But the most unnerving thing about the episode is the way it depicts Number Six’s fellow Villagers as mysterious, fundamentally unknowable people. Some of them are brainwashed automatons. Some of them are active agents of the enemy. Some seem reluctant to fulfill their duties, others positively gleeful. They spend their days in endless parades and celebrations, blasting John Philip Sousa marches and screaming at the top of their lungs — except for the times when they’re eerily silent and still.
How can you possibly live in a society constructed of people this unreliable, this unstable, this incapable of conceiving of genuine common good and working towards it together? How can you live with people who’ve collectively abandoned reality?
My latest review of The Prisoner is up at Pop Heist. (Gift link, but please subscribe, it’s worth it!)
Tags: pop heist, the prisoner, TV, TV reviews