Sundays in the Village: Arrival

(Revised 01/02/2023) 

This year marks the 56th anniversary of a television program that has had as much of an influence on popular culture in the past 20 years as Star Trek did in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, it's even so cool as to have been parodied on The Simpsons. It's a challenging, thought-provoking piece, integrating a slightly intellectual edge into its subplots involving espionage and individuality. In the spirit of the incomparable Bully's Wodehouse a Week, there is a new feature on this blog - each week, I will watch one of the 17 episodes and blog about it. (I'll be following the order of The Prisoner - Complete Series Megaset on A & E rather than the "official" televised order. (EDIT: you can now stream the series for free via Shout Factory TV or Tubi) The A & E order falls roughly into chronological order, which makes for some more interesting takes on episodes, and it's the order my Prisoner DVDs are in. So there.

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“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own.”

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When I had blogged about Jericho, one of my complaints was that, for a pilot, it had failed to do what it set out to do - set up the story and engage the viewer to tune in the next week. "Arrival", essentially the pilot for The Prisoner, actually provides multiple bangs for the buck. Within an hour, the viewer is introduced to

• Our main protagonist
• The actions he takes that lead to his being incarcerated in the Village
• His "arrival" in the Village
• The setup of the main conflict (Number 6 versus Number 2 to gain the reasons for his resignation)
• An initial "plot" (an old and new colleague are used to manipulate Number 6)
• An initial "replacement" for Number 2
• An introduction to life in the Village, including Rover
• An iteration of the initial themes - individuality versus conformity, doing the right thing versus doing the easy thing, and the fact that (as another person says it), "We're all pawns, m'dear"

In fact, if anything, this pilot may be slightly overstuffed, but again, this was a show that was not done with a "bible" in place. In fact, popular legend has it that McGoohan wanted seven episodes, the production company wanted 22, and they compromised on 17. It's also the kind of episode that, if taken alone or followed up with much weaker episodes, could have been seen as a one-joke series like Gilligan's Island or Star Trek: Voyager - "Ok, is this the episode where the crew of the Minnow/Number 6 gets off the island/Voyager comes back to Earth." The production of this episode is critical, especially the details that pop out - Number 6's car heading for the "Way Out" tunnel; the echoing of Number 6's footsteps in the hall similar to the classic Point Blank; the appearance of two world maps on his boss' wall...and that's just before the main action begins.

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New No.2: “Good day, Number Six.”
No.6: “Number what?”
New No.2: “Six. For official purposes, everyone has a number. Yours is number 6.”
No.6: “I am not a number, I am a person.”

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But it's when Number 6 arrives at the Village, the stakes increase - we need to be informed about the nature of Number 6's formal duties. We know he resigned; in fact, Number 2 asserts that they know why he resigned. However, they know he has information, asserting that Number 6 was an unquestioning agent. However, a key sequence - when Number 2 shows a series of surveillance videos, suggesting a pre-Village paranoia in Number 6 - really shifts our understanding.

No longer is this about a man who resigns out of conscience or just wants to leave - this is a man who seems to consistently bristle against authority, maybe secretly, but now it's more overt. Now, rather than emerge into "freedom" from bureaucracy and stricture, his identity is stripped down to a number, and ironically, does not even get anonymity - the very thing he is fighting against does not exist. He is known as someone with critical information and asserts that he will leave the Village.

(As a side note - does anyone know if someone has analyzed The Prisoner using Ayn Rand's philosophy? I am far from being an objectivist and don't believe that Ayn Rand is necessarily evil, but I know she has handed these themes in one of her first novels. As someone whose thoughts and values were shaped by this show, I am curious to see if such an analysis exists and what it says)

The rest of the episode serves as a kind of template (Number Two has a plan/Number Six fights that plan/Number Six gains a moral victory) for several other episodes in the series...but chillingly, a quote towards the end, where a hereby silent character tells another "We're all pawns" seems chillingly prescient.

I'm sure, right now, Patrick McGoohan is shaking his head while in retirement from acting. (EDIT - McGoohan passed away in 2009) He could not have seen an age where we are more numbers than individuals. Our personal information is often shared for commercial purposes. From blogs to internet tracking, nothing seems "personal and confidential." One can, for a price, track another person's private information, and others post "content" simply to keep an anonymous algorithm busy.  Reality television provides a nicely edited yet voyeuristic look into our lives. Memories are coopted into commercial endeavors, and even The Prisoner has been (poorly) remade. 

Welcome, one and all, to the Village. Consider this live blogging effort my attempt to get you thinking. And watching. 

Be seeing you.