The PrisonerBy LJPK, January 2001 Imagine a drama which tackles deep and meaningful questions of life, the unreliable narrator problem, and has a large and homicidal beachball as the guest star. It's set somewhere in mid-Wales, and the final episode looks like it was written after the consumption of the most potent hallucinogens ever discovered by humanity. Welcome to the Village. The backing story is quite simple. The anonymous Prisoner is a high-ranking officer in an unidentified covert operations bureau based in Whitehall. He resigns his job, and announces that he is going to take a holiday. As he is packing a suitcase, a hearse drives up outside and one of the occupants pumps his flat full of gas. The Prisoner awakens in a room which is identical to his, in a mysterious Village. Everyone there is known by a number - he is "Number 6". The ruler of the Village, number 2, attempts to discover what the reason for his mystery resignation is; but we never find out which side runs the village, the Prisoner's real name, or indeed why he did resign. Only one series, of 17 episodes, was ever written. This is a very inconvenient number to divide evenly between video box sets ... but the small number of episodes mean that it is quite easy to keep track of what is going on. The continuity problems of Doctor Who, which ran for 30 years, do not really impinge upon this series. Number 6 stands up for the liberty of the individual - he continually fights the powers that be, who are trying to reduce him to a number in their files, trying to find out his secrets and control him. He stands for the common man trapped between the great powers of the modern world. Notable episodes are "Hammer to Anvil", where in revenge for the murder of an innocent, the Prisoner drives number 2 to insanity, and "The General", where the Prisoner breaks the General with a single simple question ... and episode 17, "Fall Out", is recommended for those who have a burning desire to be puzzled by utter weirdness. Good quotes:
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