The Prisoner: Dance of the Dead Rewatch
June 23, 2014 4:22 AM - Season 1, Episode 8 - Subscribe
There's to be a Carnival in The Village — with music, dancing, and happiness, by order. Before that, Number Six wanders out at night. Also there's a cat.
On actually turning on the episode:
-I always forget this entire (excellent) opening sequence where regulation Village scientists try to break 6 with electrodes and needles, and 2 heels them back. Again, I feel that any reliance on MKUltra shit is the sign of a 2 who has no idea what they're doing; MKUltra itself is terrifying partly because one gets zero sense that they knew what they were doing, either.
-(There's nothing like reading about MKUltra to remind you how tuned into the gestalt The Prisoner really was -- it took place at a time when plenty of real people were trying to achieve the fantasy of complete mind control through hallucinogens, hypnosis, and elaborate tricks with looped tape. Some of it bore a startling resemblance to things that happened to 6 in every respect except that on the show, they sort of worked.)
posted by thesmallmachine at 11:09 AM on June 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
-I always forget this entire (excellent) opening sequence where regulation Village scientists try to break 6 with electrodes and needles, and 2 heels them back. Again, I feel that any reliance on MKUltra shit is the sign of a 2 who has no idea what they're doing; MKUltra itself is terrifying partly because one gets zero sense that they knew what they were doing, either.
-(There's nothing like reading about MKUltra to remind you how tuned into the gestalt The Prisoner really was -- it took place at a time when plenty of real people were trying to achieve the fantasy of complete mind control through hallucinogens, hypnosis, and elaborate tricks with looped tape. Some of it bore a startling resemblance to things that happened to 6 in every respect except that on the show, they sort of worked.)
posted by thesmallmachine at 11:09 AM on June 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
-Quite weird to see this one right after "Free For All," in which 6 enters the Town Hall with impunity. Now there's a force field, and everyone acts like there's always been a force field, and also like 6 won't know what Town Hall is even though he stood for election last week. Either the 6of1 order is still slightly chronologically off or the Village is ("Don't tell me there's time travel in it as well") -- a place where narrative is always a little broken, where it's expedient to pretend that what's happening has always been happening.
-I feel like being asked to wear your own tuxedo to the carnival is probably the opposite of the message that "I'm still myself," but 6 gets so few moments of optimism that I guess he can have that one. Goodness knows it's brief enough; by the time he hangs the suit up, it's over.
-(Was the tux as iconic to Bond in the sixties as it is today? I've always assumed that everyone would've read 6's costume as Bond at the time, but maybe it was more ambiguous, or the spy they saw was Drake.)
-New YouTube mashup dream: 6 turns on that radio and the stentorian voice he hears is Cecil Palmer's.
posted by thesmallmachine at 11:38 AM on June 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
-I feel like being asked to wear your own tuxedo to the carnival is probably the opposite of the message that "I'm still myself," but 6 gets so few moments of optimism that I guess he can have that one. Goodness knows it's brief enough; by the time he hangs the suit up, it's over.
-(Was the tux as iconic to Bond in the sixties as it is today? I've always assumed that everyone would've read 6's costume as Bond at the time, but maybe it was more ambiguous, or the spy they saw was Drake.)
-New YouTube mashup dream: 6 turns on that radio and the stentorian voice he hears is Cecil Palmer's.
posted by thesmallmachine at 11:38 AM on June 23, 2014 [3 favorites]
-I habitually 2's line as "This is your world now; I am your world now," but actually there's no "now" in the sentence -- why would the Village acknowledge that there was a past to alter, unless it has some specific reason?
-I thought I was bringing up MKUltra too soon, but honestly, "Dance of the Dead's" depiction of '50s and '60s-era brainwashing experiments is one of the most direct and realistic in the series -- in its ineffectiveness, in its sadism, in its total destructiveness. Nothing about that changes because 2 is holding it back from our hero for the moment.
posted by thesmallmachine at 11:55 AM on June 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
-I thought I was bringing up MKUltra too soon, but honestly, "Dance of the Dead's" depiction of '50s and '60s-era brainwashing experiments is one of the most direct and realistic in the series -- in its ineffectiveness, in its sadism, in its total destructiveness. Nothing about that changes because 2 is holding it back from our hero for the moment.
posted by thesmallmachine at 11:55 AM on June 23, 2014 [1 favorite]
Maybe they've locked out 6 since they know he's not going to play the game?
Or at least not that way.
posted by RainyJay at 3:10 PM on June 23, 2014
Or at least not that way.
posted by RainyJay at 3:10 PM on June 23, 2014
I couldn't help but notice how Number Two has a way of popping up out of nowhere in this episode. Not always, but several times, she doesn't seem to make an entrance from anywhere, she's just suddenly there. And not just to Six, either. I went back just to see just how many times that happened:
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 5:23 PM on June 23, 2014 [2 favorites]
- In the control room during Six's "treatment"
- When Six is on the balcony, stroking the cat and watching the parade
- On the beach, when she first appears in her Peter Pan costume (aside: not only in the costume, but also striking the classic Peter Pan pose)
- The final scene, in the room with the teletype
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 5:23 PM on June 23, 2014 [2 favorites]
I also noticed that the cat is in 6's apartment when he runs out and in 2's office a moment later, when she comes in to take the observer's call. They both move pretty quickly, it seems, when they want to.
posted by thesmallmachine at 5:54 PM on June 23, 2014
posted by thesmallmachine at 5:54 PM on June 23, 2014
Questions are a burden to others, and answers a prison for oneself.
posted by isthmus at 8:51 AM on June 24, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by isthmus at 8:51 AM on June 24, 2014 [2 favorites]
Another bit I appreciated: when the town crier is making his proclamation of the Carnival, afterwards, when you have shots of the crowd from a distance, it's all cheering and band-playing and umbrella-twirling...but during the proclamation, there's a close-up or two of the people listening, and their faces have some of the most despondent expressions you'll ever see on television.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:43 AM on June 25, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:43 AM on June 25, 2014 [3 favorites]
I'm assuming that the "other people" who choose your costume for Carnival are 2 and maybe the cat, and that she took the opportunity to dress everyone as a parody of their own self-image. The self-important doctor is Napoleon, a costume which also plays on his pose of perfect reason with the old gag of the Napoleon delusion (a trope Prisoner would take to the point of absurdity in "The Girl Who Was Death"). It's also a literal cutting down to size; he's towered conspicuously over 2 in every scene they share, and their story has been about her increasing her control over him, so it makes sense to dress him as a man who was archetypically tiny (if, to give the facts their due, not actually tiny).
The supercilious maid is Queen Elizabeth, while 6's observer, who works for the Village but can't control her qualms about the job, gets a costume that chides her both for adopting an excessive air of innocence and for questionable control of her charges. 6 is self-explanatory. In each case, the point is that the Village knows the role you're trying to play, the one you think is fooling everybody, and in the Village's opinion it's not working.
posted by thesmallmachine at 2:15 PM on June 25, 2014 [4 favorites]
The supercilious maid is Queen Elizabeth, while 6's observer, who works for the Village but can't control her qualms about the job, gets a costume that chides her both for adopting an excessive air of innocence and for questionable control of her charges. 6 is self-explanatory. In each case, the point is that the Village knows the role you're trying to play, the one you think is fooling everybody, and in the Village's opinion it's not working.
posted by thesmallmachine at 2:15 PM on June 25, 2014 [4 favorites]
I like this episode, but I get he feel that it's more of s setting-up episode, teaching both us and 6 how things work in the village. I can't draw a lot of broader inferences and themes from it.
and she is really one of the most personally terrible of the 2's, and certainly the worst among the 2's who are actually good at the job.
What makes her creepier is that all the while she's friendly and even flirtatious.
Either the 6of1 order is still slightly chronologically off
I don't think there is a perfect order. I think practically, the first two or three were probably all written simultaneously, and there just wasn't time to build in absolutely dovetailing chronology. For example, I really love the artifact of the air dates which lets them bookend Leo McKern. I'd love that to be strictly chronologically true, but Chimes of Big Ben just can't be the second episode. There are probably lots of little conflicts like that and the nature of Town Hall seems to be one of them. But I can deal with them by categorizing what we see as the memories of a man whose recall can't be entirely trustworthy.
But it does show him a bit further along, I think, than Free For All. I don't think the No. 6 of this episode is naive enough to expect that he can quickly organize a mass escape. He's settling in for a longer conflict, trying to learn about the enemy and test limits. He's even picking up the local color: He answers "Be seeing you," with "And you," and he's clearly heard "Questions are a burden to others..." enough times to find it annoying rather than puzzling. (Though not quite enough to realize quite the extent of the surveillance yet.)
a place where narrative is always a little broken, where it's expedient to pretend that what's happening has always been happening.
That's a nice answer: We've always been at war with eastasia.
A couple of random things that stood out to me this time around:
The terrarium on his coffee table: Now, they were, in fact, a fad around the time that the show was made. So, seeing a terrarium in someone's house would have been unremarkable. But this one is much larger than they usually were, meant to catch attention, I'd say, and the symbol of a little closed ecosystem in a jar is inescapable, particularly given 6's remark that he refused to live in a fishbowl.
How small the number of guests at the Carnival was given what we've seen of the population of the village: It can't be the whole Village by any means. I wonder what the criteria for an invitation were.
In asking questions and making himself a burden, 6 gets the answer that the Village has been there a long time -- and it looks like it has been, too. So it's odd that we never see anyone pregnant. There are several possible answers, but I don't have any feeling which one is right.
If I had to try and pull out something broader, I'd say that here is the very beginning of No 6's understanding that this is the biggest struggle of his life. And that one of the themes of the series is to talk to us about what we can do when the game is rigged, but we can't get out of it. But here, I'm starting to float from the hot air piling up inside me....
posted by tyllwin at 10:02 PM on June 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
and she is really one of the most personally terrible of the 2's, and certainly the worst among the 2's who are actually good at the job.
What makes her creepier is that all the while she's friendly and even flirtatious.
Either the 6of1 order is still slightly chronologically off
I don't think there is a perfect order. I think practically, the first two or three were probably all written simultaneously, and there just wasn't time to build in absolutely dovetailing chronology. For example, I really love the artifact of the air dates which lets them bookend Leo McKern. I'd love that to be strictly chronologically true, but Chimes of Big Ben just can't be the second episode. There are probably lots of little conflicts like that and the nature of Town Hall seems to be one of them. But I can deal with them by categorizing what we see as the memories of a man whose recall can't be entirely trustworthy.
But it does show him a bit further along, I think, than Free For All. I don't think the No. 6 of this episode is naive enough to expect that he can quickly organize a mass escape. He's settling in for a longer conflict, trying to learn about the enemy and test limits. He's even picking up the local color: He answers "Be seeing you," with "And you," and he's clearly heard "Questions are a burden to others..." enough times to find it annoying rather than puzzling. (Though not quite enough to realize quite the extent of the surveillance yet.)
a place where narrative is always a little broken, where it's expedient to pretend that what's happening has always been happening.
That's a nice answer: We've always been at war with eastasia.
A couple of random things that stood out to me this time around:
The terrarium on his coffee table: Now, they were, in fact, a fad around the time that the show was made. So, seeing a terrarium in someone's house would have been unremarkable. But this one is much larger than they usually were, meant to catch attention, I'd say, and the symbol of a little closed ecosystem in a jar is inescapable, particularly given 6's remark that he refused to live in a fishbowl.
How small the number of guests at the Carnival was given what we've seen of the population of the village: It can't be the whole Village by any means. I wonder what the criteria for an invitation were.
In asking questions and making himself a burden, 6 gets the answer that the Village has been there a long time -- and it looks like it has been, too. So it's odd that we never see anyone pregnant. There are several possible answers, but I don't have any feeling which one is right.
If I had to try and pull out something broader, I'd say that here is the very beginning of No 6's understanding that this is the biggest struggle of his life. And that one of the themes of the series is to talk to us about what we can do when the game is rigged, but we can't get out of it. But here, I'm starting to float from the hot air piling up inside me....
posted by tyllwin at 10:02 PM on June 26, 2014 [2 favorites]
There are probably lots of little conflicts like that and the nature of Town Hall seems to be one of them. But I can deal with them by categorizing what we see as the memories of a man whose recall can't be entirely trustworthy.
The need to struggle with the breakages is definitely part of what's attractive about the show; watching it always feels somewhat collaborative. I quite like the memory reading and I'll be thinking of it as I continue to rewatch.
I feel like its approach to continuity is as subversive today as it was in 1967, but in the opposite way: then, the striking thing was that it had continuity, and now it's that it prioritizes character and mood over strict timelines and rules.
He's even picking up the local color: He answers "Be seeing you," with "And you," and he's clearly heard "Questions are a burden to others..." enough times to find it annoying rather than puzzling.
And to work on the speaker in a concentrated way this time -- to seriously question, probe at the statement, rather than just react and insult.
posted by thesmallmachine at 1:46 AM on June 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
The need to struggle with the breakages is definitely part of what's attractive about the show; watching it always feels somewhat collaborative. I quite like the memory reading and I'll be thinking of it as I continue to rewatch.
I feel like its approach to continuity is as subversive today as it was in 1967, but in the opposite way: then, the striking thing was that it had continuity, and now it's that it prioritizes character and mood over strict timelines and rules.
He's even picking up the local color: He answers "Be seeing you," with "And you," and he's clearly heard "Questions are a burden to others..." enough times to find it annoying rather than puzzling.
And to work on the speaker in a concentrated way this time -- to seriously question, probe at the statement, rather than just react and insult.
posted by thesmallmachine at 1:46 AM on June 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
By the way, are we placing Checkmate next in the order?
posted by tyllwin at 7:54 PM on June 27, 2014
posted by tyllwin at 7:54 PM on June 27, 2014
This one is strange to me as it seems to run out of time before it runs out of plot: the ending is rather abrupt and inconclusive.
Two asks Six, rather dismissively, "haven't you learned anything yet?" But what did she intend him to learn? That everything in the Village is a masquerade?
And what did Two hope to get out of this? It doesn't seem to work much towards getting information out of Six. Was disorienting him, and his perception of reality, her entire plan all along? To break him down for the next Number Two?
A few more specific things:
1. Six's death sentence, and the murderous mob of villagers chasing him? I think it all gets reset at the end of the episode, and next time we start back in placid-mode Village.
So this is another demonstration of how utterly controlled the villagers are -- that Six must assume that most if not all of them are tools that can and will be used against him. It seems to me this is one of the running motifs of many episodes: Six must pick someone to trust, but then that trust is broken.
2. The teletype machine: what is its significance? Six tries to destroy it; it continues to work despite apparently being destroyed; Two laughs at him.
Is it just another "messing with Six's perception" moment? Or more of a "the call is coming from inside the house" thing -- Six thought he'd found some link to the outside, but it ended up being just another staged prop.
(Along similar lines: was the radio transmission that Six listened to real, or again something that he was being fed?)
3. ROLAND WALTER DUTTON. It's highly unusual for the system to identify somebody by name rather than by number: why him and why here? (Cobb is named in Arrival, but only by Six.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 1:53 PM on June 30, 2014 [1 favorite]
Two asks Six, rather dismissively, "haven't you learned anything yet?" But what did she intend him to learn? That everything in the Village is a masquerade?
And what did Two hope to get out of this? It doesn't seem to work much towards getting information out of Six. Was disorienting him, and his perception of reality, her entire plan all along? To break him down for the next Number Two?
A few more specific things:
1. Six's death sentence, and the murderous mob of villagers chasing him? I think it all gets reset at the end of the episode, and next time we start back in placid-mode Village.
So this is another demonstration of how utterly controlled the villagers are -- that Six must assume that most if not all of them are tools that can and will be used against him. It seems to me this is one of the running motifs of many episodes: Six must pick someone to trust, but then that trust is broken.
2. The teletype machine: what is its significance? Six tries to destroy it; it continues to work despite apparently being destroyed; Two laughs at him.
Is it just another "messing with Six's perception" moment? Or more of a "the call is coming from inside the house" thing -- Six thought he'd found some link to the outside, but it ended up being just another staged prop.
(Along similar lines: was the radio transmission that Six listened to real, or again something that he was being fed?)
3. ROLAND WALTER DUTTON. It's highly unusual for the system to identify somebody by name rather than by number: why him and why here? (Cobb is named in Arrival, but only by Six.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 1:53 PM on June 30, 2014 [1 favorite]
a sadistic middle-aged Neverland
I love this turn of phrase, BTW.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:05 PM on July 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
I love this turn of phrase, BTW.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:05 PM on July 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
This one is strange to me as it seems to run out of time before it runs out of plot: the ending is rather abrupt and inconclusive.
It is, and it's weird, because the pacing is quite stately and I'm sure they could've made room for a coda if they'd wanted to.
2. The teletype machine: what is its significance? Six tries to destroy it; it continues to work despite apparently being destroyed; Two laughs at him.
Is it just another "messing with Six's perception" moment? Or more of a "the call is coming from inside the house" thing -- Six thought he'd found some link to the outside, but it ended up being just another staged prop.
I suspect the latter (and I like the image of a prop; lots of little fragments of stage theater in this one, from the stock costumes to the meaningless props and sound cues to the 2 who can fly, who can fly, who can fly).
3. ROLAND WALTER DUTTON. It's highly unusual for the system to identify somebody by name rather than by number: why him and why here? (Cobb is named in Arrival, but only by Six.)
Never sure whether to blame this on in-world forces or on writers who didn't get the memo, although if it was that simple, why wouldn't the crew just swap in numbers? It's not like McGoohan's production role was that of an ordinary actor who had no choice but to deliver things as written.
I think the use of Dutton's full name has a nice nightmarish feel, the way little details catch the brain in nightmares, but I am nowhere near an explanation for it. Maybe the Village just gives your name back when it's killing you as a matter of course -- I mean, we know they reuse the number. Waste not, want not.
posted by thesmallmachine at 6:05 PM on July 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
It is, and it's weird, because the pacing is quite stately and I'm sure they could've made room for a coda if they'd wanted to.
2. The teletype machine: what is its significance? Six tries to destroy it; it continues to work despite apparently being destroyed; Two laughs at him.
Is it just another "messing with Six's perception" moment? Or more of a "the call is coming from inside the house" thing -- Six thought he'd found some link to the outside, but it ended up being just another staged prop.
I suspect the latter (and I like the image of a prop; lots of little fragments of stage theater in this one, from the stock costumes to the meaningless props and sound cues to the 2 who can fly, who can fly, who can fly).
3. ROLAND WALTER DUTTON. It's highly unusual for the system to identify somebody by name rather than by number: why him and why here? (Cobb is named in Arrival, but only by Six.)
Never sure whether to blame this on in-world forces or on writers who didn't get the memo, although if it was that simple, why wouldn't the crew just swap in numbers? It's not like McGoohan's production role was that of an ordinary actor who had no choice but to deliver things as written.
I think the use of Dutton's full name has a nice nightmarish feel, the way little details catch the brain in nightmares, but I am nowhere near an explanation for it. Maybe the Village just gives your name back when it's killing you as a matter of course -- I mean, we know they reuse the number. Waste not, want not.
posted by thesmallmachine at 6:05 PM on July 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
it took place at a time when plenty of real people were trying to achieve the fantasy of complete mind control through hallucinogens, hypnosis, and elaborate tricks with looped tape.
One of the things that really resonated with me in the first episode is the series of photos of Our Hero, with a corresponding narration from Two. They can observe his every movement, and make inferences about his mental state from them (even with a high degree of accuracy!) yet he is not entirely known.
Two in this episode says they want him unbroken, that he could have a future with them. That, more than the "information, information" line from the opening narration, is the key. They don't want sodium-pentothal truth, a tortured or explanation. They want his free will.
Our Hero would make a terrifying Two, I think.
I couldn't help but notice how Number Two has a way of popping up out of nowhere in this episode.
Like the cat.
The initial scene with Our Hero and the woman Two sets him up with (240?)- it reminds me of the Dip game I'm playing now: Yes, I'm Paranoid. But Am I Paranoid Enough?
Carnival is from Latin, a "farewell to meat" before Lent. The using up of forbidden food items before a fast. Our Hero's costume is his own suit, the Village wants him to play himself and considers his own actions to be a role deliberately chosen, like the revelers. But does he?
The Village wants to appear to run on a deontological system, yet seems to always treat people as means, not ends.
I watched the execrable remake, with Caviezel and McKellen. I think one made now, with the full weight of the NSA revelations and done in very, very close to the same style as the original (isolated location, mind games, overwhelming surveillance) would be very on-the-nose.
And very worth doing.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:29 PM on July 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
One of the things that really resonated with me in the first episode is the series of photos of Our Hero, with a corresponding narration from Two. They can observe his every movement, and make inferences about his mental state from them (even with a high degree of accuracy!) yet he is not entirely known.
Two in this episode says they want him unbroken, that he could have a future with them. That, more than the "information, information" line from the opening narration, is the key. They don't want sodium-pentothal truth, a tortured or explanation. They want his free will.
Our Hero would make a terrifying Two, I think.
I couldn't help but notice how Number Two has a way of popping up out of nowhere in this episode.
Like the cat.
The initial scene with Our Hero and the woman Two sets him up with (240?)- it reminds me of the Dip game I'm playing now: Yes, I'm Paranoid. But Am I Paranoid Enough?
Carnival is from Latin, a "farewell to meat" before Lent. The using up of forbidden food items before a fast. Our Hero's costume is his own suit, the Village wants him to play himself and considers his own actions to be a role deliberately chosen, like the revelers. But does he?
The Village wants to appear to run on a deontological system, yet seems to always treat people as means, not ends.
I watched the execrable remake, with Caviezel and McKellen. I think one made now, with the full weight of the NSA revelations and done in very, very close to the same style as the original (isolated location, mind games, overwhelming surveillance) would be very on-the-nose.
And very worth doing.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:29 PM on July 12, 2014 [2 favorites]
Our Hero makes a comment before the tribunal: "Three judges, just like the French revolution." I couldn't find any references to the Terror's use of specifically three judges, but the Soviet Terror and purges were famoulsy the Troika.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:46 AM on July 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:46 AM on July 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
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(It took remarkable restraint on the show's part not to set the word-association scene on the stone boat.)
Anyway, I hope I can be forgiven for being distracted by the power of Morris' presence. I've always found her sardonic camp-masculinity as inspiring as her cruelty is frightening -- and she is really one of the most personally terrible of the 2's, and certainly the worst among the 2's who are actually good at the job. Most of the competent ones try to win 6 over by making him complicit, or making him like them. Morris' 2 just wants to show him fear in a handful of pixie dust, and it actually works pretty well.
posted by thesmallmachine at 10:42 AM on June 23, 2014 [1 favorite]