“Who are
you?”
“The new Number Two?”
“Who is Number One?”
“You are Number Six.”
{The Prisoner and Number 2 - the opening sequence}
So that’s
that all tidied up nicely, what’s more we know whose who, it couldn’t be
simpler. But of course it wasn’t Number 2 who gave the Prisoner his number of
identity. One would have thought it should have been Number 2, a man in his
position. It was the Supervisor who gave the Prisoner his number 6. He did that
when he made that announcement to all units and all posts, when Number 6 was
heading toward the Outer Zone in the Mini-Moke. Makes one wonder how the
Supervisor knew what Number this new arrival was to have, when all the time
he’s mostly in his domain of the Control Room. Number 2 may very well have
alerted the Supervisor to the Prisoner’s number. But if so, that is one of
those numerous moments in ‘the Prisoner’ to which we as the viewer are not
privy. So we simply have to accept that it was the Supervisor who gave the
Prisoner’s number of 6. Then again the Prisoner didn’t know that, he was too
busy trying to escape. The Prisoner wasn’t actually given his number until the
next day, after he had been discharged from the hospital. It was in fact the medical
orderly who actually presented the Prisoner with his number 6, via his card of
identity, and not the Supervisor after all!
Be seeing you
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