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Number 6: Where am I?
Number 2: In the Village.
Number 6: What do you want?
Number 2: Information.
Number 6: Whose side are you on?
Number 2: That would be telling. We want information… information…
information.
Number 6: You won't get it.
Number 2: By hook or by crook, we will.
Number 6: Who are you?
Number 2: The new Number Two.
Number 6: Who is Number One?
Number 2: You are Number Six.
Number 6: I am not a number! I am a free man!
Number 2: [laughs]
A top British intelligence
operative resigns from his job without explanation. On returning
home to pack his bags for a holiday, a stream of gas pours in through
the keyhole, knocking the man unconscious. When the man awakens,
he thinks himself still in his own living room, but when he draws the
blinds he discovers that he is in a strange village-- a village where
he is held prisoner by unknown forces.
So begins Number 6's
introduction to the Village in the 1960s television series The
Prisoner.
On
the surface, the Village appears to be a pleasant little seaside
resort made up of quirky Italianate architecture and gay holiday
colours. The surroundings are congenial. There are brass bands,
recreational activities, a "democratically-elected" local council and
the inhabitants are quite friendly-- though they never give a straight
answer to any question that's put to them.
But beneath that surface is
something far more sinister. The Village, it turns out, is part
prison, part interrogation centre, and part social engineering
experiment. The individual counts for nothing and even the most
seemingly benign episodes may be part of the Village's programme of
absolute control over the minds and souls of the inmates, who have
only numbers instead of names. Under the trappings of a pocket
democracy, they are ruled over by an iron-fisted bureaucracy headed by
a chief administrator known as Number Two, who is, in turn,
replaced at alarmingly frequent intervals by his superior, Number One.
As to who Number One is...
Though
there are no apparent barriers, Number 6 quickly discovers that the
Village is almost impossible to escape from, thanks to various
high-tech security devices and a mysterious robot guardian that
resembles a giant weather balloon. Worse, the line between
inmate and warder is so blurred that it is impossible to trust anyone,
so Number Six is utterly alone. His captors will stop at nothing
to learn his secrets and to bend him to their will; whether that
requires trickery, brainwashing or the most elaborate of hoaxes to
distort Number Six's very sense of reality.
So begins a war between Number
and those who have imprisoned him with the Village becoming the
battleground as Number Six strives to maintain his identity, regain
his freedom and assert his absolute right to be an individual.
