The Prisoner #009: Question on "Free for All"
Date: Thursday, 9 January 1986 17:47 mst
From: packard!psuvax1!burdvax!sjuvax!iannucci at SEISMO.CSS.GOV (Dave Iannucci @ St. Joseph's University)
Subject: Prisoner #009
Reply-To: sjuvax!iannucci at SEISMO.CSS.GOV
To: sjuvax!prisoner at SEISMO.CSS.GOV
The Prisoner #009 01/09/1986 Moderator: Dave Iannucci (iannucci@sjuvax.UUCP)
Topics
- Question on "Free for All"
- More on "Fall Out" and the rocket
- Question on "Many Happy Returns"
- Video Tapes of the Prisoner
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From: William Gasarch <umcp-cs!gasarch>
Found a nice quote in a recomendation of the prisoner
``John Le Carre meets Sam Beckett, and they like each other without necessarily agreeing on how to be depressed in the modern world.''
Makes me wonder, is this the first combination of the two genres, spy story and philosophical intrigue (or something). Could be the only one, as such works are hard to combine with something else- e.g. Waiting for Godot couldn't be combined with anything because the whole point is that there is no point.
To its credit, the prisoner manages to have solid plot (well, sortof) as well as be a commentary on life.
Recently re-saw ``Free For all'' (Boston, Saturday night, midnight. It was much better then watching Madona host Saturday Night Live, -:) )
I have a question on it- what was the point of having him run for office? and why did the girl slap him around at the end. The overriding point was probably that even in a democracy we don't have as much power as we think, or some such, but what effect did they think having him run would have? They did seem to do a better job of brainwashing in this one then in later ones.
A friend of mine once pointed out that as the series progresses you can see him getting more and more control, i.e. in the early ones they want to break him, in the later ones, he wants to break out or break them.
William Gasarch
``Please order by number
I am not a number, I am a free meal!''
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From: lzla!tek
I've never thought of the number one, nuclear missle link. It seems very interesting. Does anybody think there may be the tie in to the episode "The Girl Who was Death?". I never cared for that one, and agree with what most of you have stated... I was disappointed and it seemed pointless.
I think the theory represents that nuclear war is the number one driving force of modern society. There was the strugle (balance) of power in the next to last show and then death the show before that. The whole series was heavely into technical devices (behind the scenes) of the village. Is it not like society today?
The village was to break individuals. There is no place for them in the village, they must conform. There can be no conflict. Conflict must be eliminated (but "#6 is to important..."). Why was #6 to important? #6 even had to deal with self conflict in the last program as a result the missile was set off. What happened though? If it was nuclear it didn't destroy the world... Did #6 send it off to space? They seemed to be pretty happy with it gone (dancing on the way back to London).
Then again, on the other hand maybe it was an after thought to make it relevant to the time. I say this because how would it tie into his resignation? I have trouble with this though because I'd like to believe that the general theme for the series was layed out and the writers just expanded upon it.
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From: smeagol!earle (Greg Earle)
It has been a while since I last saw the series in its entirety, and I remember being confused by something I saw in two episodes - namely, the presumed location of The Village.
In the episode 'Many Happy Returns', the Prisoner wakes up to find the Village completely deserted, and he makes his escape via a makeshift raft. He floats for about 3 weeks and finally comes ashore. He eventually makes his way back to his former employers, and they proceed to attempt to re-hash his path. I seem to recall them drawing concentric circles on a map of Western Europe to frame his possible starting point (based on min and max distance traveled), and then deciding the the Village was probably located off of Morrocco or something. So they get a fighter plane to go out and look for it, and ... well, you all know how that turned out, anyhow.
Now then - I could have sworn that in the very last episode, there was some big scuffle underneath the Village in some catacoumbs or something, and eventually the Prisoner gets on some sort of Jeep vehicle which I recall starts down this really long dark tunnel. Then, before you know it, it blasts out of the tunnel onto some road in England somewhere!!! So much for my Morroccan theory... Anybody remember/resolve this for me?
[ed. note: I attempt to answer this below ]
Also ...
The entire series has been put out on Video cassette, by some company in L.A. (YEA!!). Unfortunately, there is very little information about the vendor on the cassettes. I have seen them for rent in a few video stores in the Pasadena area. The only thing I can recall is that the vendor only went by some initials, like 'MLK productions, LA' or something. Does anyone in mail.Prisoner-land know the real name of this firm, and how they can be contacted? I would love to know if you could get a bargain rate on buying the whole set (One video place that had all of the episodes was selling them for ~$55/episode, or ~840 total for all 17 - a bit much).
BCingU.
Greg Earle
JPL
sdcrdcf!smeagol!earle
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From the moderator: Re: the above question.
Well, there are 2 different ways of resolving this problem that I know of. The first is the most intriguing: No. 6's friends in British Intelligence are the ones who sent him to the Village in the first place, so they purposely misled him on his return. They probably would not have done so were it not required of them by higher-ups (lest they themselves wake up one morning..!). A variant on this, and more likely, is that the top brass in the organization were the ones who sent him, without the knowledge of the other operatives. Before he took off in the plane, the brass replaced the scheduled pilot with their own man. It has been suggested that the milkman seen in the hangar before take-off may be the plant. (I never saw him myself). The less interesting case is that "the enemy" sent him to the Village, and planted the new pilot without the knowledge of any of the Britishers. Once up in the air, the pilot could have probably pretended he was navigating by No. 6's map without No. 6 being any the wiser. In other words, the Village was always in Britain.
Hope this resolves it for you. If anybody has other ideas, please let's hear them! Following is hopefully some good info on getting the Prisoner on video. It is a bit old (it came from the net), but may still be correct.
Dave Iannucci @ St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia [40 00' N 75 15' W]
{{ihnp4 | ucbvax}!allegra | {psuvax1}!burdvax | astrovax}!sjuvax!iannucci
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From: eli@uw-june (Eli Messinger)
The creator and star of The Prisoner is Patrick McGoohan. There are 17 epsiodes in all. About six years ago there was a course based on this series offered in Toronto through The Ontario Educational Communication Authority. Their were two study guides, "The Prisoner Program Guide" and "The Prisoner Puzzle." The latter includes the following:
For information about videotapes of
the programs in the series... write to:
OECA Order Desk Box 200, Station Q, Totonto,
Ontario, M4T 2T1 (CANADA).
... uw-june!eli
END OF Prisoner #009
