Although I think its futile to try and avoid spoilers for a 37 year old television show, if you really don't want to listen to somebody ramble about The Prisoner for awhile then you'll want to avoid the rest of this post.
No, I'm not saying that this show is suddenly more timely, today, November 3, 2004. That's just crazy talk. (And, besides, while I don't claim to know Patrick McGoohan's personal views on anything, he is by all accounts a rather conservative Catholic, so who knows what he has to say about the modern political scene? Re: knowing too much about what your heroes think: Ray Bradbury.)
Uh, anyway, when I was much younger and Betamax was still a viable home video format, the local PBS station was showing The Prisoner and my father recorded some of them, and all I remember, being, what, four or five? at the time was the scene from the episode "Schizoid Man" in which an unlucky person tries to shut off that creepy bubble with the wrong password and gets consumed.
("Hey, son, why are you so weird?" "Well gee, I dunno, maybe because of the bizarre diet of media you had me on?" I think my father secretly wanted me to be a philosophy major, but who knows?)
Anyway, BBC America just finished showing the series, and now I can put my memory in context. (For reference, I found this website useful while watching.)
One thing I find interesting is how much I like the show despite a host of flaws that you'd think would drive joyless, detail-obsessed geeks over the edge. What's the deep meaning behind the western episode? McGoohan just wanted to do a western and they were short on ideas. Various fansites suggest that looking for concrete plot elements (for instance, where is the Village located?) is "misunderstanding" the show, since it isn't really about such things; normally an argument that annoys me. And yet, despite the fact that maybe only half of the episodes are really brilliant, the ones that are seem, to me, anyway, to be really brilliant.
Anyway, about the ending, "Fall Out" (or is it "Fallout"?): I knew it was going to be weird, but I didn't know it was going to be this weird. It skyrocketed to at least my top 20 most surreal moments list. In many ways I think it kind of betrays the strongest elements of the series; for instance, the character of Number Six, who, in the best episodes, wasn't content with simply escaping, but wanted to expose and destroy the Village entirely. And yet. . .
I also didn't expect it to be so musical. I can't decide whether I think the use of "All You Need Is Love" was ironic or not. (It seems to me he needed a bit more than love: automatic weapons, for instance.)
Anyway, I guess I am easily won over by sheer strangeness. Rover apparently gets sucked into a crater while singing some high-pitched jaunty tune? Awesome.
So, here's my real point, such at is: I thought of two complimentary stories while watching the finale.
The first is Brazil. Why was his escape so out-of-nowhere bizarre? Because it was all in his own head. Maybe.
The second is the Philip Dick story "Autofac." In it, humanity is fighting a losing battle against wholly automated factories. At the end of the story, the protagonists witness a series of launches (in this case, if memory serves, via artillery, rather than rocket) and realize that the factories are self-replicating too. That's what the rocket launch at the end of The Prisoner reminded me of, at least, though I'm not claiming that's what the literal truth is. (I doubt there's any literal truth to be found.) [And if pressed, literally I'd prefer to think of the Village as a social experiment funded by fully human villains, rather than a malignant self-aware entity all its own, though that has a certain attraction.]
"Fall Out."
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
On that note, I was also pleasently bewildered by the door which read "WELL COME." Hidden message or simple set dressing error?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
That's the bueaty on shows like this: any error is part of the conspiracy.
In trek we can just blame the TCW without all the cloak and dagger stuff.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
"Now I hear the word of the Lord."
Apparently the BBC offices were flooded with phone calls and letters looking for some explanation of the final episode when the series originally aired. It's masterful. It's entertaining. It's inconsistent. On purpose? Still totally relevant. It's a show that challenges the viewer. And so, yeah. I believe that looking for McGoohan's intended meaning does betray the whole point of the show.