Episode 5: The Prisoner

Let’s begin with a question: Where are you?

That’s the question we all ask, isn’t it? Whether we know it or not, whether we want to admit it or not. Where are we? 

In 1968, a TV show called The Prisoner aired in the United States on CBS. The protagonist, known only as Number Six, wakes up one morning to find himself trapped in a place called The Village. The Village is a seemingly idyllic place, where every need is met and every comfort is provided. But every person is stripped of their true identity. They are nothing but numbers, caught in a system that controls their every move, their every thought, and their every word.

And the question that lingers throughout the show’s seventeen episodes is simple: Where am I?

“I am not a number,” says Number Six. “I am a free man.”

But in The Village, freedom is an illusion. The people who live there are told they’re free, but they are bound by the controlling forces around them. These controllers twist the truth, twist their very souls, to keep them in line, to break their will. And the most unsettling thing is that many of them don’t even know they’re trapped.

Of course, this sounds familiar to many of us. This is the world we now live in.

We are surrounded by forces that tell us what to say, how to think, and how to live. It’s all neatly packaged and branded, wrapped up with a bow of comfort and convenience. We have the internet, social media, endless streams of entertainment and distraction. We are constantly plugged in, our minds always occupied. But is it freedom? Or is it The Village in a different guise?

Like Number Six, we are told that we are free. But when we start asking questions, when we seek real truth, when we try to break free from the stories that are being fed to us, something strange happens. People tell us to settle down, to just go along, to stop fighting against the current. They tell us we’re being uncooperative, rebellious. 

But is it rebellion to ask why we are here? To seek out the truth? To want to know who is really pulling the strings?