Patrick McGoohan died Monday, January 13th.  Creator and star of the milestone British science fiction series, The Prisoner, McGoohan’s influence has been invading our pop culture since the 60s.  In this modern era, where many of McGoohan’s notions and philosophies from The Prisoner have become eerily appropriate and sometimes shockingly true, we can look back and see one of the finest works of futurism presented as entertainment.

For those who have never seen The Prisoner, it revolves around McGoohan’s character Number Six, a former spy who resigns from his post for unknown reasons.  Number Six is abducted and awakes in The Village, an isolated community where he is throughly interrogated, tortured, baited, and tempted into revealing the secret of why he resigned.  Number six is faced with defeating his captors psychological methods of intelligence gathering while fighting to maintain his own identity in a place where all names are taken away and numbers given in their place.  Indoctrination, identity, surveillance, and government imprisonment are themes that run throughout the show.  These themes and many of the shows iconic images have been influential on modern creators, going so far as to be lampooned by The Simpsons on more than one occasion, and having many themes from The Prisoner present in shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica among others.

The story of Number Six does not end with McGoohan’s passing though, AMC is working on a new Prisoner miniseries slated to air in November.  The new versions will have a more global flavor to better show the changes in the global climate since the sixties.  It is slated to star Jim Caviezel as Number Six, and Sir Ian McKellen as the main warder of The Village, Number Two.

- Luke

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