The Prisoner: A Change of Mind

"Unmutual!"

Wow. This is actually quite a harrowing episode that goes to some very dark and totalitarian places, exploring the nature of tyranny to an extent rarely seen even in The Prisoner. It's almost a common cliche that British science fiction of the post-war, Cold War era deals with themes of totalitarianism, freedom and tyranny, reflecting a nation relieved to have escaped Hitler's clutches and looking nervously over to the Eastern Bloc.

Things are very dark from the start. Number Six is using his private makeshift gym again, until a couple of thugs rough him up a bit for having the effrontery to expect privacy. Things then escalate as he is made to confess before a "committee" which has no interest in protestations of innocence; this is a Stalin-type show trial and the confession of Number Six's bearded predecessor is deeply distressing to observe. Even the absurd surrealism of the committee's appearance is sinister in the same way as the Nazis' goose-stepping; yes, it's silly. But you're too terrified to laugh, which makes the silliness something quite different. And, as though things were not awful enough, a woman is being "treated" for obvious depression in this context. Then we get the sinister "social group", evoking Mao's contemporary Cultural Revolution as dissenters are verbally denounced, although I'd like to think that the rare casting of an actor of Chinese origin here is not stereotyping.

Things get even more horrifying as we turn to the medicalisation of dissent in the hospital- something which, at the time, would very much evoke the USSR of Brezhnev, with its treatment of dissent as psychiatric illness. But then we seem to observe Number Six being lobotomised- something which even Brezhnev saw as beyond the pale. Of course the series has to continue after this, so the lobotomy turns out to have been a charade and the reset button remains available for pressing. But this in no way lessens the horror.

Yes, Number Six sort of turns the tables at the end. But even here he finds the mob mentality a depressingly small-minded one. An extraordinary and outstanding piece of television, which disturbed me far more than any horror film I've ever seen.