Today I learned that the star, who I shall always think of as Number 6, passed away.
The LA Times:
McGoohan himself, who had passed on a chance to be James Bond, was already known to audiences as John Drake, the hero of "Secret Agent,"... "The Prisoner" was something different: Most every other spy, on movies and in television, was a glorified cop doing his (or, rarely, her) master's bidding. To the extent that he was free, it was expressed in a tendency to do things "his own way," but he was always first and foremost a company man. Whether his cause was just was something that he and we alike took for granted. It wasn't part of the deal to question it, or to ask any questions at all.AMC is streaming The Prisoner online here. (Granted, it's in preparation for their dreaded remake...)
By contrast, "The Prisoner" was a television show of ideas -- the inalienable if inconvenient right to self in a world that demands your cooperation, if not capitulation -- which also distinguished it from pretty much every other television show I had ever seen.
Six of One, the prisoner fan society.
And the "U.S. Prisoner Home Page." Source for these quotes, and more:
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own.”
New No.2: “Good day, Number Six.”
No.6: “Number what?”
New No.2: “Six. For official purposes, everyone has a number. Yours is number 6.”
No.6: “I am not a number, I am a person.”
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