A. B. AND C.
A. B. UND C.

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"I AM NOT
A NUMBER.
I AM
A PERSON."

"SIX OF ONE,
HALF A
DOZEN OF
THE OTHER."

SCREENPLAY: Anthony Skene
DIRECTED BY Pat Jackson
GERMAN VERSION by Joachim Brinkmann
GERMAN EPISODE 3
FIRST GERMAN BROADCAST: ZDF 25.10.1969

MORE: EN-TITLE-D
DUBBING DIRECTOR JOACHIM BRINKMANN
DIESE SEITE AUF DEUTSCH

Written by: Anthony Skene
Directed by: Pat Jackson

APPRECIATIVE EXAMINATION

In order to unveil Number Six’ secrets his dreams are manipulated. It is supposed he could have tried to "sell out" his knowledge to three persons when he resigned, A., B. and C. But the drug hasn't been tested yet and the pressure on Number Two to deliver results is high. Yet Number Six proves his superior abilities as an intelligence man who even has a firm grip at his dreams. He embarrasses his adversary.

RANKED 17th: A weak script despite some nice touches of the "dream within a dream" subject and rather poor sets. Outstanding Colin Gordon's servile and ambitious Number Two.

Don't read any further
unless you know THE PRSIONER already
and you want to delve more indepth
into theoretical discussions and facts
around the history of the production.
- Be seeing you!

By Arno Baumgärtel

"A. B. and C." certainly ranks in the upper third of many fans' popularity list. This author, it has to be said, is of a different opinion.

Number One now demands results regarding the case of Number Six. It is assumed that he was going to "sell out" his knowledge to a person he knew when he resigned. The pressure is high on Number Two, he needs to take action. There is a female doctor, Number 14, conducting the treatment whereas Number Six' dreams are manipulated and made visible on a screen in order to find out who the person might have been to whom he wanted to sell. Number Six encounters two people, "A" and "B", the identity of "C" remains widely unkown. But the medical drug is dangerous and hasn't been tested yet. However, Number Six is suspicious and turns the tables against Number Two. He is eventually left disgraced.

"How does one talk to someone that one has met in a dream?" Number Six one day asks himself upon meeting the doctor in the café. She evades him leaving the question unanswered in this respect. A good question, though, and the subject is quite demanding but sadly it is given a very poor and naive treatment here: Edgar Allen Poe's dream within a dream, the quest for the status of our reality and the use of psychoactive drugs capable of changing that reality. Anthony Skene was the author of this episode and of two others as well. Michael Brüne has gone in-depth with this issue.

'WHAT A NICE PLACE TO WORK', NUMBER 14 MIGHT BE THINKING

The episode was produced entirely in the studio. There is no location action and only little use of Portmeirion stock footage was made. Here, the Village café is located in front of what is better known as the Old Peoples Home, its facade erected on the studio stage. Also, what usually is Number Two's command room now has to stand in as a medical lab with dividing walls put in place and the room furnished with a conglomerate of "technical equipment" the sole user of which appears to be the doctor Number 14. It may have been established especially for this operation.
Simple as it can be. Likewise the mise en scene, the staging, when the script (or is it McGoohan himself) calls for very lax security measures in the Village that otherwise are extremely tight (where is Rover?), thus enabling Number Six to find the location of the secret laboratory and make his way into it through a ventilation duct (what else would it be?). He finds the drug lying unchilled on a table, already in a syringe. And he prepares himself for the third treatment, in order to remain fully in control, thus replacing some of the liquid with - we don't know for sure - distilled water perhaps. Did he know what it was? He needs no checking. Right away, as a hero he's now capable of outwitting his adversaries literally from the sleep. Very convincing, isn't it.

A lot of its inherent potential, in comparison to the episode "Living In Harmony", is left untouched and even the thin layer of irony included in "The General", that other episode where there are equally poor production values, is absent here.
Interestingly, it isn't the story, it's the details, little vignettes, rendering the episode "acceptable". There is Colin Gordon and his portrayal of the Number Two character: kissing up and kicking down thereby always having a glass of milk at hand; a personality mixture of ambition and servility. It's hard to think of any other actor in this role. The big red curved telephone, the Number One hot-wire, is placed prominently in the foreground while somewhere in the back, winced at its beeping sound, there's Number Two, a shot that isn't easily forgotten. Among the best scenes are those from Madame Engadine's "dreamy party", Number Six, for once, seen here not in his familiar Village attire but in plain clothes, dressed in in a dinner jacket, a little bit like John Drake. And there's also the magic moment when he unexpectedly, out of his own, grabs a wall mirror hanging askew and rights it. Thereby doing the same with the whole (imaginary, filmic) space around himself. This remains a non-sequitur, a surreal moment.

ALAN N. SHAPIRO: THE PRISONER AS 'THE HOSTAGE' (GERMAN LANGUAGE)
ABOUT THE LOST 2ND VILLAGE OF THE PRISONER
MORE: EPISODE LIVING IN HARMONY

Finally, the end of the episode: Quite nice the exposure of "C", the infamous person unknown, the supposed buyer of Number Six' secrets (in a scene filmed on the so-called "French street" of the former MGM studio backlot), to be Number Two (ha, ha!), while Number Six is still sleeping in the lab. Number Two and Number 14 staring worriedly at

the screen where the dream action controlled by Number Six is unfolding. A dream within a dream. He rewinds the title sequence of the series for them, the walk through the dark corridor, the letter of resignation. And then from the virtuality he turns to his bloodhounds: 'Now I'm coming at you!' (Where's the Village administration, where are the guards? Is Number Two granted only little backing?) The experiment has gone wrong. Number Two is a loser. These scenes are quite delightful. But they are also piecemeal within a very mediocre episode.

You can put it this way as well: "Any serious critical analysis of A. B. and C. is null and void… for this episode is simply superb fun." [1]

In contrast to the statement above US media scientist Alan N. Shapiro puts his emphasis on this aspect of the episode: "What I find to be especially interesting about the advanced science fictional technology presented in the episode 'A. B. and C.' is that it is simulataneously a totalitarian Nazi-like police technology of torture, interrogation, surveillance and mind-control, and yet is at the same time a potential postmodern cyber-consumerist technology what I call the digital-neurological interface. This technology of, so to speak, the second wave of digitalization would successfully convert signals and information back-and-forth between the neurological data format and what we might call the digital multimedia data format. The coming to realization in the years ahead of such a technology will clearly enable widespread “killer applications” for so-called play, entertainment, pornography, and professional training in the consumer and educational markets. One can even speculate that the digital-neurological system depicted in 'A. B. and C.' is an exemplary technology of what we today in 2019 call the approaching Fourth Industrial Revolution." [2]

[1] The comment on the Anorakzone website. www.anorakzone.com/prisoner
[2] Alan N. Shapiros lecture was held at the 50th German anniversary of THE PRISONER in 2019; the English version of his text (on his blog) being somewhat different to the German variant.

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