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THE PRISONER Episode Studies
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This is PopApostle's chronology and studies of the 1967-68 TV Series, The Prisoner. I will be watching and reading the licensed tie-ins of the series and its AMC mini-series remake from 2009 and will be presenting my studies relating to each, such as commentary on the philosophical issues examined, sound bits of memorable dialog, screen grabs and my own musings. I'll be presenting them based on a slight reworking of the chronology presented on The Prisoner U.S. Home Page. The series was not originally shown in production order and even the production order presents continuity discrepancies in the timeline. The aforementioned website breaks the 17 episodes down into three batches with common themes that suggest their chronological placement. I have named these three batches I'm New Here, I Am Not a Number, and Be Seeing You. The I'm New Here batch takes place early in Number 6's confinement within the Village and features him learning about his new home/prison and attempting to escape while the powers that be attempt to crack him, mostly by persuasion. The I Am Not a Number batch features a Number 6 who is more informed of Village life and he attempts more complex escapes, while the powers-that-be become more forceful in their attempts to crack him. In the final, Be Seeing You, batch, Number 6 has determined it is essentially impossible to escape from the Village for good, so he turns his plots to undermining the Village from within, while the powers that be, failing to break him and not wanting him permanently harmed, basically stop trying to crack him and just observe him, waiting for him to make a slip that will reveal the information they want. I will attempt to place the licensed novel and comic books into the appropriate batch based on the content of the story.

At this point, I have no plans to produce studies of the 1960-62 and 1964-68 TV series Danger Man, featuring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake, which some fans think is the real identity of Number 6 in The Prisoner. In fact, there are some suggestions in the show itself that suggest this may be true (I'll point them out along the way), as well as pre-production anecdotes from those involved suggesting same. Series co-creator, George Markstein, even states this was to be the case when the series started, but he had a falling out with co-creator McGoohan and left half-way through production, and McGoohan has stated in interviews that the two characters are not the same.

I am continuing to use the term "episode" here as I have elsewhere on PopApostle, as a separable piece in the continuous narrative of a larger story, whether discussing an actual TV episode or a novel, short story, or comic book.