In PRESTIGE PREHISTORY, Pop Heist critic Sean T. Collins takes a look at classic TV shows that paved the way for the New Golden Age of Television — challenging, self-contained stories from writers and filmmakers determined to push the medium forward by telling stories their own way.
The Prisoner Episode 2 (airdate order) / Episode 5 (AVC order)*
"The Chimes of Big Ben"
Original airdate: Oct. 8, 1967
Writer: Vincent Tilsley
Director: Don Chaffey
Cast: Patrick McGoohan, Leo McKern, Nadia Gray, Kevin Stoney, Richard Wattis
*NOTE: The Prisoner's proper running order is a matter of dispute; Pop Heist is using the AV Club order for the show
Now this one's a punch to the gut. Once again using Number Six's own indomitable will against him, the Village inflicts its cruelest punishment yet: escape.
For a while, it seems as if everything is status quo. There's a new Number Two in town, as usual, and as played by Leo McKern he makes quite an impression — impish, garrulous, boisterous, his lively eyes all the more mesmerizing for their mismatched colors and amblyopia. When he sits in the big chair in the Green Dome, he does so criss-cross-applesauce style. And he's given to gales of laughter when Six makes his characteristic sardonic remarks about Village life, noting that the prisoner's sense of humor should be added to his files. They tend to miss that kind of thing, don't you know.
Like many of his predecessors, this Number Two has a big community event planned: an arts and crafts exhibition showing off the artistic talents of the Villagers, with prize money (in the form of the Village currency, "work units"), for the best entries. Six, however, has a different idea, one that surprises even Number Two. He still plans to escape, yes, but he also plans to come back — to "wipe this place off the face of the Earth, obliterate it, and you with it."
But Two has grand plans in mind as well. He tells Six that his big questions — who is Number One? whose side is the Village on? — are irrelevant, because the two sides are "becoming identical." When they realize they're looking not at their nemesis but into a mirror, Two says, they'll realize the Village is the way of the future. One big happy planet. At least, that's how our new Number Two would like it. "I'd like to be the first man on the moon," Number Six replies. Both eventualities have an equal chance of coming true, he feels.
Despite his grandiosity, this Number Two's demand of Number Six is the most modest yet: "Tell me why you resigned," he says, "and I'll release you." The real idea, of course, is that if they can break him enough to get this out of him, the rest will come pouring out as well: "Answer that and the rest will follow," as Two tells one of his minions.
The arrival of a new prisoner changes the equation for Six dramatically. Dropped off unconscious via helicopter, the new Number 8, an Estonian woman named Nadia (Nadia Gray), meets Six while he plays the part of the Good Villager, complete with the "Be Seeing You" salute. Each attempts to determine if the other is truly a prisoner or working with their captors, with Six particularly intrigued by Nadia's Estonian nationality. This means that people from the opposite side of the Iron Curtain are being brought here as well, wherever here is.
That, in fact, is the secret that caused Nadia's kidnapping. Like an Estonian Dedra Meero, she tells Six she was an intelligence official who stumbled across a file she shouldn't have, revealing the location of the Village somewhere on the Lithuanian coast. Indeed, she quickly attempts an escape of her own, using her training as an Olympic bronze medalist to try to swim for safety. A trio of Rovers soon put a stop to that, dragging her back to shore.
The powers that be in the Village initially suspect the swim might have been a suicide attempt, a suspicion seemingly confirmed when Nadia tries to electrocute herself during one of the Hospital's Pavlov/Skinner experiments. Six dramatically declares that if they let her go, he still won't talk, but he'll be a Good Villager for real. Why, he'll even make something for the art exhibition.
"Haha!" Two laughs theatrically. "You really are the limit, Number Six!"
What Six has surmised, though, is that he now has the means to really make a break for it. Using the art competition as a smokescreen, he builds an abstract piece out of a hollowed tree using handmade tools, which he entitles "Escape." He spends his prize money on buying the runner up, a portrait of Number Two rendered as a tapestry. (Actually, every entry in the art show is a portrait or sculpture of Two, except for Six's, but even he's got a drawing of the guy perfunctorily tacked to the front of the thing.)
Of course it's plain to see that what he's truly built is a boat, and that the tapestry is the sail he plans to use to get to safety. With Nadia aboard, they'll sail to the nearest safe point, a small coastal village in Poland 30 miles away where Nadia has an undercover contact (David Arlen) who can smuggle them through the Iron Curtain back to Britain.
What follows is the most amazing thing we've seen on The Prisoner yet: the world outside the Village. From Nadia's contact's cave on the coast, the pair are packed into wooden crates and shipped by land to Gdansk, by sea to Copenhagen, and by air to London.
Throughout their uncomfortable journey, Six, who clearly would rather catch some Z's, frequently reassures Nadia about the length of their remaining journey, using a watch given to him by their Polish contact to replace his own, which got wet during his escape and stopped running. Throughout their journey and the rest of the episode, Nadia expresses her great wish to hear the chimes of Big Bill, her erroneous name for Big Ben. She takes to calling Six "Big Bill" in lieu of a proper name.
And amazingly, they make it all the way to Big Ben's home. Six and Nadia are unboxed, in the parlance of our times, in the headquarters of the unnamed British intelligence agency for which he worked. Fotheringay (Richard Wattis) and the Colonel (Kevin Stoney), the most preposterously English people you've ever seen and heard in your life, greet the returnees, with the Colonel staying behind to debrief Six.
He's understandably skeptical of Six's wild claims. Here, after all, is a guy who resigned his position as one of the top secret agents in the government without a word of explanation, sped off, and, as far as anyone back home knows, simply disappeared. He then rematerializes from out of the blue with a Soviet intelligence officer, claiming he's been on the other side of the Iron Curtain all this time. And now this "Village" story? Come on, man, give us something. Give us something and we'll grant Nadia political asylum, even.
That does it. "I resigned," Six begins, "because for a very long time, I…"
He trails off when he hears the chimes of Big Ben strike eight. Checking his watch, he confirms the time — and that's the problem. Why, he demands of the Colonel, would a Polish secret agent wear a watch showing the time in London?
"Maybe he was slow," the Colonel suggests.
"I'll bet he was," Number Six sneers.
Six tears apart the room until he finds what he's been looking for: the tape player transmitting the sounds of London. When he trudges out of the room and opens the door to the outside, the sight of the cheery Village sitting there waiting for him to "return" is absolutely backbreaking to behold.
The entire escape, all those hours, all that moving around, the entire friendship with Nadia, all of it designed to break him. But don't worry, there's another art competition coming up. This time, the subject, we hear, will be seascapes, which Six knows better than just about anyone there, from very recent and very bitter experience.
To me, this is the first episode of The Prisoner that really makes you, the viewer, feel like a prisoner as well. For all that he remains so inscrutable that we know neither his motive for resigning nor his actual name, for all that he was once an agent of Her Majesty's government and is thus, for all intents an purposes, a super-cop, Six is an enormously endearing figure, especially right now. His adamant refusal not just to bend the knee, but to even play along without the most obvious and contemptuous sarcasm imaginable, is not just admirable but likeable. When it seems like Nadia is falling for him, after a late-night conversation in which he pretends to flirt with her so they can have a surreptitious conversation about escaping, you can see why.
But his determination means nothing. His ingenuity means nothing. His planning means nothing. His patience means nothing. His mental and physical toughness mean nothing. His kindness toward a fellow human being, even one from the other side of a world-historical ideological divide, means nothing. His service to Queen and country means less than nothing, given that men he knew and trusted in that capacity have betrayed him, and are in fact the enemy he's been fighting this whole time.
"I want him with whole heart, body, and soul," Number Two says early on, while rejecting the usual offers to use more extreme methods to break Number Six. That is the way of fascism. It's not enough to submit: You must embrace your own submission. That this itself is a destruction of heart and soul does not concern the regime. Your heart and soul are your masters', and they will remake you in their grey and grinning image.
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