Be seeing you

Where am I?
In the village.
What do you want?
Information.
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling. We want information.
You won't get it.
By hook or by crook, we will.
Who are you?
The new Number 2.
Who is Number 1?
You are Number 6.
I am not a number, I am a free man!

Just finished watching the final (17th) episode of The Prisoner. And yes, stop reading if you don't want the big reveal spoiled. I hadn't seen the series since I was a kid, but Rover has always been an idelible image in my mind. Number 6 wants only his freedom - and when he eventually recovers it, the door to his London apartment opens on its own, just as it had in The Village. Unfortunately, what has happened before, will happen again... and again... history repeats itself, and spins 'round and 'round like the wheel of progress - or the symbol of the Village, the penny-farthing. This defeatist cyclical message is also present in Pink Floyd's The Wall. The Wall (of the prison?) is torn down, only to be rebuilt and brought down again ad infinitum. It is progress that series creator and star (and sometimes writer/director) Patrick McGoohan believes is moving too quickly - and that mankind, as a result, is doomed.

The identity of his captor, Number 1, is revealed in the series finale "Fall Out" (in 52 frames or so) to be Number 6, himself - an interesting argument that we are all prisoners to ourselves. Great series - a desert island-- or should I say Village-- DVD set if ever there was one.