Television Review: Once Upon a Time (The Prisoner, S1X16, 1968)

Once Upon a Time (S01E16)

Airdate: January 25th 1968

Written by: Patrick McGoohan
Directed by: Patrick McGoohan

Running Time: 50 minutes

By the time The Prisoner had aired its first dozen episodes, its star and driving creative force, Patrick McGoohan, had seemingly realised that the series had, to use the colloquialism, ‘jumped the shark’. The initial high-concept premise—a former spy imprisoned in a surreal, Orwellian holiday camp—had been stretched and tested through a run of increasingly gimmicky and often incoherent adventures, many of which bizarrely allowed the protagonist to escape the Village confines altogether. The exhaustion of the show’s creative juices necessitated a drastic return to its claustrophobic first principles while simultaneously forging a path towards a definitive conclusion. The result was Once Upon a Time, the penultimate broadcast episode, which many fans understandably treat as the first half of a two-part finale. Yet it stands apart from the entire series canon, not only as its most structurally and tonally unusual entry but also as its most profoundly divisive.

Faced with the unwavering defiance of Number Six, the Village administration, in a move of sheer desperation, reverts to a cadre that has already failed. Leo McKern returns as a weary, yet determined, Number Two, whose new plan is deceptively simple in aim but brutally complex in execution. Dubbed ‘Degree Absolute’, the scheme involves hypnotising the and forcibly regressing him to a childlike state of vulnerability. This emotionally risky gambit is the Village’s last roll of the dice, a final, intimate confrontation where psychological warfare replaces physical coercion.

This confrontation occurs in the so-called ‘Embryo Room’, a stark, ascetically designed chamber located beneath the iconic Green Dome. Here, Number Six is to spend seven days with Number Two, who subjects him to an intense psychodrama, methodically working through what he posits as the seven stages of man—a concept lifted directly from Jacques’ speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The stakes are ultimate: when the deadline passes, only one of them will leave the room alive. McKern’s Number Two invests every ounce of his being into the ordeal, and in a moment of seeming breakthrough, a regressed Number Six appears to yield, even hinting that his resignation was motivated by a profound moral unease. However, the tremendous psychological toll of waging this war of wills falls not upon the prisoner, but upon his jailer. In a climax of immense strain, Number Two suffers a fatal heart attack. Victorious, Number Six is met by the Supervisor (Peter Swanwick) and asked what he now wants. His answer, a simple “Number One”, provides a cliffhanger that directly sets the stage for the final episode.

The episode’s pivotal narrative position is somewhat ironic given its production history. Once Upon a Time was actually filmed much earlier, as the sixth episode produced. It was originally conceived as the season finale for a first series intended to run for thirteen episodes. When McGoohan subsequently decided to end the show entirely, he shrewdly reworked this existing, self-contained psychological duel to serve as the crucial penultimate act, the necessary crucible that forges Number Six for his final confrontation.

This repurposed episode has long split the fandom. Its advocates hail it as the series’ most imaginative, surreal, and intellectually daring hour. Its detractors dismiss it as pretentious, ‘artsy’ navel-gazing, a bizarre detour from the espionage-thriller and speculative-fiction roots of the show. It undoubtedly serves as a textbook ‘bottle episode’, featuring an extremely limited cast: McGoohan, McKern, Angelo Muscat as the ever-silent Butler, and John Cazabon in a brief, wordless cameo as the ‘Umbrella Man’ in the early sequence. Its aesthetic is deliberately theatrical; the fake, minimalist sets of the Embryo Room feel like a piece of avant-garde stagecraft, heightening the sense of abstract psychological conflict.

This theatrical approach clearly delighted McGoohan, who served as both writer and director. He seizes the opportunity to play a childlike Number Six with remarkable gusto, and it is fascinating to watch him gradually ‘age’ and re-conquer his formidable adult persona throughout the episode’s runtime. Yet his performance is ultimately overshadowed by the raw, terrifying intensity of Leo McKern. Number Two visibly deteriorates as the episode progresses, appearing physically ill during the most emotionally wrenching scenes. Anecdotes from the set suggest McKern invested so utterly in the role that he either suffered a mild heart attack or a severe nervous breakdown, forcing a temporary halt in production—a testament to the punishing realism of his performance.

Beyond its formal experiment, the episode tantalises viewers with rare glimpses into Number Six’s personal history and motivations. The hinted reason for his resignation—a deep moral disquiet over the existential threat of nuclear weapons—resonated powerfully with a Cold War-era audience grappling with the same apocalyptic anxieties. Furthermore, it is suggested he served in the RAF during the Second World War, was shot down over Germany, and endured harsh interrogation, a trauma which Number Two painstakingly reconstructs during the psychodrama.

Nevertheless, for all its undeniable acting prowess and conceptual ambition, McGoohan’s steer into overtly symbolic, almost absurdist theatre was hardly standard television fare, even in the psychedelia-infused late 1960s. To a modern audience, it can feel less ‘edgy’ and more simply opaque. The viewer is granted little initial guidance in decoding the bizarre rituals of the Embryo Room, and the slow, deliberate pace may test the patience of those awaiting narrative propulsion. Its ultimate reputation, therefore, is inextricably tied to its function. Once Upon a Time is a protracted, gruelling, and often alienating dramatic prelude. It earns its essential place in The Prisoner canon solely by virtue of its purpose: to strip Number Six bare, to break him down only to have him rebuild himself stronger than ever, and thus to prepare both the character and the audience for the bewildering, iconic finale that follows. It is a necessary, if deeply flawed, ordeal.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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