Fall Out (Guide to “The Prisoner”)

‘The whole Earth … as the Village.’
‘That is my hope. What’s yours?’
‘I’d like to be the first man on the moon.’

The impact of The Prisoner upon society was explosive, transforming art, storytelling and popular culture like no other television programme before or since. Patrick McGoohan spearheaded the project in his role as an unnamed man, held against his will in a strange isolated Italianate village, tormented by a succession of individuals, each calling themselves Number 2, whose true motivations and intentions towards him remained a constant mystery.

The man, known only as Number 6, attempted escape, was befriended and betrayed, underwent hallucinogenic journeys, and experienced many strange revelations, before the series achieved its cathartic climax.

The Prisoner was ahead of its time, and in this book, Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore take on the task of debriefing the programme and attempting to make sense of the many interpretations and readings which have been placed on it. This is not the book with all the answers but it may help you ask the right questions.

Introduction by film editor and writer an Ian Rakoff.

394pp. 9×6 paperback.
ISBN 978-1-84583-862-1 (pb)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alan Stevens has written, edited and developed numerous publications on telefantasy series, including Doctor Who, Blake’s 7 and The Prisoner. He is also co-author of the Telos books Liberation: The Unofficial and Unauthorised guide to Blake’s 7 and By Your Command: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Battlestar Galactica Volumes 1 and 2. Since the early 1990s, he has produced a number of documentaries, serials and dramas for radio and independent audio release, including the Blake’s 7/Doctor Who spin-off series Kaldor City and the Gothic horror time-travelling adventure Faction Paradox. He is currently based in the South East of England, and runs his own audio production company, Magic Bullet Productions (kaldorcity.com).

Fiona Moore was born and raised in Toronto, but has lived in the UK since 1997. She has a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and is currently Senior Lecturer in International Human Resource Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has written non-fiction on a wide variety of subjects, from the identities of Taiwanese businesspeople to the culture of drag queens, and is also co-author of the Telos books Liberation: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Blake’s 7 and By Your Command: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Battlestar Galactica Volumes 1 and 2. Her fiction and poetry have been published in, among others, Asimov, Interzone and Dark Horizons.