The Prisoner: Hammer Into Anvil

November 27th, 2007

Episode 12

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 distraught, hospitalized woman, cruelly interrogated by Number 2, leaps out a window to her death. Angered, Number 6 vows to make Number 2 pay. This more violent Number 2 threatens Number 6 with a sword, promising to “hammer” our favorite prisoner.

At the Village shop, Number 6 asks to review several copies of the same record. He listens to a few bars of each while checking his watch. He then returns them all to the shopkeeper, along with a Tally Ho newspaper on which he has scribbled a question mark. The shopkeeper is suspicious of this activity and reports to Number 2.

So is laid the seeds of paranoia. Number 6 continues to behave oddly — wandering about the sea shore, writing strange messages, utilizing a carrier pigeon — until Number 2 is convinced counter-spies have infiltrated everywhere and Number 6 is leading a conspiracy against him. Distrusting his own staff, Number 2 angrily fires the bald bespectacled supervisor, and even the midget butler packs his bags.

At episode’s end, a crazed Number 2 tries to comprehend the paranoid fantasy of his own making by directly confronting Number 6. Number 6 continues the ruse, saying he’ll report Number 2’s failings to his superiors. Crushed, Number 2 surrenders, turning in his resignation over the phone to his superiors.

Thoughts

At this stage of the series, Number 6 is less interested in escaping from the Village, than destroying it from within through sabotage. Number 6 takes advantage of the pervasive surveillance throughout the Village, demonstrating several problems with over-zealous gathering of intelligence:

• Too much useless information can be impossible to sort through.
• Data may be twisted to support a particular hypothesis.
• Surveillance can be deliberately filled with “disinformation” to confuse and distract the watchers.

The last point reminded me of an article on “antisurveillance” by Brian Martin for Anarchist Studies:

• Disrupters can fill out forms with small mistakes in their names, addresses, and other details. This will create multiple entries in databases and make it more difficult for database matches to be successful.
• Disrupters can fill out forms with imaginary information, or with information about famous people (or about database managers). This will swamp the database with incorrect information.
• In the face of direct surveillance by bugs or observation, a range of devious techniques can be imagined, such as disguises and misleading taped messages.

After employing his personal disinformation campaign, the tables are turned, and Number 6 finds himself tantalizingly close to seizing control of The Village. Note that Number 6 eventually gets Number 2 to resign — which is exactly what Number 6 did to imprison himself in The Village.

Next Episode: Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling
Previous Episode: A Change Of Mind

IMDB: Hammer Into Anvil
Wikipedia: Hammer Into Anvil
The Prisoner Online: Hammer Into Anvil
Bookmice: Hammer Into Anvil

iTunes Store Link: Hammer Into Anvil — The Prisoner (Classic)