|
The Prisoner
"Confrontation"
The Prisoner Book c
DC
Story by Dean Motter and Mark Askwith
Illustrated by Dean Motter
Colored by David Hornung and Richmond Lewis
1989 |
A confrontation 20 years in the making occurs between Number 6
and Number 2 in the Village.
Read the
summary of the mini-series at Wikipedia
Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue
Alice Drake
Number 6
Thomas Drake
Lee West
Mrs. Butterworth (mentioned only)
Meagan Drake (mentioned only)
Barb (Thomas' secretary, mentioned only)
Director of Operations Ross
Max
(mentioned only)
Joanne
(mentioned only)
Martin Lake (deceased, mentioned only)
Mr. Smiley (mentioned only, possibly a nickname; possibly based
on fictional British spy George
Smiley in novels by John le Carré?)
Number 2
Didja Know?
This study is of the third issue of the 4-issue mini-series
titled simply The Prisoner published by DC Comics
in1988-89, based on the 1967 TV series.
The trade paperback compilation was titled The Prisoner: Shattered Visage.
The individual issues of the mini-series
are labeled books a-d (rather than the typical numbering
convention). This may be a nod to the episode titled
"A. B. and C.".
Didja Notice?
On page 7, Thomas hears a radio broadcast about a magnox power
station in Gloucestershire and the Bradwell nuclear power
station in Essex.
"Magnox" is an obsolete type of nuclear power station; the name
is derived from magnesium-aluminium alloy which covers the fuel
rods of the reactor.
Gloucestershire and Essex are counties in England which were
home to nuclear power plants that were shut down in 1989 and
2002 respectively.
Another broadcast mentions the anniversary of a stock market
crash. This is probably a reference to Black Monday, the stock
market crash of October 19, 1987.
Also in the broadcasts is the report of the mysterious deaths of
British defence officials, with a defence ministry spokesman
dismissing theories of foreign assassination as "straight out of
James Bond". Bond, of course, is the fictional
British super-spy of novels and film. The broadcast goes on to
state that five of the dead scientists worked for the Marconi
Electrics Company, a defence subsidiary of General Electric,
doing top secret research involving the Star Wars anti-missile
defense initiative. Marconi Electronics Systems was an actual
company at the time, owned by General Electric Company (a
British corporation that went defunct in 1999 and not related to
the U.S. company called General Electric) and 25 scientists who
worked for the firm did die in the years from 1982-1990, with a
number of conspiracy theories floating around about the reason
for the deaths.
There is also a Marconi-GEC connection in that the
offices of ZM-73's superiors (ZM-73 being Patrick McGoohan's
character in The Prisoner) were shot inside the GEC-Marconi
building on Elstree Way in Borehamwood, London for the episode
"Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling";
one might now interpret this as a working relationship existing
between the agency he worked for and Marconi.
The broadcast mentions energy secretary Cecil Parkinson.
Parkinson was, in fact, the British energy secretary from June
1987-July 1989.
Another broadcast mentions someone who plunged to their death
from a Bristol bridge and whose body was found to have a tiny puncture wound in
his left buttock. This alludes to the death of a computer
software engineer at Marconi, Vimal Dajibhai, in 1986.
On page 10, Thomas tells Lee that KAR 120C was a wedding gift
from Mrs. Butterworth.
Mrs. Butterworth did seem to be in ownership of the car after
"Number 6's" disappearance from London (i.e. his abduction to
the Village in "Arrival"), as seen in
"Many Happy Returns".
On page 11, Lee tells Thomas that their little operation has
snafued. SNAFU stands for "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up." It
originated as military slang but the term has also come to be
used simply as the word "snafu", meaning simply that something
has gone wrong.
On page 13, Alice finds an ape mask sitting on a pedestal in the
Control Room of the Village. This may be the ape mask that
Number 1 was wearing under his comedy-and-tragedy mask before it
too was torn off by Number 6 to reveal 6's own face underneath
in "Fall Out". After she finds the
mask, Number 6 begins to speak the lyrics of "Pop Goes the
Weasel", "...The monkey chased the weasel...The monkey thought
it was all in fun...Pop goes the weasel." The music (though not
the lyrics) of this song are heard a number of times in several
episodes of the TV series, with its meaning in relation to The
Prisoner unclear.
On page 15, Alice asks Number 6 if he's ever going to tell her
his name. The two of them then have a brief dialog in German.
Number 6: "Namen sind überflüssig, nummer sechs."
("Names are superfluous, Number Six.")
Alice: "Also, herr drunter-drüber...wie darf ich sie denn
nennen?" ("So, Mr. up-over...how may I call you?")
Number 6: "Gar nichts, Nummer Sechs." ("Nothing, Number
Six.")
On page 17, the gigantic star chart on the rounded ceiling and
walls of the Control Room is revealed when Alice's eyes become
adjusted to the darkness. Number 6 begins to quote "Twinkle,
Twinkle, Little Star", a 19th Century English lullaby still
popular today. He also quotes from "Star Light, Star Bright", an
American nursery rhyme from the late 19th Century; the full text
of the poem is, simply:
Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.
On pages 17 and 18, Alice and Number 6 begin speaking in yet
another language, written on the page in the Cyrillic alphabet,
thus untranslatable (by me, anyway). They are possibly speaking
Russian. |
|
|
On page 24, Ross remarks that the U.S. government can't slap a
D-Notice on sensitive information to prevent it being printed by
the media the way they do there in the U.K.
D Notices, or Defence Notices (currently
referred to as DA Notices for Defence Advisory) have been used
in the UK since 1912, as a request, not legally binding, to the
news media by the government to not publish or broadcast
specified subjects for the good of national security.
On page 25, Thomas tells Ross about several topics he had to
remove from Number 2's book The Village Idiot while he
was re-writing it: Zircon spy satellites, the Windscale
disaster, pre-emptive orbital platforms, the Kennedy
assassination, and the Livermore Group. These are all actual
concerns of the British and U.S. intelligence agencies to a
more-or-lesser degree at the time.
Thomas remarks that the most interesting lacuna was about the
Archangels ("lacuna" is a term that means a missing section of
text from a manuscript). It's implied that the Archangels are
something related to U.S. intelligence concerns, but neither
Thomas nor Ross admit to knowing what it means. Thomas goes on
to say that the removed sections about it were all very cryptic
and apocalyptic.
On page 34, Number 2 refers to Alice and Number 6 as
"six of one, half dozen of the other." He used this same phrase
with Number 6 in
"Once Upon a Time".
On page 45, portions of "They Whose Course on Earth is O’er" are
seen, an
1844 hymnal by John Mason Neale (1818-1866).
Back to
Prisoner Episode Studies