The Prisoner Episode 5 “The Schizoid Man”

The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series broadcast in the UK from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968. “The Schizoid Man” is the 5th episode of The Prison Episodes.

In an extremely complex plot of bluff and double bluff, Number 2 brings a lookalike of Number 6, referred to as “Number 12″, to The Village. Contrary to some reports, Number 12 (also played by McGoohan, apart from a few shots with a double) is not a clone, just an “agent” of whoever runs The Village who happens to bear a (very) strong resemblance to Number 6. Details in the final scenes of the episode reveal Number 12 to have a family outside The Village.

The “real” Number 6 is subjected to aversion therapy to alter his tastes and instincts, and then drugged to wipe his memory of the treatment. When he awakes, he is treated as “Number 12″, while the lookalike assumes the role of Number 6. The real Number 6 is informed by Number 2 of the plan to break “Number 6″ (actually the imposter) by convincing him that he is not Number 6 at all.

The two engage in various challenges to prove which is the real Number 6, the aversion therapy resulting in the imposter behaving more like Number 6 than the real one does. The plot is unusual among the series, as it seems that Number 2’s plan is not designed to reveal why Number 6 resigned, but simply to make him accept his place in The Village, having consistently rejected the moniker “Number 6″ in the past.

At the end of the episode, the real Number 6 overcomes the imposter, who is then killed by Rover. Pretending to be the imposter, he reports to Number 2 that Number 6 is dead. Having “failed”, he is put onto the helicopter to leave The Village. Blindfolded, and believing himself to have duped Number 2 into letting him escape, the helicopter returns to The Village, where Number 2 reveals that he had deduced the truth due to his inaccurate answering of a trivial question about Number 12’s family life just before boarding.

15 November 2009

The Prisoner Episode 5 “The Schizoid Man”

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