The Prisoner: Checkmate

"It 's not allowed- the cult of the individual!"

A weird but very interesting episode this time, with subtle exploration of themes of totalitarian control through some sharp and nuanced dialogue and a very Brezhnev-like exploration of how dissent can be medicalised as a mental condition.

Yes, we get the visual spectacle early on of a chess game played with real people, but this is just done to introduce chess as a metaphor and introduce us to the likeable “queen” who, sadly, is fated to be used as a pawn-.and to show us a rebellious rook (never referred to as anyone else) who commits the crime of independent thought. It’s interesting, though, that this is followed by Number Six having an interesting and opaque conversation with one of the players, played by no less a figure than George Coulouris, who explains ways of distinguishing prisoners from staff.

The medical scenes are disturbing, with the rook’s individualism being punished by Pavlovian electric shocks and the psychiatrist, a Freudian quack, recommending to the new Number Two (a coasting Peter Wyngarde) that Number Six should be forced to have a “leucotomy”, better known as a lobotomy; in 1967 no longer quite flavour of the month but still legal to perform on a patient without their consent in the UK. Even Brezhnev’s Soviet Union had no truck with this barbarity.

Also cruel, though, is the way the queen is conditioned into unrequited love for Number Six. And the end is clever; Number Six is betrayed by his own accomplices who are in the end unable to accept him as a fellow prisoner because of his air of authority. This may not be the most high concept of episodes but it’s quietly one of the cleverer scripts.