Significant Sixes of Sci-Fi

Who are you?

The new Number Two

Who is Number One?

You are Number Six.

I AM NOT A NUMBER, I AM A FREE MAN!

So began every episode of Patrick McGoohan’s totalitarian masterpiece, The Prisoner.

The Prisoner, which originally aired 1967-68 on BBC, was extremely far ahead of its time. In only seventeen episodes, McGoohan’s Six does everything possible to escape “The Village,” a rather scenic seaside place filled with other people just like him: ex-secret agents. The others, also given numbers, all seemingly accept their fate, but not Six. Six fights. Despite the deception, endless drugging, and maddening mind control tricks, Six refuses to break.

Although I saw this long after its initial run on PBS, it remains, in my opinion, the best sci-fi show ever made.

McGoohan is amazing as Six and brings instant credibility to the role of a former spy stolen away to keep the secrets in his head secured. It helped that he had recently come off a wildly successful run of his previous show Danger Man (Secret Agent Man in the US) playing international spy John Drake.

Fun fact, McGoohan actually turned down the role of James Bond that famously went to Sean Connery. McGoohan, who would many years later notoriously turn down the role of Gandalf for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film series, did however grace us with the unforgettable role of Edward Longshanks in Mel Gibson’s Oscar-winning film Braveheart.

Besides being groundbreaking in its production design which featured the real-life village of Portmeirion, Wales, the final episode of The Prisoner features none other than the Beatles song All you Need is Love. Not only did the Beatles rarely lend their songs to film and TV that wasn’t their own, they were still together when this aired. They were said to be huge fans of the show.

The groundbreaking Prisoner not only still sparks debate among the legions of faithful fans regarding the meaning of the series finale (think Lost) but it was entirely shot on 35mm so the digital transfer looks like it was shot yesterday.

But The Prisoner started an unintentional sci-fi trend that still resonates today among many science fiction creators.

Most total sci-fi aficionados (of which I proudly count myself) will shout the number 42 as the most influential of all sci-fi numbers, and for good reason.

But for my money it’s the number Six.

The creators of the critically-acclaimed reboot of Battlestar Galactica have stated Tricia Helfer’s seductive Cylon Six is a direct homage to McGoohan’s persistent spy. This callback to The Prisoner gave BSGs creators extra street cred with the geek community. It is a way to honor what came before while still offering something completely fresh. They managed to do this with the whole series.

In 1975 the character of Jonathan E., played by James Caan in the highly underrated and increasingly prophetic Norman Jewison classic film Rollerball, wears the number 6 on his uniform. While there is no direct connection to Six on The Prisoner, Rollerball’s anti-hero Jonathan refuses to play the “game” set out by his corporate sponsors much the same way McGoohan did on the show. Johnathan E. rides his popularity playing the game while never playing the “game.”

While Seven of Nine ultimately rebelled, her name was a near miss on Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, on Tripping the Rift the adult CGI science fiction comedy, the character Six (for Six of one half dozen of the other) kept the tradition going despite being a gynoid originally designed as a sex robot.

The pale little girl in the yellow raincoat in the Little Nightmare comic book series is called Six. And even though it isn’t sci-fi so is Jenna von Oy’s character on Blossom. Six is the nickname of Lt. Kal Varrik played by Roger Cross on the 2015 sci-fi series Dark Matter.

In the 2011 sci-fi film I am Number Four based on the novel of the same name, Teresa Palmer plays Number Six who has the ability to turn invisible and block energy attacks. Of course, we can’t forget our Sixth sense from which so much science fiction derives, as well as 666, the number of the beast, from which so many horror franchises are born to raise hell, literally.

Six in mathematics is the smallest perfect number. In Judaism the Star of David has Six points. In Islam there are Six Articles of Faith.  In numerology Six is considered a nurturing number that embodies caring, empathy, and relationship-building powers.

The numerology on The Prisoner is still, believe it or not, a hotly debated topic.

Each episode brought a new Number Two to try and break Six, so it was assumed the lower the number the higher in importance they must be. With seemingly hundreds of residents the thought was the numbers must go up at least as high as the number of people. But when residents inevitably die in captivity is their number recycled, or is it hung up like a sports jersey – never to be worn again?

With Number Two continually replaced, it follows that the number must represent an office station, not a name replacement.

Like I said, hot topic of discussion. This was something in the world of Bond as well.

Who was of higher worth? 007? 006? 008? And what does it take to merit a letter at MI6 like Q, because surely Bond has qualified by now.

This doesn’t apply to Miss Moneypenny but then again the staff of MI6 hasn’t been forcibly taken to the Village because of what they have stored in their heads….yet.

Back when Roger Moore, Sean Connery, and McGoohan were all still alive, I think a giant opportunity was missed – having them all trying to match wits with a new Number Two while Pierce Brosnan attempts to break them out.

After more than a decade of trying to bring The Prisoner to the big screen it did receive a reboot of sorts with Jim Caviezel playing Six on AMC. Even though the great Ian McKellen played Number Two, the limited series failed to resonate with fans. Although rumors continue to persist for plans of a feature, I still highly recommend the original source material.

Be seeing you.

Fred Shahadi is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and television writer living in Los Angeles.