The Prisoner: The General

September 6th, 2007

Episode 7

The Prisoner is a 1967 British television series, starring Patrick McGoohan as “Number 6,” a top-level government agent who resigns his post. As a result, he’s kidnapped and imprisoned in “The Village”, where his captors hope to interrogate him for “information.” The series documents Number 6’s repeated escape attempts and the progressively more extreme methods employed by his captors to break his will.

Synopsis

A general and a professor are teaching a speed learning course via the television where citizens of The Village can learn three years worth of knowledge in three minutes. Number 6 realizes this speed learning could be a dangerous form of brainwashing.

Number 6 decides to learn the identity of the general. He finds an administrator (Number 12) who is willing to help him sneak a bit further into the inner workings of The Village than before. Number 6 attends a meeting of “education board members” by wearing a tuxedo, top hat, and dark glasses with secret entry tokens given to him by Number 12 — small coins that are whisked away by a tiny blue hand.

Once inside, Number 6 sneaks into the projection room where the next lecture is to be broadcast from. With some old fashioned brute force, he disables the guards and operators and takes command of the projection. He swaps out the canned lecture for a new one that speaks of freedom — hoping to use speed learning to inspire the village citizens to revolt. Unfortunately, Number 2 realizes that the projectionist is actually Number 6 and the subversive plan is thwarted.

Number 2 takes Number 6 to meet the professor and the general. The latter turns out to be a supercomputer that was created by the professor and stores an impressive amount of knowledge. Number 6 then destroys the computer by asking it a simple question: “Why?” Both number 12 and the professor are killed as the computer explodes. The Prisoner is still a prisoner but he’s annoyed the controllers of The Village to no small degree.

Thoughts

The professor and the general are surely stand-ins for the education and military systems of society, which could be very dangerous if they colluded to control a population. The use of television to transmit eduction is rather cynical — as The Prisoner itself is a television program.

The secret identity and disabling of the computer reminded me of several classic Star Trek episodes where some controlling force is discovered to be a computer, and in the episode The Changeling the robot NOMAD is destroyed by some insoluble question. Kirk also destroys a robot with a statement in I, Mudd. The common thread is a super computer that can replace or control humans becomes dangerous — and then must be proven pointless by a hero.

All in all, because I had seen the plot device of a computer controlling everything on Star Trek, I didn’t find this episode to be particularly suspenseful, but I did enjoy seeing some of the inner customs and workings of The Village.

Next Episode: The Schizoid Man
Previous Episode: A, B, And C

IMDB: The General
Wikipedia: The General
The Prisoner Online: The General
Bookmice: The General

iTunes Store Link: The General — The Prisoner (Classic)