Monday, 3 January 2011

THEPRISONER

    The echo's within this series cannot be denied. They are there in the very titles of the six episodes, Arrival, Harmony, and now Anvil. And once again it's a game of wits between Two and Six, except that Two has told Six it is a trap he has set, but wants to see if Six is clever enough to turn the situation to his advantage.
    Six is set to work with 909, an 'Undercover.' 'Undercovers' are people who are set to watch other citizens who have become suspect of something, possibly having become a 'dreamer.' Dreamers dream of that 'other place,' being a place other than the village. 'Undercovers' work in cells, and it is quite possible that everyone in the village is an 'Undercover,' which means everyone in the village is watching everyone else!
    Two is a very clever and manipulative person, in the way he sets citizen against citizen. A mother who misses a regular Yoga class, is suspected by her son. But perhaps the mother was ill that day. A school teacher who goes swimming after work, instead of going home, becomes suspect. But perhaps he simply likes to go swimming! Then he hangs out a towel to dry, this is seen by an 'Undercover' as being a signal.......but to whom? Dreamers perhaps! Everyone is under close surveillance, and surveillance is a class taught at the village school. And it's here in class that 1,100 has a revelation to tell when Six, working undercover as a schoolteacher in surveillance, asks the question "Who is Number One?" To which 1,100 replies "There is no Number One. There has never been a Number One, and there never will be." As for Two, he is nothing more than a public servant. So to whom is Two answerable?
   Two wakes his wife/M2 from her sedated state, and she asks "What this time?" The only trouble with M2 being awake, is that holes begin to appear in the village. It is M2's unconcious mind that holds the reality of the village together. M2 eats a 'wrap,' it's her favourite food, and that's why everyone in the village eats nothing but wraps.
   909 is a homosexual, and is having a homosexual affair with 11-12, Two's son, but Two must never find out. Although there is the suspicion that he does know. In the end 11-12 murders 909. 1955, a school teacher who becomes suspect, but who is completely innocent, commits suicide by cutting his own throat. In the original series of the Prisoner, it is said that death is an escape. That the Rook would die one day and beat them all. So it is in this reinterpretation, that death remains an escape. But it has been reinvented for this series, and later you will find out how, if you don't know already that is.
    Viewers of this series might be wondering why Six is always waking up on the sand somewhere out there in the desert. Well that's simply a reinterpretation of what the Prisoner-No.6 does in the original series. In Arrival the Prisoner wakes up on the sand of the beach after being attacked by the village guardian. In The Schizoid Man No.6 is rolling about on the sand after being punched to the ground by No.12. And during the Dance of the Dead, No.6 wakes up on the sand after spending the night on the beach. So for Six to keep waking up on the sand in this series isn't so unusual, it's only what his predecessor used to do!
   We see for the first time the 'Therapy Zone,' a place where citizens are sent for............treatment. Such as 313, who has become suspect at the surveillance of 909. And the schoolgirl 1,100, who is sent to the Therapy Zone, for having spied on Two, who never even gave her time to finish her ice cream before the men in white suits came for her, and took 1,100 away in a black van.
Be seeing you.....but not in the Threapy Zone I hope.

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