THE UNMUTUAL PRISONER ARTICLE ARCHIVE
The Graphic Prisoner: Reviewing The Uncertainty Machine and Revisiting Shattered Visage
By Frédérik Sisa
THE UNCERTAINTY MACHINE
When we're first introduced to Breen, he's a man on the run drawing on his experience as a covert government operative to evade capture. Flashbacks reveals that his rogue status as a “high-ranking spy” wanted for treason is part of an orchestrated plan to obtain access to the secret “Pandora” project and use it, whatever it is, as bait to attract the attention of a sinister and near-mythical entity. That entity, of course, is the Village, which is causing headaches for agencies like MI5 through bizarre and disparate activities from the theft of Einstein's brain to kidnapping, information brokering, and acts of terror. All the while, Breen deals with the personal aftermath of an ops gone wrong and the disappearance, possibly though abduction by the Village, of his lover and fellow agent Casey.
Written by Peter Milligan and drawn by Corin Lorimer in an appealingly stylized rather than photographic realism, The Prisoner: The Uncertainty Machine offers a solid premise for a spy thriller. And from that premise, it follows with the paranoid twists and turns of character motivations, deceptions, actions, and reactions that are genre conventions in espionage fiction. Familiar elements from the original TV series make an appearance, from the Portmeirion setting and the Village's numbered hierarchy to rover, and the plot beats effectively, and sometimes quite dramatically, making disorienting use of simulated realities to destabilize Breen.
Yet for all that the story trades in manipulating our understanding of what's going on and who's telling the truth, none of the narrative maneuvering is layered with the TV's series allegorical quality and thematic complexity, the stuff of so many fan discussions and debates. For example, in the TV series we witnessed Number Six's experiences through the lens of social structures such as elections and education. In The Uncertainty Machine , however, the focus is squarely on the ordinary confrontational dynamics: interrogation, escape, encounters with friends turned foe (maybe), fisticuffs and gunfights, and so on. While we can sympathize with Breen, who seems like a decent enough fellow, his struggle is still that of a spy trying to navigate the dangerously shifting information landscape of opposing forces, without the resonance of the original Number Six's efforts to maintain his integrity as an individual under duress. In other words, we could see the allegory of the individual versus society in the TV series in the form of confrontations between Number Six and Number Two, but there is no equivalent philosophical proxy to see in Breen and his Village opponents. Altogether, The Uncertainty Machine appropriates the style of the TV series without sharing its substance or thematic interests. Some of these appropriations, such as a reference to a previous prisoner who successfully escaped from the Village but went mad, can feel glib and dismissive. Overall, they struggle to justify The Uncertainty Machine as a re-invention of, or at least dialogue with, The Prisoner versus a spy thriller in an original setting.
Style Over Substance
A possible objection to my view that the comic is Prisoner style over substance might come from the fact that Miligan does tackle one of Prisoner fandom's most essential questions: who is Number One? But I'm not convinced that this is the case, for two reasons – one specific to the story itself, on its own terms, and another concerning how the book relates to the original TV series. Briefly, once Breen has survived various interrogation attempts, he successfully makes his way to the source, the ubiquitous Number One, where he learns that the Village mastermind is not a person but a computer fed a steady diet of punch cards by data entry specialists who also then relay its orders. The premise isn't just that Number One is a computer, bringing to mind The General and, these days, AI, but the titular uncertainty machine acting on the basis of chance rather than goals, systematic or otherwise: “Every decision Number One makes. Every action the Village undertakes. It's all perfectly random. And incorruptible. It has no agenda, no malice, it operates purely on zeroes and ones,” explains Mr. Smith, the “office manager” responsible for ensuring that the system works efficiently. He then proceeds to declare, without any apparent irony, that this is a good thing. “Capitalism. Socialist. Fascism. Social Democracy. None of them worked, all ending in mediocrity, terror, or slaughter.” Yet how else would one characterize the Village's actions if not as expressions of mediocrity, terror and slaughter? What sense does it make to judge Number One as incorruptible when it doesn't adhere to any sort of ideal or moral standard? One can't be corrupted when one isn't held to a moral standard in the first place. More fundamentally, if Number One were truly random in its choice of actions, shouldn't we see just as many random acts of kindness sinister acts? To put it in cosmological and existential terms: how is an uncertainty machine any different than the universe itself from our individual perspectives?
In the end, brushing away conceptual illusions, we're left with the spy thriller plot, specifically the reasons why Breen was ordered to infiltrate the Village in the first place. Conveniently, the Village provides him with the opportunity to find out by offering him the position of Number Two, and the story ends with him taking advantage of it to kidnap his superior. This isn't nearly as controversial or upsetting as it would be if the original Number 6 had decided to join the village as its new Number Two. Why should it? In the game, the Village is a purposeless machine and Breen is simply making his next move in his efforts to understand the truth underlying his work as a government operative.
Although I respect the attempt to provide a novel rationale for the Village the most charitable interpretation is that the premise is incomplete, leaving it to possible future installments to develop. It doesn't really work as an explanation for what goes in the story, except in the most fundamental sense that the Village acts and characters like Breen react. Without a why, not even insights into the reason anyone would build and empower the Number One machine in the first place, and without any discussion of its implications by the governments and people impacted by the Village's operations, we're left with no clear stakes. It also doesn't work as a commentary on the original series. Setting aside the lack of textual evidence to support the idea, if we were to view The Prisoner through the lens that perhaps, Fall Out notwithstanding, The Village was really run by a purposeless uncertainty machine, the entire premise would fall apart. It is precisely because of the intentionality , the goals desired by The Village (via Number Two), in opposition to Number Six's interests that the story has stakes and can ask interesting questions about the individual's role in society and the complex calculus of national, even international, security. Personally, I'd be much more open to the idea of the Village run by a mercenary corporation that sells its interrogation and containment services to various governments across the world. (While I don't think the textual evidence in the original series offers any clear support for this interpretation, I also don't think it can be entirely be ruled out, which opens the possibility not available to the uncertain machine interpretation, namely, questions about how economics – the pursuit of profit – influences governmental decisions regarding national security.)
None of this is to say that The Uncertainty Machine is unenjoyable or a “failure.” While I don't find it offers much substance to philosophize with, Breen's efforts to sort out truth from fiction in relation to his supposed allies, as well as his Village antagonists, do make him a sympathetic protagonist who's easy to root for in a story that is thrilling enough when not overthought.
SHATTERED VISAGE
Reading The Uncertainty Machine motivated me to revisit Dean Motter and Mark Askwith's Shattered Vision , the Prisoner “sequel” which readers of The Unmutual might recall I've championed as an underrated and underappreciated work . In revisiting the work, I found confirmation yet again as to how it demonstrates far more depth and sophistication than it's given credit for.
The thing about Dean Motter is that he's not only a brilliant artist but a sophisticated and thoughtful writer. His works are the best kind of works, rewarding multiple readings with new details to discover, nuances to further consider, interpretations to deepen. Co-written with Mark Askwith, Shattered Visage is no exception, and in my most recent re-reading I've come to appreciate aspects of the plot that I hadn't necessarily fully appreciated in earlier readings. And the outcome, especially in contrast to The Uncertainty Machine , reinforces my view that the book really does serve the purpose of a sequel by engaging with the original in a way that asks insightful questions without ret-conning inconvenient or undesired elements. To demonstrate, let's revisit the plot.
Three Threads
There are essentially three plot threads woven around the premise that, 20 years after the Village's evacuation by UN-mandated forces, its secrets are to be revealed in Number Two's tell-all memoir, “The Village Idiot:”
• The “Alice” thread, which centers on an operative named Alice Drake who resigns from the security services to indulge her adventurer's spirit by undertaking a solo sailing tour around the world. When a storm wrecks her ship, she washes up on the shores of the Village, where she encounters its sole, reclusive resident: Number Six.
• The “Thomas” thread, which centers on Alice's estranged husband Thomas Drake, an “Excavations Officer” whose work redacting classified information from Number Two's book prior to its public release necessarily requires him to investigate the Village's secrets. It's through Thomas' machinations that Alice's navigational computers is reprogrammed to have her sail past the Village in an attempt to gather useful reconnaissance intelligence.
• The “Ross” thread, in which Thomas' superior, Director of Operations Ross, though unable to provide official support and resources, nevertheless makes inquiries regarding a series of assassinations whose common denominator is a mysterious mustached man. His inquires bring him into the sphere of influence of the “Gods,” the intelligence community's highest and most secretive masters, and their agents, called “Archangels.”
Insofar as the threads overlap, the book's overt plot amounts to this: Already convicted of violating the Official Secrets Act, a psychologically broken Number Two attempts to publish a memoir related to the government's most classified secrets, including a facility for resigned and retired agents: the Village. To mitigate the potential damage to national security that would come from the exposé, Thomas Drake is tasked with editing the book to excise government secrets, a process that uncovers questions pointing to further secrets underlying the Village's existence. With only the support of an American agent, Lee West, Thomas conducts an unauthorized investigation that includes hijacking his estranged wife, and recently resigned secret operative, Alice's boat to have it sail by the Village to gather photographic intelligence. Unfortunately, a storm wrecks her ship and casts her to the Village shores, where she is tended to by Number Six who has been (apparently) living in isolation since it's UN-enforced evacuation 20 years earlier. While Alice forges a strange, cautious, yet entirely polite connection with Six, and has disturbing encounters with Number Two, Thomas and Lee resort to the bold gambit of going directly to the Village with support by Thomas' superior Ross, who has been following the trail of an unknown mustached man associated with a series of assassinations, including that of a former Number Two: Mrs. Butterworth. Meanwhile, an angry and delusional Number Two, fixated on revealing the truth as he understands it, has made his way to the Village where he confronts Number Six, leading to a fight and stalemate. Thomas and Lee arrived as well, discovering the Village's ultimately secret and purpose as a cold war silo for nuclear ICBMs. The discovery comes at a price, however, as Number Two triggers a missile launch with closed silo doors, destroying the Village with (apparently) only Alice and Six able to escape. Meanwhile, unclear as to what directives the Archangels – special operatives unaffiliated to ordinary rank-and-file of the intelligence services – are acting under, nor what intentions their masters, the so-called “Gods” who function in the highest government echelons, Ross' inquiries lead to a dead end as his superior, The Colonel, is replaced by the mustached man who demands his resignation. Ross is subsequently abducted in the same manner as Number Six was. Back in London, enjoying a quiet moment together in the park while unknowingly surveilled on monitors from a new Village control center, Six confirms to Alice that his secrets are safe. The story ends with a view of Westminter, seat of the British Government.
In the process of telling the story, at the risk of repeating my review, we learn that the Village's mission was far more dangerous than initially assumed – with global implications. We discover the consequences of the conflict between Number Two and Number Six, represented by Once Upon a Time and Fall Out , that (apparently) left Number Six a contented recluse in the Village and Number Two a broken man burdened by his secrets. We witness the legacy of the Village as its secrets consume a new generation of government agents.
The Hidden Plot
An interesting characteristic of the story as I've summarized above is that while the three threads do intersect – Thomas' actions unintentionally lead to Alice's shipwreck, Ross picks up investigating where Thomas leaves off – none of the characters, including those who survive to the end, actually sees the big picture in full. Which leaves readers without anyone to offer a tidy explanation for what's going on and why. Yet it's clear, particularly through the “Ross” thread, that there is a greater rationale underlying the book's narrative and it requires more than a casual reading to extrapolate it. The clues are there and it's in the re-reading that their significance becomes clearer. So, what's really going on in Shattered Visage ?
The clearest clue comes at the end, when we're shown how Number Six and Alice are being watched on Village control room screens. Since the original Village has been destroyed, the inescapable conclusion is that there is a new Village of some kind in operation, perhaps located within Westminster itself given the panel transitions. Going backward, to the beginning of Part D, we see that the funeral for murdered agent Martin Lake is also being monitored on Village control screens. At this earlier point in the story, however, the original Village has not been destroyed. Could it be, based on what we know at this moment in the story, that someone is watching the funeral from the original control room? The next and most vital clue comes shortly after, when Ross visits a bedridden Mrs. Butterworth. As they discuss Number Two's book and Thomas' work, Mrs. Butterworth shares that the original village was a prototype . She is then shown smothered to death in her bed.
Piecing these clues together, the idea emerges that there is at least one new Village built on lessons learned from the prototypical original and that the murders involved people with knowledge of the prototype. The agenda of the “Gods” and their “Archangels” must be to preserve the secrecy of their new Village by getting rid of anyone associated with the original whose knowledge could put that secrecy at risk. We can very well ask: why are such extreme measures necessary? There's the nuclear weapons issue, but even before considering that there is a plausible explanation. Granted, this is interpretation on my part, not anything directly explained in the book, but I think my interpretation is defensible and, really, what good is a story if it doesn't inspire interpretations and speculation? In thinking about the need for the Village's secrecy, the rationale is both internal to British security and external. Internal, in the sense that awareness of the Village's existence and purpose other than as a whispered rumor, if even that, would negatively impact agents and operatives at all organization levels. It could be as basic as an HR problem: would you want to join an intelligence agency knowing that you can look forward to retirement in a prison, however “comfortable?” Would you want to serve your country in the riskiest, most secret capacities knowing that you might eventually be abducted from your ordinary life, or whatever passes for one, then ruthlessly interrogated to confirm your loyalty, your alignment with the national security agenda? How about knowing that you can't resign, not really – once you're in, you're in for life? Externally, consider the risks of having a facility in which are gathered people who know a country's most sensitive secrets. How tempting would it be for, say, Russia's KGB to infiltrate or capture the Village to learn the secrets of its residents? After all that, throw in the nuclear weapons issues along with other ominous-sounding incidents Ross attributes to “something calculated, a single intelligence” (e.g. the death of President Zia and “the Vincennes error”) and it's clear that the Village necessarily must be a critical secret that must be kept secret if it is to fulfill its functions at all. And in the world of spycraft and geopolitical intrigues, there are no better secret-keepers than the dead.
With the above in mind, we can recast the plot more completely. Number Two, mentally unstable from his experimental interrogation of Number Six, threatens to reveal multiple government secrets in a memoir – including secrets related to the original Village, a prototype, that directly threaten the operations of the current Village (or Villages). This catalyzes a series of sinister and tragic events aimed to contain the damage and preserve operational security, encompassing both the murders of knowledgeable agents/operatives and the ill-fated investigations of Thomas and Ross.
Questions Are (Not) A Burden But … Who Is Number One?
My purpose in explaining the plot isn't only to emphasize that Shattered Visage has more depth than generally given credit for, but to engage with the more interesting question: what does it all mean? What are the thematic implications of the plot? The quality that makes The Prisoner so enduringly fascinating is its ability to stimulate conversations around topics that are still relevant today – and not only the broader issue of tensions between the individual and society. Shattered Visage , in my opinion, shares this quality, both as a perspective on the plot of the TV series and its themes, allegorical or otherwise.
A good starting point is the book's ending, with Number Six and Alice's conversation in the serene winter setting of the park. Alice asks two important questions that impact our interpretation of events in both the book and TV series. The first concerns the identity of Number One, to which Number Six replies: “Does the presence of Number Two require the presence of Number One?” It's a real zinger of a question. While we can't know what Number Six really intends to mean in asking what, on the surface, seems like a rhetorical question – we are not made aware of his thoughts – it nevertheless cuts straight to the heart with how we approach our interpretations. It challenges our assumptions, what we take for granted. Of course, it's possible to derive an allegorical answer to the question from Fall Out . McGoohan himself has shared his view, which we are free to accept wholly, partly, or not at all. But whatever our inclination, we have to confront the narrative challenge that Fall Out poses, because it's a weird episode that certainly earns its controversy. For me, it's not so much the philosophical theatrics that make it weird. It's watching Number Six grab a machine gun and shoot his way out of the Village that makes it jarring, given his moral character in every other episode (particularly “Living in Harmony”). From an allegorical standpoint – fine, especially when we consider the context and the soundtrack. Let's call it an inner, spiritual battle. From the literal standpoint, however, it's a problem, one that Shattered Visage resolves by attributing the episode to an interrogation-induced delusion instead of depicting actual, unfiltered events. If we accept this premise, then, once we confine the episode to the realm of allegory what remains in literal terms is the unanswered question of Number One's identity. He may very well represent an aspect of Number Six's mind, but we have no answer as to who Number One is in the real world.
But surely there is a Number One on the other end of the phone, someone who consistently unsettles whatever iteration of Number Two occupies the chair. Surely the frequent mentions of a Number One, including in the series' famous opening, aren't simply empty references. And yet, just as McGoohan wasn't interested in unveiling a singular villain in the manner of a Bond story, Shattered Visage emphasizes the point by explicitly questioning our interest in assigning a clear identity to Number One; a name, a character, a job title. I'd posit, however, that there is the suggestion of an answer in those final panels depicting Westminster. Perhaps Westminster isn't the site of a new Village control center or, at least, isn't exclusively that. Perhaps it is Westminster itself that is Number One – the UK's government, it's security establishment. Number One doesn't need to be an individual; it could be a collective, and designating the Village's governor as Number Two could be a psychological maneuver to remind the person holding that position that he or she is not the final authority, that they answer to something greater.
Your Secrets Are Safe With Me
Where Alice's first question has metanarrative implications in terms of how we interpret both book and series, her second – how Number Six knows his secrets are safe – is more pragmatic in terms of explaining the narrative. Again, we're not aware of what Number Six is thinking; we don't (and can't) know what he knows. Yet his answer to the question, “none of us would be here if they weren't” is marvelously loaded. In one sense, we can interpret the question and answer as it applies to the events in the book. By the book's end, most characters are assassinated, killed or, in Ross' case, abducted, ostensibly because of the threat they pose on account of what they know. And while arguably unplanned, the original Village's destruction, along with its secrets, is a convenient coincidence to this dramatic cover-up. So why are Alice and Number Six still alive and loose in the world, if not exactly “free?”
In Alice's case, the simplest answer I can think of is that she was not an operative in the most classified capacity and, accordingly, never in possession of knowledge that, if compromised, could harm national security. When Ross expresses his misgivings about her motive for resigning, we can share Thomas' shock and skepticism, particularly because we know something he doesn't: following her resignation, she isn't abducted by Village agents and is free to go on her sailboat tour around the world. Unlike, ironically, Ross, who is abducted shortly after being forced to resign. Even after her time in the Village, rendered moot by its destruction, we're not made aware of her gaining any knowledge that would make her a danger.
As for Number Six, the answer has already been provided in the TV series: he is trustworthy. After all, Number Two's interrogation in A, B & C confirms he isn't a traitor, and his ability to resist other forms of questioning and psychological manipulation point to a strong psyche. The Village may not meaningfully learn the reason for his resignation, other than vague references to moral concerns, but they can at least be assured that he has not become corrupt. Considering that Shattered Visage implies, without offering definitive proof, that Number Six lived alone for twenty years following the Village's liberation by UN forces, his utter lack of interest in revealing secrets is all the more notable in comparison to Number Two's manic eagerness to tell all.
We could debate the extent to which Number Six's knowledge is up-to-date during Shattered Visage in its totality, yet the Village's secret remains entirely relevant. Here I want to emphasize a point that, I think, gets glossed over: it really is a big deal that the Village hides a repository of nuclear ICBMs. Textually, it's a reasonable extrapolation for Motter and Askwith to make since it's based on imagery we see in the TV series. But it's also – POP –thematically appropriate. After all, what greater threat to humanity is there if not weapons of mass destruction like nuclear weapons? Yawning at the revelation in Shattered Visage 's final act, in my opinion, says more about a reader than it does about the book. (Personally, writing all this at this point in time, I'm more conscious about the risks of nuclear warfare now than at any point in my life.) When American agent Lee West reveals the silos to Thomas, the delivery is perhaps understated but our reaction shouldn't be. It makes sense that the ultimate manifestation of spycraft, it's logical endpoint, is to be sure that all the intrigues for geopolitical domination don't trigger a nuclear apocalypse whether by state actors, rogue regimes, or terrorists. I can't help but wonder: given the stakes, could the Village be necessary ? A necessary evil? What else are we supposed to do with people who have the knowledge not only to allow one country to dominate over others, but to enable the use of weapons that can end all life on Earth? Let's ask the question differently: would we be so hostile to the Village if Number Six had been characterized as an unprincipled, mercenary, amoral spy willing to sell the most dangerous secrets to the highest bidder? Shattered Visage , like the TV series, doesn't actually ask the question, but the book does make it possible to infer it by directly stating the global stakes.
Fortunately for us, Number Six is trustworthy both within the context of the narrative and from our (well, my) perspective as a reader/viewer. Which leaves us with another possible interpretation to his explanation that “none of us would be here if they weren't.” Who is “us?” It could refer more narrowly to Number Six, Alice, Alice's daughter Megan, and people within their social circles. But it could also refer to humanity as a whole . The fact that nuclear war hasn't broken out confirms that, however achieved, the secrets driving these monstrous weapons are, for the moment, secure.
Not Everyone's Cup of Tea
I can understand how Shattered Visage may not be to everyone's tastes, particularly on a first reading. It's not a Prisoner story in in the sense of the TV series' templates: Number Six being interrogated or trying to escape. And Number Six isn't even the protagonist, being closer to a MacGuffin than a character with significant influence on events in the plot. (His significance stems from his interactions with Alice.) It doesn't help when popular books, explainers of the series, such as Robert Fairclough's otherwise excellent The Prisoner: The Official Companion to the Classic TV Series offer inattentive interpretations of the kind that prompted my original review all those years ago. How motivating is to read that Shattered Visage reflects the “revisionism accorded to popular hero figures in comics at the time” where “the original Number 6 is a sad and lonely figure, who suffered a mental breakdown?”
Yet Shattered Visage is very much a Prisoner story, unlike The Uncertainty Machine whose narrative would work well, perhaps even better, without the Prisoner references. Motter and Askwith's entire narrative, both in terms of plot and themes, relies on the TV series for its intelligibility. Which brings me to another nuance I've come to notice on re-reading: it's elegant symmetry in relation to Fall Out . Consider: in Fall Out , Number Six is a player in s psychodrama not of his own devising (whether allegorical, literal, or a hybrid). In Shattered Visage , he's also a player in a broader plot, a conspiracy if you like, outside his ability to influence. Fall Out ends with Number Six unbroken and physically free in the world yet, as indicated by the Butler entering his home through a Village-style automatic door opening, still a prisoner in circumstance. Shattered Visage ends with a cool and composed Number Six physically free in the work as he converses with Alice. Yet the panels depicting their surveillance by the Village suggests he (and everyone else) remain prisoners in circumstance. What makes the symmetry noteworthy is that this isn't simply a duplication, like the way thoughtless sequels simply repeat the same formula over and over again. It's rather an expression of different aspects of the same idea that we are not absolutely free, and we must always negotiate the tension between our individuality and our circumstances. Fall Out expresses the inner psychological aspect of that tension, in line with the TV series' overall focus on Number Six's experience in the village, while Shattered Visage , which examines the context of Number Six's experience, expresses its external social aspects.
That leaves us with one last question to ask: what next after Shattered Visage ? When I compare it to The Uncertainty Machine , I'm struck by a difference in what I'd want to see as a follow-up. For The Uncertainty Machine , my interest is conventional curiosity about the next turn of the plot – what happens next, as Breen uses his position as Number Two to discover some truths. With Shattered Visage , however, my curiosity is less about a continuation of its plot, as interesting as that might be, than in a continuation of its themes as seen through a contemporary lens. Considering the book takes place in 1987, one could speculate about the Village today given advances in technology, from smartphones and social media to AI and overt camera networks. But even if a sequel to Shattered Visage isn't forthcoming, the timeliness and underappreciate richness of its themes, like those of the TV series, mark it as an excellent catalyst for ongoing conversations.