The General (The Prisoner)

"The General"
The Prisoner episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 6
Directed by	Peter Graham Scott
Written by	Lewis Greifer
Original air date	3 November 1967
Guest stars
Number Two - Colin Gordon Number Twelve - John Castle Professor - Peter Howell Professor's wife - Betty McDowall
Episode chronology
← Previous "The Schizoid Man" Next → "Many Happy Returns"

The General is the sixth episode of the television series The Prisoner. The central themes of this episode are rote learning and indoctrination.

Synopsis

Number 6 discovers a new scheme—Speedlearn—that permits a person to learn a university level course in history in three minutes, taught by an individual known as "The Professor", who is backed by another entity known as "The General". Number 6 finds that Speedlearn could possibly be used for mind control as well as mass education. A disaffected member of the Speedlearn committee helps Number 6 infiltrate the project to try and bring the General down.

"The General" turns out to be a sophisticated computer system. However, Number 6 is able to destroy this computer, and Number 2's plans, with some simple logical epistemological trickery: Number 6 feeds it the question "why?"

Additional guest cast

• Announcer - Al Mancini
• Supervisor - Peter Swanwick
• Doctor - Conrad Phillips
• Man in buggy - Michael Miller
• Waiter - Keith Pyott
• Man at Cafe and First Top Hat - Ian Fleming
• Mechanic - Norman Mitchell
• Projection operator - Peter Bourne
• Corridor guard - George Leech
• Corridor guard - Jackie Cooper

Trivia

• The General is first mentioned by Number Two in the episode "The Schizoid Man."
• The twist ending is similar to the The Twilight Zone episode "The Old Man in the Cave" (1963).

Notes

Bibliography

• Fairclough, Robert, ed. The Prisoner: The Original Scripts. vol. 1. foreword by Lewis Greifer. Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 978-1903111765. OCLC 61145235.  - script of episode

External links

• The Prisoner: The General at the Internet Movie Database