The Girl Who Was The Girl Who Was Death

Despite Number Six' almost complete lack of interest in the fairer sex, there are an awful lot of pretty girls in 'The Prisoner', one of the prettiest (and deadliest) being hit woman Sonia, as played by ITC regular Justine Lord. 

The Prisoner: The Girl Who Was Death

‘The Girl Who Was Death’ is an unusual bit of television by any standards, even the superlatively weird ones of ‘The Prisoner’. Completely adrift of any continuity, hallucinatory and disjointed, set outside the Village and mostly played for laughs, the episode is, nonetheless, bloody good telly, and one of the most genuinely entertaining of the series.

Originally written as a ‘Danger Man’ episode, ‘The Girl Who Was Death’ is a wild fantasy that parodies the idea of the super capable agent up against equally deadly foes, but also provides some excellently thought out sequences that would grace any serious espionage drama.  

It’s all very psychedelic (in the British sense of slightly frightening whimsy, rather than the American sense of losing your mind and going to a different dimension), and has a joyously ramshackle feel to it, a sort of thrown together quality no doubt caused by McGoohan’s absence for some of the filming (he was away making ‘Ice Station Zebra’, Howard Hughes’ favourite film), and the requirement to use stand ins and back projection to make up for it.

This is an episode of great ‘bits’, and Justine Lord, as the slinky white clad assassin, is a memorable and deadly addition to the ever changing cast. In the end analysis, ‘The Girl Who was Death’ isn’t exactly a ‘Prisoner’ episode, but it’s isn’t exactly anything else, and that’s what makes it so great.

The Prisoner: Dance Of The Dead

'Dance of the Dead' is a strange ‘Prisoner’ episode, a vague amalgam of various themes executed in a fair to middling way, neither a notable success nor a flop. It has good bits, and weird bits (the radio broadcast; the trial), and a great new Number Two (played by frail but feisty veteran actress Mary Morris), but it doesn’t hang together particularly well and, as such, is nowhere as memorable as other episodes.

When I tried to recall the plot of this one, for instance, I came up with three basic elements: something about a trial, Number Two in a Peter Pan costume and Roland Walter Dutton. I don’t know why I should remember an incidental character’s full name other than everyone keeps saying it all the time. It’s even written down at one point. Brains are funny things, aren’t they? Well, when they’re on your side, that is. There’s nothing funny about your brain turning against you, believe me.

When I re-watched the episode, I was additionally struck by the attempt to present more composed, ‘artistic’ shots, by how very cool Ms. Morris is, and, on a Ms. Morris coolness related note, the final scene in which Number Six says to Number Two ‘I’ll never give in’. The not particularly bothered Number Two smiles and says ‘then how very uncomfortable for you, old chap’. A killer line, and a very perceptive analysis of the situation. Just for a second, I’ll bet Six felt like a right chump.

Armchair Theatre: The Greatest Man In The World

‘The Greatest Man In The World’ is an ‘Armchair Theatre’ presentation from 1958.

It opens with familiar TV face Ludovic Kennedy introducing a live link from Washington, where the state funeral of Jack ‘Pal’ Smurch is taking place. Smurch, it appears, was the most revered hero in the history of mankind, ‘the greatest man in the world’, and his death has caused an outpouring of national and international grief.  The President (Donald Pleasence), his face taut with emotion, gives a touching eulogy to the enormous crowd that has gathered but, as he observes a moments silence, we hear his private thoughts: ‘it’s a good job they don’t know what the lousy bastard was really like’…

Smurch’s fame is based on a single amazing thing: he piloted a spaceship to the Moon, got out and walked around a bit, threw up (he was drunk) and then came back. The rocket was designed by a dipsomaniac high school teacher, and was developed entirely independently on a tiny fraction of the huge budget the government has expended on not getting to the Moon. Naturally, the President orders that everything possible is done to ensure that this incredible story is rewritten to include the full support of the US government, and the Press are briefed that, if they want to keep their jobs, they help keep the secret.

The big problem, however, is Smurch himself, who is the most incredible arsehole (he’s described as a ‘congenital hooligan' but there are much shorter words). Lazy, dishonest, violent, lascivious, cruel, astoundingly obnoxious, Jack Smurch is universally hated by everyone he has ever come into contact with. His High School teacher shows off a six inch scar Smurch gave him; his Army Sergeant admits that he put him on point while on patrol in the hope he might get shot. His own mother, when told that he is attempting re-entry, says ‘I hope he gets blown to bits’. When he finally arrives in person, he more than lives up to expectations: he’s unbearable – a gum chewing, aggressively ignorant braggart. He’s also played by Patrick McGoohan which, is wonderful and, although his accent is a bit hit and miss (to say the least, he sounds like Jimmy Cricket auditioning for ‘Guys & Dolls’) McGoohan makes Smurch a truly loathsome character, the sort of bloke you want to keep hitting until your fists are worn down to the wrists.

What’s worse, of course, is that everybody has to put up with his shit: the President, the Press, the F.B.I, the Army, the Air Force – they’re all committed to the lie that he is an inspirational person, a man of the highest courage and calibre, simply because of the enormous benefits of ‘the greatest man in the world’ being an American.  

At an official reception a few days after landing, General Smurch (as he is now) is holding forth on his own genius and courage whilst making crude moves on the waitresses and other female guests and showing everybody the nude lady he has tattooed on his chest. When he is told that he is to embark on a World Tour, visiting China and Russia to spread the American message, he starts to rant about how much he hates the Chinks and the Commies, and how he can't wait to tell them that he’d like to drop a bomb on them all. The President and the Secretary of State exchange glances and, realising that Smurch will always be a diplomatic timebomb waiting to explode, the President nods and the Secretary of State calmly pushes Smurch out of an open eighteenth storey window. I wonder if Mr. Mc remembered this scene when he did exactly the same thing to somebody else in 'Braveheart'?

From a story by American satirist James Thurber, ‘The Greatest Man In The World’ is a bitumen black comedy that benefits enormously from a careful, considered turn from Donald Pleasence and a scenery chewing tour de force of infuriation from McGoohan that you really have to see for yourself --

The Prisoner: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling’ is an odd one, mainly because Patrick McGoohan ain't in it (he was away making ‘Ice Station Zebra’, Howard Hughes favourite film, and appears only in old footage and via a slightly hammy voice over). Instead, Number Six’s mind has been transplanted into the body of a Village agent (Nigel Stock). The story is fairly daft – Number Six is transplanted into another body because Number Two needs to track down the scientist who will be able to reverse the process – and although nothing about this series is rubbish, the episode certainly suffers from the absence of its charismatic star. We do, however, discover that Number Six has been in The Village for a year, and that he has a fiancée (seemingly not very high up on his list of priorities, as she has had no previous role in his plans or thoughts).

The climax of the episode has a Baron Frankenstein on the NHS feel to it, and although the final twist is slightly obvious, it has the bitter irony of some of the earlier episodes, as Number Six outwits his captors, yet remains a prisoner. He’s not bothered, though, he’s still going to escape.    

The Prisoner: Change Of Mind

It's not easy being Number Six, but he clearly finds some degree of comfort and self-satisfaction in his refusal to conform, achieving Village superstar status by virtue of being so difficult to break. In ‘Change Of Mind’, Number Six is officially declared ‘unmutual’ and, funnily enough, he doesn’t like it. Ignored by the other Villagers, and scheduled for ‘conversion’ (something like a lobotomy) Six finds life in the Village increasingly difficult, especially when he is grabbed by a mob and forcibly taken for surgery. The ‘unmutual’ thing is all a ploy, however, by which the new Number Two (the creepy and insidious John Sharp) hopes to soften him up by pretending to mess about with his brain box. It doesn’t work, of course, and Number Two is forced to move his little fat legs rather quickly when Six uses a bit of manipulation of his own to turn the tables on him.

A good but slightly frenzied episode, ‘Change of Mind’ builds on previous stories like ‘Hammer Into Anvil’ and ‘It’s Your Funeral’ by showing The Village not as a whimsical (albeit very sinister) holiday camp, but as a seething cauldron of hatred and resentment, a place of mental and physical violence and, when it suits the powers that be, mob rule. There is perhaps a study to be done on the REST of the inhabitants, the garishly dressed non-entities that aren’t staff or Number Six, the ones that attend the parades and enter the art shows and shuffle interminably about in Mini Mokes from boundary to boundary: what are they all about, and why are they so easy to manipulate? Are they irreparably broken, or just indifferent? And don’t they ever get sick of brass band music?

Pitch: how about a show based on the perspective another Prisoner, one who has long since given in and now just sits and watches Number Six rush about all day long, shouting and failing to escape. In this world, Number Six is a bit of a dickhead, and rude with it.