Fall Out (The Prisoner)

"Fall Out" is the seventeenth and final episode of the allegorical British science fiction series The Prisoner, which starred Patrick McGoohan as the incarcerated Number Six. The episode originally aired in the UK on ITV on 1 February 1968, and was first broadcast in the United States on CBS on 21 September 1968.

"Fall Out" generated controversy when it was originally aired, because the last third of the episode was designed to be very obscure and be open to interpretation. The reception forced McGoohan, who wrote and directed the episode, to go into hiding for a period of time because he was hounded at his own home by baffled viewers demanding explanations. This episode omits the usual long opening and instead shows a recap of the penultimate episode, "Once Upon a Time". This is also the only episode in the series in which the show's main outdoors location, Portmeirion, is given a specific credit in the opening titles. This came about as a result of an agreement with Portmeirion's architect, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, that the location would not be revealed until the final episode.

Plot summary

After breaking Number Two's will from "Once Upon a Time", Number Six asks The Supervisor to "meet Number One". After being allowed to change into his own clothes, Number Six is led to a cavernous chamber bearing resemblance to a British courtroom, including a presiding judge and a large assembly, its members wearing masks and robes; The Supervisor joins its ranks after directing Number Six to his seat. The room also contains a large cylindrical object with a mechanical eye watching the room, and is labeled "1". The judge announces that Number Six has passed the ultimate test and won the right to be an individual, and with that occasion, there are many matters of ceremony to be completed in the "transfer of ultimate power".

The caged room from "Once Upon a Time" is lowered into the chamber and Number Two's body is taken into a laboratory in the chamber. His body is revived, and he is given a make-over. Both he and Number 48, a young modishly-dressed man, are seemingly put on trial. Number 48 refuses to conform, and causes a ruckus in the chamber by causing the assembly to sing along to "Dem Bones" before he is restrained, while Number 2 questions why he was revived and defies the authority of the process. Both are taken away.

The judge shows Number Six that his home is being prepared for his return, and gives him a large sum of money in traveller's cheques, his passport, the keys to his London home and his car, and a purse of petty cash. The judge then offers Number Six to address the assembly, but Number Six can only utter "I feel..." before the assembly rambunctiously drowns him out by clapping and pounding on their desks. Number Six is then given the opportunity to meet Number One by ascending in the metal structure after seeing 48 and 2 held in tubes labeled "orbit 48" and "orbit 2" next to an empty tube labeled ominously "orbit" with no number (noteworthy as 6 had been told he's no longer to be referred "a number of any kind"). Number Six sees the hooded figure of Number One watching surveillance videos of Number Six; Number Six tries to unmask the figure, first revealing a chimpanzee mask, then what appears to be a crazed version of Number Six (suggesting that Number One was, somehow, a perverted element of Number Six's personality) before Number One leads Number Six on a chase, eventually locking himself in a room above the surveillance floor. As he leaves the metal cylinder Number Six realizes it is a rocket and starts its launch sequence, sending the assembly and the Village into a panic and mass evacuation.

As Number Six leaves, he helps to free Numbers Two and 48, and along with the Butler they successfully engage in a gun battle with the armed guards, killing several of the guards in the process. Number Six and his three confederates then make their escape in the caged room, revealed to be on the back of a Scammell Highwayman low loader. As they leave the Village, the rocket launches overhead. The last shot of the village in the series shows it completely evacuated, except for Rover which is destroyed upon activation by the flames of the rocket. As the escapees drive along the A20 road towards London, Number 48 gets off and proceeds to hitch-hike. The remaining three stop outside of the Palace of Westminster; Number Two thanks Number Six and enters the building via the peers' entrance, while Number Six and the Butler return to Six's former home and find The Prisoner's car. As he drives off, the door to his home opens for the Butler in the same electronic/automatic manner as the doors in the Village. The number on the door is 1. (This was also the case in the standard opening sequence when Number Six returns to his home just prior to being gassed into unconsciousness, and in "Many Happy Returns", when Number Six was temporarily allowed to "escape" from the Village.)

The final moments repeat the show's normal opening sequence without the music (or the cloudy sky shot), showing Number Six driving in his Lotus 7 car towards the camera.

Critical reception

At the time "Fall Out" was first broadcast there were only three television channels available in the UK and the long-awaited final episode of the series had one of the largest ever viewing audiences seen until then for a television program.^[1] As VCRs did not become generally available until some years later,^[2] most consumers did not have access to any video recording equipment and the fleeting glimpse of No 1's face was missed by many viewers.^[1] This, along with the intentional ambiguity of the finale caused bafflement and a great deal of anger amongst the public and McGoohan claimed he was ‘hounded’ out of the country after the episode was shown.^[2] The popular press joined in the ‘protest’ against this ‘rubbish’ McGoohan had foisted on the viewing public and he never worked in Britain again.^[2]

Additional guest cast

• Supervisor: Peter Swanwick
• Delegate: Michael Miller
• The Butler: Angelo Muscat^[3]

Shattered Visage

The comic book sequel mini-series Shattered Visage (1988) opens with the text of a classified intelligence report on the Village. It describes the events of this episode and the previous as "a theatrical tour-de-force involving actors as well as hallucinogenic drugs," organised by Leo McKern's Number Two, in which Two "staged his own death and resurrection." Further explanation of this episode is suggested when Number Two narrates the life of Number Six and recounts how a psychologically broken Six was convinced to choose a number - Number One. The comic suggests that the final sequences of this episode, from the gun battle to Six driving his Lotus Seven, represent a skewed perception of actual events.

Shattered Visage interprets the inauguration of Number Six in this episode as psychologically entrapping him. Where before the Village sought to crush any sense of free will Number Six possessed, here its administration claims to respect his self-identity and offers him the reward of leadership. This position, however, requires that Number Six accept that he is a number - Number One. According to the comic, Six's acceptance of the number and abhorrence for being a number breaks his mind. It is implied that all this is initiated by the Degree Absolute interrogation process of the previous episode.

Miscellany

Cast notes

• Leo McKern, Alexis Kanner, and Kenneth Griffith all appear in previous episodes of the series. While McKern's Number Two is the same one that previously appeared, Kanner's Number 48 is almost certainly a different character to the one(s) he played in "Living in Harmony" and "The Girl Who Was Death", but it is unclear whether Griffith's character is the same one that was the Number Two in the latter episode. It is, however, reasonably common in The Prisoner for actors to play different characters in different episodes.
• Leo McKern's hair is trimmed much shorter in this final episode than in "Once Upon a Time" (and his beard is absent entirely) because he changed his appearance during the year-long production gap between filming the two episodes. The show accommodated this by showing McKern's face covered in shaving cream and being shaved before he is revived.
• All six main stars of this episode are now dead - Peter Swanwick (The Supervisor) died in 1968, Angelo Muscat (The Butler) died in 1977, Leo McKern (Number Two) died in 2002, Alexis Kanner (Number 48) died in 2003, Kenneth Griffith (The Judge) died in 2006, and then finally Patrick McGoohan (Number Six) died in 2009.

Production notes

• This is the only episode to feature a pop song. As Number Six approaches the large "court" chamber and again during the gun battle, The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" is played in the background.
• According to the book The Prisoner by Robert Fairclough, McGoohan was informed that production was canceled on the series immediately following filming of the preceding episode "The Girl Who Was Death" and was given only a week to write a finale to conclude the storyline started in "Once Upon a Time", which had been filmed a year earlier. (Fairclough's account is, however, in contradiction to virtually all others, which state that McGoohan knew when he left for America to act in the Hollywood film, Ice Station Zebra, that there would be only four more episodes produced from that point, starting with "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" during his absence and ending with a finale; indeed, most agree that this last happened because a scheduled production break was scrapped when two series of 13 episodes were reduced to one of seventeen due to ITC chief Lew Grade deciding that the actor/producer was taking too long and spending too much money.) In order to save time and cut costs, "Fall Out" reused several sets from "Girl", most notably the rocket control room. Two guest actors from the episode, Kenneth Griffith and Alexis Kanner, were also recruited to play different characters in "Fall Out" (this was in fact Kanner's third appearance on the series in only a few weeks, as he previously played Number Eight alias "The Kid" in the Western themed episode "Living in Harmony"). According to Fairclough, McGoohan was so pressed for time that Griffith was asked to write his own dialogue.
• Patrick McGoohan receives no onscreen acting credit in this episode. The episode opens with the series title superimposed over the first moments of the "Once Upon a Time" recap, with the location credit, episode title, guest stars, David Tomblin's producer credit and McGoohan's "written and directed by" credit over aerial footage of Portmeirion following that sequence. At the end, after the names of Kanner, McKern, and Muscat appear as captions over the actors themselves (still in character), an extreme aerial shot of the Lotus on London streets (the driver is not actually recognizable) is captioned simply, "Prisoner". Nor does McGoohan receive his usual executive producer credit; in "Living in Harmony" and "The Girl Who Was Death" it is replaced with a large "Starring Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner" credit, but here his name appears onscreen only as writer/director.
• McGoohan has very little dialogue in this final episode, save for brief exchanges with the Judge and Number 48, his unintelligible speech at the podium (only the words "I feel, that despite..." can be heard, the rest being drowned out by the "jury"), and a few slogans heard in the archive footage.
• The jukeboxes featured in the alcoves of the cave as Number 6 is led to the court room are a Seeburg LPC480, Seeburg Mustang Discotheque, Seeburg SS160 Stereo Showcase, and a Wurlitzer 2300.

References

Bibliography

• Fairclough, Robert, ed. The Prisoner: The Original Scripts. vol. 2. foreword by Roger Parkes. Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 978-1903111819. OCLC 61145235.  - script of episode

External links

• The Prisoner: Fall Out at the Internet Movie Database
• A page at The Straight Dope discussing the final episode
• The Fall Out Theory
• Articles and views on the episode