Fall Out

And so after 17 episodes I got to the end of Patrick McGoohan's idiosyncratic, often brilliant series "The Prisoner". A contemporary Kafka-esque take on individuality, identity, free-will and the intrusion of privacy spiced up with sci-fi and secret agent tropes, it must have seemed way out there back in 1967 and if truth be told, comes across as not much less baffling today.

Unsurprisingly, reading up on the show's chequered production history, there are occasional lapses in continuity and consistency with one or two episodes bypassing me completely, but at its best, with brilliant episodes like "Arrival", "A B + C", "Living In Harmony", "The Chimes Of Big Ben", "Many Happy Returns", "Hammer Into Anvil" "The Schizoid Man" and "Once Upon A Time" to name but eight, this was an intriguing, challenging series which has deservedly become even more revered as time has gone by.

For this climactic episode, having won his psychological war of wits with Leo McKern's vanquished No. 2, McGoohan's ("Don't call me) No. 6" gets taken to meet the seemingly omnipotent No. 1. What follows next is an absurdist finale with a resurrected McKern and Alexis Kanner both put forward as rebels of the community, before a presiding McGoohan, playing out bizarre scenes in front of a president of proceedings and a seated but highly suggestible audience wearing black drapes and masks.

Finally, McGoohan unmasks No. 1 in a shocking moment and in a crazy finale which sees a rocket go up, a gunplay shootout to the background of The Beatles "All You Need Is Love" and the three rebels jiving to "Dem Bones" in the back cage of an articulated truck, finally he returns to his London flat (or has he?), now accompanied by the impassive dwarf butler.

The whole series could be the subject of a college thesis and still I don't think you'd get to the bottom of it. I certainly didn't but what a strange and immersive experience it was.

As is now better known to the general public, this episode was hatched by McGoohan after he was told that the series was to be canceled. Originally, the preceding "Once Upon a Time" was to be the final episode of the first season. McKern was to die, The Prisoner was on his way to see Number 1, and the audience would have to wait the summer to find out what happens.

McGoohan, whose political and social viewpoint was by then clear to everyone who had watched the series from its inception, was as should be expected miffed by its termination, and decided to give audience and producers alike a run for their money. The surrealism of this episode is never matched again until the finale of 'Twin Peaks'(qv). I give it a 9 rather than a 10 because the preceding episode is im(ns)ho one of the greatest pieces of television drama ever written, and therefore should not ever have another piece from the same series given equal appraisal.

I watched the original broadcast of this episode (and the entire series) on CBS the summer it ran in the United States. After the first viewing, I absolutely hated this episode. I wanted factual explanations, a very real and solid down-to-earth conclusion, and Mr. McGoohan provided imagery and allegory. I was perhaps excessively literal in those days, and may have been led astray by the series itself. While the episode title escapes me at the moment, I'm sure the hard core fans will remember: Number 6 wakes up to a deserted Village, fashions a raft, and eventually finds his way back to London. He works out where the Village might be from a variety of clues and returns in a military plane, only to be ejected and returned to the once-again lively Village. I was looking for something building on that episode's "clues", and was vastly disappointed. As some of you may recall, CBS ran the series again the next summer, and I tuned in again. After a year of contemplation (and maybe some maturing), I was able to accept FALL OUT for the fine work that it was and is.

After the previous mind-bending episode, the conclusion of the series isn't quite as stellar, but it is still quite striking. If, indeed, we are watching a man who has come to a sense of great inner pain and has lapsed into being a prisoner, we then see this as a kind of psychedelic journey (which would have been cutting edge in the sixties). Number Six is brought to see Number One, or so he thinks, and finds himself at a kind of tribunal with a panel of half black faced jurors. There is also a person in the robes and wig of the British judiciary who holds court over everyone. As Number Six sort of double talks as the tribunal goes on, he is reintroduced to his time in the village. They bring up the time he said he would escape and come back and obliterate the whole place. There is so much that is symbolic in all of this, but, ultimately I believe that the "I" or the Number One is a shadow with multiple layers that is not unlike the subconscious mind. I have not figured out the guy who played "The Kid" in the Western episode. He sings the song "Dry Bones" over and over, I suppose to bring us back to a kind of reality where things leave what is in the mind to corporeal being. He ends up hitch-hiking on the highway, but with little success. This may take a few more viewings. What an amazing series. I first saw it when it ran for the first time, nearly fifty years ago. I wish it could be viewed again with fresh eyes in the current political and social climate.

I was a child when this first aired and as a child fully enjoyed the surreal reality of it. Watching it now as an adult; the visual of how society, any society, tends to dehumanize people and categorize them is very powerful and even more contemporary than back when it was written and filmed. It was quite unusual for its time. And though parts of it are very much "of its time", the issue behind the series is timeless as long as we continue to see others as "them" instead of part of "us" and therefore a threat. Brilliant writing and execution by all involved. Kudos!!