The Prisoner - It's All About The Six!

   ‘The Prisoner’ directly revolves around………..well the Prisoner, and when it doesn’t, Number 6 is surely to be involved somewhere within the plot. Sometimes the plot cannot do without him, as in ‘It’s Your Funeral’ when Number 6 is actively encouraged to become involved, even though it may be against his better judgement. And he has to go on, because he has no choice. And sometimes Number 6 is masquerading as someone else, and ends up impersonating himself but as someone else who is impersonating him! And at other times he has a complete change of mind, either that or someone wants to change it for him! But that’s ‘the Prisoner’ for you, there’s hardly ever a dull moment. Never time to sit back and relax……………well there was that time when Number 6 was listening to classical music. Music makes for a quiet mind, well it does, but it can also excite, it can even stimulate the imagination, all depending on the sort of music one is listening to at the time. In this instance it’s a piece of classical music, but then Number 14 comes barging in disturbing the peace and quiet. Mind you Number 6 isn’t exactly innocent of that. In he comes, barging into an office, ranting and raving at some poor bureaucrat sat behind a desk. Slams down his letter of resignation, slams down his fist upsetting cup and saucer on a tea plate, then barges out. And as for the number of times Number 6 barges his way into Number 2’s office, without a by your leave of the Butler. But that’s the Prisoner for you, no hint of subtlety about him whatsoever…………..well there was that one time, during ‘The Chimes of Big Ben.’ On the day of his arrival in The Village, you could see he was getting more and more annoyed by the music playing through that black loudspeaker. He couldn’t find a switch to turn it off. Well you know how fond of good old fashioned brute force Number 6 is. So he trampled said speaker underfoot for what little good that did him, because the music still played even without a loudspeaker. But the next time, well that’s where the subtlety came in, because the next time he became irritated by the incessant music, he placed the speaker in the refrigerator, thus rendering silence to the cottage. Which doesn’t go to explain why the music still played in the Prisoner’s cottage after he’d trampled the black loudspeaker under foot, nor why it didn’t when the speaker was placed inside the refrigerator! And the Electropass? Number 6 kept it in a drawer as a keepsake, after all it wasn’t any good any more, serving only as a reminder!

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