THE UNMUTUAL PRISONER ARTICLE ARCHIVE
THE PROJECTION ROOM (The Prisoner Compared...)
"THE FACELESS ONES"
"DOCTOR
WHO – THE FACELESS ONES AND THE PRISONER: SOME SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES"
By Dr Andrew K Shenton
Individual identity was a subject that was explored in a wide range of fantasy and science fiction productions in the late 1960s. Clearly, the issue was of central concern in "The Prisoner", and the matter was also addressed in a quite different context in the "Doctor Who" adventure, "The Faceless Ones". Broadcast in April and May 1967, "The Faceless Ones" was transmitted only months before the opening episode of "The Prisoner" was first shown on UK television. Essentially, it deals with a scheme by aliens to steal the identities of human beings by making duplicate bodies of kidnapped young holiday makers. Beyond the theme of individual identity, however, at first glance there may appear little commonality in the plots of this serial and "The Prisoner". Certainly, it seems that no previous writer has made any significant comparison of the two. Nevertheless, Cornell, Day and Topping (1) see parallels between the "Doctor Who" serial and the "Danger Man" episode, "Colony Three", although the authors do not indicate any specific areas of similarity. An indirect link between "The Faceless Ones" and "The Prisoner" lies in the fact that several commentators, such as Lewis and Stempel (2) and Fairclough (3), believe that this "Danger Man" story provided the inspiration for "The Prisoner". In addition, close inspection reveals a surprising number of rather more concrete similarities between Patrick McGoohan’s series and the Patrick Troughton "Doctor Who" serial.
"The Faceless Ones"
and "The Prisoner" are both set in contemporary times, specifically
1960s Earth. Indeed, in the former’s last episode the date of the story
is confirmed as 20th July 1966. One of the key differences, however, is that
"The Faceless Ones" is predominantly set in a real life airport, whilst
The Village is presented as a fantasy world far removed from normality. As "The
Prisoner" himself comments warily to Number Twelve in "The General",
“Nothing’s impossible in this place.” People are seldom treated
as individuals with their own characteristics in either The Village or the airport.
In the former, such dehumanisation is achieved through the use of numbers to
represent people and the application of a range of other techniques specifically
developed to promote conformity and integration. Muir (4) notes how, in "The
Faceless Ones", the airport setting is particularly appropriate for a story
about the loss of individual identity. He inquires, “what better place
to comment on the dehumanization of the individual than a center for mass transport,
where hundreds of people are herded into lines, treated as numbers, and met
with disdain and dull indifference by overburdened officials? Who has not felt
like just ‘a face in the crowd’ while standing in line on an escalator
or behind a metal detector?” (p. 142)
Abduction is another key theme in "The Prisoner" and "The Faceless
Ones". In the former, the eponymous character is kidnapped apparently because
of the information he carries in his head, and in the latter young people are
being taken to provide bodies whose duplicates will give identities to members
of an alien race that have lost their own in a massive explosion. Questions
of trust are also pivotal in both productions. Number Six’s attempts to
discover who is an inmate like himself and who is a warder is a major theme
which is particularly apparent in the Checkmate story and, as the aliens attempt
to infiltrate Gatwick Airport in "The Faceless Ones", it is only gradually
that The Doctor realises a method of learning who on the airport staff is genuine
and who an impostor. Paranoia is another term that has been used in connection
with the plots of each drama. In their broad overview of "The Prisoner",
Brosnan and Nicholls (5) refer to the show’s “obsessive evocations
of a whole range of fantasies of paranoia” (p. 963), and, explaining their
own use of the word in relation to "The Faceless Ones", Howe, Stammers
and Walker (6) highlight how “any character could suddenly be revealed
to be a Chameleon ‘duplicate’” (p. 93). Games of bluff feature
prominently in "The Prisoner" and "The Faceless Ones". Such
a ruse is central to the plot of "Hammer into Anvil", as well as to
the conclusion of "The Schizoid Man". Whereas in the former The Prisoner
seeks to destroy Number Two in an act of revenge and in the latter he is intent
on engineering an opportunity to escape, in "The Faceless Ones" The
Doctor and the airport authorities are playing for time in order to give those
looking for the missing humans greater opportunity to conduct their search.
We learn very little in both "The Prisoner" and the "Doctor Who" serial about the perpetrators of the abductions. The issue of which side runs The Village has long been the subject of speculation and is never resolved in the programme. In "The Faceless Ones", The Doctor terms the alien race “Chameleons”, yet it would seem that this is a label that he attaches to them rather than their actual name. The aliens never refer to themselves in this way. Moreover, none of the individual aliens is ever named and even their leader is referred to simply as “The Director”. This anonymity emphasises their lack of individual identities. Viewers do not see the aliens’ home planet and the satellite from which they are directing their operations is left unnamed.
The messages of "The Prisoner" with regard to the nature of man and the relationship between the individual and society have long been debated. Rather less attention, however, has been attached to the philosophical arguments underpinning "The Faceless Ones". Clapham, Robson and Smith (7) venture some way into this territory by suggesting that the implication of the plot “seems to be that, without a physical form that we can recognise as ourselves, we cease to function” (p. 91). Within "The Prisoner", such a notion is most apparent in the episode, "The Schizoid Man", in which the Village authorities attempt to alter Number Six’s particular characteristics so that he will begin to doubt his sanity, although it is in "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" that perhaps the most obvious similarities between the "Doctor Who" story and "The Prisoner" emerge. Here, however, through the use of Professor Seltzman’s machine, the Prisoner’s mind is transplanted into the actual body of another person, rather than merely being accommodated in a duplicate. Still, as Frumerman (8) recognises, actual twins or clones forms a recurring theme in "The Prisoner". She notes that they can be seen in "Arrival", "Free For All", "The Schizoid Man" and "Fall Out".
Colin Gordon and Wanda Ventham appear in both "The Faceless Ones" and "The Prisoner". Whilst Ventham has a relatively minor role in the latter’s episode, "It’s Your Funeral", Colin Gordon plays major parts in "The Prisoner" and "The Faceless Ones". In each instance, he is an autocratic leader who shows little humour or even tolerance of others. We do not learn his name in either "The Faceless Ones" or "The Prisoner". In the "Doctor Who" story, he portrays the manager of Gatwick Airport and is usually referred to simply as “the Commandant”. In a moment which, with hindsight, can be viewed with some irony given his later appearances as Number Two in "The Prisoner", in the opening instalment one of the airport staff refers to him as “Number One”. Since for much of "The Prisoner" episode, "A, B and C", the Number Two played by Gordon is under pressure from an unseen superior whom viewers are led to assume must be Number One, this reference is particularly humorous, albeit unintentionally. Even when the Commandant introduces himself to characters he has not previously met, he never reveals his actual name and this serves to reinforce the mood of anonymity within the airport that has been highlighted by Muir. Perhaps the conclusion to be drawn here is that our world is not as dissimilar to that of the Chameleons as we may wish to think. Nevertheless, in an apparent in-joke centring on the identity of the actor, in the W. H. Allen novelisation (9) the Commandant is given the name, Charles Gordon.
Not only does anonymity extend to the airport manager and the aliens in "The Faceless Ones". The real name of the eponymous character in "Doctor Who" is, of course, one of the show’s ongoing enigmas, although on several occasions he has assumed the alias, Dr. John Smith. Lofficier (10), in fact, lists seven different stories during the Second and Third Doctor eras in which the Time Lord refers to himself in this way. Similarly, the hero of "The Prisoner" introduces himself as Peter Smith on meeting Mrs. Butterworth in the episode, "Many Happy Returns", but few viewers take this claim seriously and debates over whether he is intended to be John Drake, from "Danger Man", continue to rage.
The durations of "The Prisoner" and the "Doctor Who" serial in terms of their numbers of episodes are often the subject of comment. McGoohan (11) has indicated that he would have liked to have produced only seven instalments of "The Prisoner", and "The Faceless Ones" has been criticised by writers such as Howe (12) and Clapham, Robson and Smith (13) for being overlong. Undoubtedly, the denouements of both productions fell short of the expectations of many viewers. Rogers (14) reports, “During and immediately after Fall Out had been transmitted, the ATV duty officer logged well over 150 calls from a confused public” (p. 138), and, in an ending that Campbell (15) describes as “lame” (p. 49), "The Faceless Ones" concludes with the aliens resigned to living their lives without individual identities and The Doctor making only a vague offer to help their scientists.
In the time immediately after the original transmission of the two productions, neither received any great popular acclaim. Fairclough (16) refers to the “lukewarm reaction” (p. 523) with which "The Prisoner" met and, for many years, "The Faceless Ones" attracted little attention. Although the serial was viewed by an average audience of 7.38 million, a figure that places it comfortably in the top half of the Patrick Troughton "Doctor Who" serials in terms of viewing statistics (17), the W. H. Allen novelisation, which in 2000 Howe and Blumberg (18) found to be the sole item of merchandise associated with this particular story, did not appear until December 1986, almost twenty years after the serial was broadcast. Moreover, in a DWB poll of Doctor Who fans carried out in 1991 (19), "The Faceless Ones" failed to appear at all in a ranked list of the programme’s leading 133 serials. Nevertheless, both dramas have been the subject of considerable interest in recent years. Not only has "The Prisoner" been examined in a detailed partworks production (20) and a range of new books on the series has been published in the last five years (21) but, in 2005, the series attained fifth position in an SFX poll to find the top fifty greatest UK science fiction and fantasy television shows (22). "The Faceless Ones", too, has undergone something of a critical re-appraisal of late. Unlike "The Prisoner", the serial no longer exists in its entirety in the archives yet, in 2002, all six parts were released in audio form on compact disc (23). In the following year the two surviving episodes appeared on VHS video (24). Reviews of "The Faceless Ones" written in recent years have generally been complimentary. Campbell (25), for example, awards the serial 80%, adjudging the script to be “ambitious” and the production itself “well-made” (p. 49). In a further generally positive review, Clapham, Robson and Smith (26) describe "The Faceless Ones" as “a hugely impressive attempt to stretch the series’ format” (p. 91), and Bradbury (27) even goes so far as to urge his readers, “Don’t miss this one!” (p. 86).
References
(1) Cornell, P., Day, M. and Topping, K. Doctor Who: the discontinuity guide.
Virgin, 1995.
(2) Lewis, J. E. and Stempel, P. Cult tv. Pavilion, 1993.
(3) Fairclough, R. The Prisoner: the official companion to the classic tv series.
Carlton, 2002.
(4) Muir, J. K. A critical history of Doctor Who on television. McFarland, 1999.
(5) Brosnan, J. and Nicholls, P. The Prisoner. In: Clute, J. and Nicholls, P.
(eds.) The encyclopedia of science fiction. 2nd ed. Orbit, 1993, p. 962-63.
(6) Howe, D. J., Stammers, M. and Walker, S. J. Doctor Who: the sixties. Virgin,
1992.
(7) Clapham, M., Robson, E. and Smith, J. Who’s next: an unofficial and
unauthorised guide to Doctor Who. Virgin, 2005.
(8) Frumerman, C. N. On the trail of The Prisoner: a walking guide to Portmeirion’s
Prisoner sites. PrizBiz, 2003.
(9) Dicks, T. Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones. W. H. Allen, 1986.
(10) Lofficier, J.-M. Doctor Who: the universal databank. Virgin, 1992.
(11) Quoted in: Carraze, A. and Oswald, H. The Prisoner: a televisionary masterpiece.
W. H. Allen, 1990.
(12) Howe, D. J., Stammers, M. and Walker, S. J. Doctor Who: the handbook -
the Second Doctor. Virgin, 1997.
(13) Clapham, M., Robson, E. and Smith, J. op. cit.
(14) Rogers, D. The Prisoner and Danger Man. Boxtree, 1989.
(15) Campbell, M. Dimensions in time and space. Steven Scott, 2003.
(16) Fairclough, R. (ed.) The Prisoner: the original scripts - volume two. Reynolds
and Hearn, 2006.
(17) Howe, D. J., Stammers, M. and Walker, S. J. op. cit. 12.
(18) Howe, D. J. and Blumberg, A. T. Howe’s transcendental toybox. Telos,
2000.
(19) 1991 Doctor Who series survey results. DWB, 96 (December 1991), p. 10-13.
(20) The Prisoner: The official fact file. DeAgostini, 2005-06.
(21) Davies, S. P. The Prisoner handbook. Boxtree, 2002; Fairclough, R. op.
cit. 3; Frumerman, C. N. op. cit.; Fairclough, R. (ed.) The Prisoner: the original
scripts - volume one. Reynolds and Hearn, 2005; Fairclough, R. (ed.) op. cit.
16.
(22) Top 50 British telefantasy shows. SFX Collection, 22 (2005), p. 6-57.
(23) Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones [CD]. BBC Worldwide, 2002.
(24) Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror / The Faceless Ones / The Web of Fear [VHS
videocassette]. BBC Worldwide, 2003.
(25) Campbell, M. op. cit.
(26) Clapham, M., Robson, E. and Smith, J. op. cit.
(27) Bradbury, K. C. Portal to infinity: an independent and unauthorized guide
to BBCtv’s Doctor Who. 1st Books, 2004.
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