Village.
shareThanks, I thought that was the case from what I've seen thus far.
But re the ones in on the ruse - to what end? Just to find out why he resigned? Isn't the whole thing an incredibly expensive scheme simply to find that out...
Well, the series begins as something more literal & logical—people with secret knowledge that authorities want to protect or possess are taken to The Village, where their knowledge is either kept safe from any other interested parties, or else extracted by any means necessary. Basically, a straightforward spy story, and a very good one too.
But the allegorical subtext gradually becomes the driving force of the series as it goes along, at which point straightforward logic & narrative are subsumed by metaphor, philosophy, surrealism, Theater of the Absurd, etc. Now, for those viewers who just want more of the spy story, the latter can be seen as hallucinations induced by The Village to break The Prisoner—and that's a perfectly valid reading of the series as a whole, too. But for those viewers who enjoy going deeper, it's the allegorical & metaphorical aspect that's the real appeal of the series, and the more bizarre it is, the better!
While I tend to fall into the second category, the series is designed to work either way—for those who deem the symbolic reading of it to be self-indulgent rubbish, there's still a solid spy/mystery story with tension, suspense & action to be enjoyed for its own sake. And of course you can enjoy it on both levels as well.
Let me add that I find it to be a brilliant, thought-provoking series to this day, with its deeper questions no less timely & relevant. But I'm not going to be a snob who sneeringly dismisses those who prefer the spy story to the allegory. It's all good!
Yeah, I agree re brilliant, thought provoking.
Different genre but it's reminding me of episodes from the original Star Trek series in terms of being a nice outlet presumably for the pulp fiction writers of the time.
That's a great breakdown of the two ways of looking at this series.
I definitely belong in the surrealist camp. It's about the symbolism. The subtext becomes the text at some point and it might be bizarre, but that's the way it goes.
Because this series defies explanation, I don't think I'd ever be satisfied with the straight-up spy story explanation. For it to work as a pure spy thriller, it would need to have a logical conclusion and actual evidence-based explanations for the weirdness. Because it doesn't have that, I can't see it as being mainly a thriller.
As you say, though, to each their own.
Like you, I'm in the surrealist camp. After all, the metaphors & symbolism are there right from the start, cheek by jowl with the spy story. And while many other series might have been satisfied to keep it that way, The Prisoner happily & brilliantly goes beyond that almost immediately & keeps ramping it up as it goes forward. If it had remained primarily a spy story/thriller, it would still have been a distinctive series. But by plunging headfirst into surrealism, it became a great & unique series.
shareThe Prisoner is amazing for the risks it takes. The fact that they paid off makes it all the more amazing.
I still don't really understand The Prisoner, but I love that they were aiming at doing something more unusual and experimental; you don't get that on TV a lot. TV shows are only green-lit when they feel safer to executives. I think we see a bit more experimentation with streaming stuff, if only because the sheer volume and variety means they can afford/are forced to cater to more specific tastes among fan groups.
> I love that they were aiming at doing something more unusual and experimental;
And experiment to replace a media that used to have morals and messages and some sort of decency with increasing senselessness, and violence, and social isolation.
"The Prisoner" in my opinion was a toxic pile of negativity trying to determine just how much BS and nonsense the TV watching audience would watch and still impose some kind of meaning on base simply on spectacle, celebrity and random symbols.
If you read about Patrick McGoohan, the star of (and a major creative force on) The Prisoner, I think you'll find that he was definitely not trying to decay morals or erode decency.
shareAgreed. It was quite the contrary, in fact. I notice, for instance, that while The Village is said to have everything, including a cemetery, we never see or hear any mention of a church, if I recall correctly. In short, The Village isn't lacking in technology, power, control, modernity—but it lacks anything spiritual. It has no soul, no place for or need of the soul. And, of course, the entire series is replete with religious symbolism, especially as it moves toward the final episode. When The Prisoner gets any on behalf of other prisoners, it's because they've been reduced to objects, to disposable things, denied their humanity—and yes, their innate sacredness as people.
shareThat's a great observation about the Village. I might argue that it has need of the soul, but it's creators are trying to avoid or obfuscate the spiritual. 6 is an agent of morality as much as a secret agent.
shareHahaha, does it really matter what he said? Like he would say any of that?
shareIt matters who he was. He made creative decisions and career decisions based on his faith and morality. It's not what he said but what he did - his actions, not his words.
sharePrecisely. After all, he demanded changes in his Danger Man character of John Drake—no babe-in-and-out-of-bed of the week, as little gunplay as possible, and having the character use his brain more than his fists—although he could certainly use his fists when necessary. And he turned down the role of James Bond when he was asked, so that Sean Connery was a second choice—he thought Bond was a morally loose character & a poor role model, the sort he didn't want to play. McGoohan had a strict moral code for himself & lived by it. That aspect of the man definitely went into The Prisoner, because he was the driving force & mind behind it, especially as it went on.
(I'm sure you already know all of that, Ace, but other readers ought to be aware of it.)
I knew most of that, although I don't think I ever heard he turned down James Bond. The names I most often hear associated with that role are Ian Flemming preferring Christopher Lee and David Niven for the role while Albert Broccoli considered Cary Grant. There are so many stories around "who was going to be Bond," though, that I'm not sure how many of them are credible. They probably threw a lot of names around, but were any of them serious?
Anyway, yeah, McGoohan clearly wasn't trying to undermine the public morality. If anything, the opposite argument might be made that he was trying to influence people to follow his stricter moral code, but I don't get the impression he was after that, either. He wanted to do shows in-line with his morality, but wasn't interested in brainwashing.
Shows like The Prisoner are, I think, challenges to look closer and think deeper - cultists and brainwashers hate the idea of looking closer and thinking deeper, so that's another mark in The Prisoner's favour.