It’s been a bad week for fans of genre movies and TV. Patrick McGoohan, creator and star of the cult classic TV series “The Prisoner,” died Tuesday at 80 after a short illness. Ricardo Montalban, star of stage and both the big and small screen, best known for “Fantasy Island” and his role as Khan in “Star Trek,” died Wednesday at 88.
(I was just getting past the passing of Forrest J. Ackerman on Dec. 4. Creator of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine and the comic character Vampirella, “Forry” was the ultimate genre fanboy.)
But let me say a bit more about McGoohan here. His filmography included “Ice Station Zebra,” “Escape from Alcatraz,” “Braveheart,” “A Time to Kill,” and “Secret Agent (aka “Danger Man”), the direct precursor to “The Prisoner.” He won Emmys for his work on “Columbo.”
In my memory, McGoohan will always be the unnamed character known as Number Six in “The Prisoner,” the surreal and cerebral 1960s British series that explored isolation and dehumanization in a super-spy/sci fi environment. Number Six was a former spy held captive in an island resort called The Village, where a mysterious authority, Number Two, tried to get information from him “by hook or by crook.”
Number Six fought in every way he could. He attempted escape, he worked the system, he fomented rebellion among his fellow prisoners. He resisted in ways both subtle and overt, non-violent and violent. He was not willing to bend, and could not be broken.
“I am not a number! I am a free man!” he shouts at the beginning of each episode, a declaration met by laughter from his tormentor.
One of the show’s trademarks was the farewell gesture used by the villagers: Thumb and forefinger form a circle over the eye, then tip forward as if tipping a hat; this is accompanied by the phrase “Be seeing you.” This is a warning that you’re being watched, and a reminder that you won’t be leaving any time soon.
(Some say the gesture also resembles the numeral “6,” a hint that he is actually the secret “Number One” who runs the Village.)
McGoohan once explained his wider concept of the show this way in an interview: “We all live in a little Village. … Your village may be different from other people’s villages, but we are all prisoners.”
In the 1960s, it was meant as a cautionary tale, a warning of how things could be if we weren’t vigilant about our freedoms. But in the brave new world of the 21st century, McGoohan’s fiction is even closer to the truth. The world is smaller, cameras are everywhere, and everyone’s information is online, being tracked for advertising and homeland security purposes.
Be seeing you.
