Fall Out

     ‘True Entertainment’ screens the final episode of ‘the Prisoner’ tonight, ‘Fall Out,’ and by the end the series will have come full circle. And that’s what ‘the Prisoner’ is, a vicious circle from which there is no escape for the Prisoner.’ Perhaps it’s an anguish pattern as Number 14 suggested in ‘A B And C,’ which begins after he makes the decision to resign his job.
   Number 6 takes the throne, he witnesses two forms of revolt for which Numbers 48 and 2 are put on trial. Number 6 who mustn’t be called Number 6 or indeed any number at all, has vindicated the right of the individual to be individual. He has waged a private and pure war, and that is applauded. He’s given the key to his house, presumably Mrs. Butterworth has moved out! A passport valid for anywhere, one million in travellers cheques, and a purse of petty cash. Now he is given the opportunity to lead them or go, and Number 6 can’t make up his mind! But he is given the opportunity to meet Number 1, who turns out to be himself, his other self. He’s been his own worst enemy all the time, well according to Patrick McGoohan he has. But ‘Fall Out’ isn’t like any of the previous episodes, but it does explain why no real harm was done to Number 6. Number 1 was looking after him. Making sure the tissue wasn’t damaged, that extreme measures, or the usual techniques were not used, so they didn’t end up with a man of fragments. And that’s all the thanks he gets, chased around the control room in the rocket, sealed in the nose cone, and launched into Earth’s upper stratosphere! But despite that, Number 6 and Number 1 do escape The Village at precisely the same moment, one aboard a rocket launched from its silo, the other in a cage set on the trailer of a lorry as it crashes through the gates at the end of a tunnel!

   ‘True Entertainment’ commences a repeat screening of ‘the Prisoner’ on Sunday night at 11pm, so it will all begin again then. Will Number 6 never be free of it? After 50 years I shouldn’t think so!

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