The Prisoner – The Girl Who Was Death

January 18, 1968 Season 1 Episode 15

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

The script for this show was a leftover script from McGoohan’s earlier show Danger Man. They turned it into a Prisoner episode, and yes, it gets confusing. I’ll do my best to explain this one, but explaining the next two episodes will be hard. I watched this episode, and I was wondering how they could make it make sense. They do!

This is one of the most unusual episodes of The Prisoner. Number Six is enjoying a rare day outside the Village (you don’t know how or why) when he encounters a mysterious young woman who seems determined to kill him after she already killed someone else. She uses one elaborate trap after another. She has already killed another spy. Number Six barely escapes each one. At first, he has no idea why he is being targeted. The episode is more like a spy adventure than a typical Village story.

It quickly turns into something closer to a comic-strip adventure. A glamorous assassin and a smug announcer push the story into a world where danger is real, but everything is staged like entertainment. The Girl herself is the main weapon; she’s charming, always one step ahead, and the whole thing plays out like a game designed to break his rhythm and make him look foolish.

As the story unfolds, Number Six discovers that the woman is working for her father, a dangerous scientist who has created a weapon capable of threatening Britain. The scientist hides his plans behind riddles, clues, and puzzles. Number Six follows the trail across the countryside. Along the way, he faces more traps and narrow escapes. The episode is filled with disguises, secret messages, and a sense of fun that is very different from the darker episodes of the series.

In the end, Number Six uncovers the scientist’s plan and races to stop the weapon before it can be used. The final confrontation reveals that things are not quite what they seem. That’s all I’ll say, or I would give it away. That’s what makes this show fun. They can explain almost anything with the Village. It remains one of the most debated and unique episodes in the entire series that is full of them.

The character “Bowler” is portrayed by an actor named John Drake. Not only is John Drake the name of Patrick McGoohan’s character in his old show Danger Man, but it is also possibly the true identity of Number 6 in this show. McGoohan hired Drake because he was amused by the coincidence. Be Seeing You!

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

22 thoughts on “The Prisoner – The Girl Who Was Death”

  1. Pingback: The Prisoner – The Girl Who Was Death – MobsterTiger

  2. Usually I watch the episode the weekend after Max’s previous post. This weekend I didn’t have the opportunity. So I am reading Max’s post without benefit of having recently seen the episode in question.

    And I am once again amazed at how good Max is at this. It has been years since I have watched this episode, and I don’t remember. The first thing that strikes me is how much Max tells me about the episode that makes me want to watch it.

    A glorious assassin, a smug announcer… Is there an announcer in the show? I don’t remember an announcer in previous episodes. What Max has done in describing the show works to entice us. This all sounds like glorious fun.

    My hat, if I wore one, is off to you.

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    1. Thanks Arthur…yes… there is an anouncer in this one in the middle… it’s so out there that I guess they needed one. This one confused me more at first than the western did.
      I do wear a hat…my Dodger LA hat never gets far from me….since 1977

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  5. Max, I watched this over the past 2 nights. It was totally entertaining for me. They packed a lot into the episode. How he managed to survive all he did was impressive. Not sure what I think about what held the villains up from getting to the boat. It doesn’t quite fit for me, but it works for what it needed to do. There may be an inside joke with it? This is one of my favorite episodes so far.

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    1. Yea it was an old script for Danger Man so they had to adapt it. It was almost like a spy serial in the middle…and just like the last one…it took me a while to figure out. How was he out of the village? Was this before the Village? That is what was going through my mind for a while.
      You know probably my favorite now after rewatching them is Hammer to Anvil…how he really sticks it to Number 2 is great! I think it was his best victory to that point.

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      1. I didn’t even think about how it was connected to The Prisoner. I remember you saying the series goes off the chain towards the end so it didn’t faze me. Not sure if I saw Hammer to Anvil, it might have been during one of the weeks I was off. I do subscribe to Shout! studios YT channel now so will try to get back to the ones I missed.

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  6. It works well for a bit of a cobbled together Danger Man script. Love that ‘message at the bottom of a beer glass,’ so very 60s Cool, but in a very British mannered way, sort of in that ‘Avengers’ style. The cure for poisoning would be a killer hangover though.

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    1. It’s actually not a bad episode. Coming back and re-watching them. I appreciate them more now. I also understand it a little more and yes, it is pure 1960s. You always catch me in that sweet spot when I’m leaving to go home and I’m in between, but I’ll get back with you soon.

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      3. I understand. Shopping, tasks, yard work, work commutes- for those so afflicted- all take up our time. I just go get done what I must do and answer as soon as I can. I hate using my phone to answer anything, big fingers and tiny key pads means my trying to key in ‘thank you’ turns out to be something like ‘Yhanj uoy,’ so I just answer after cranking up the Commodore 64 when I’m home.

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      4. I do hate answering on my phone unless it’s an actual call! I always like to wait for my laptop. I do use voice to text once in a while but half the time it will screw it up. “Hey how are Eiffel Tower you doing?” just something bizzare.
        Oh they were rolling those babies in my high school the year I graduated…I never got to sit down at one. But…I did take typing (for the girls!) and that paid off 10 years later when I got a computer…but it sure as hell didn’t pay off with the girls in there!

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      5. ‘Eiffel towers’ Lol big time!

        I’m a two finger typist on good days.😬 I jest of course, PC wise I have an Apple something, a hand-me-down from my wife. It works for me, and so long as it keeps working I’ll keep hammering away at it.

        The gals didn’t like the guys crimping their style eh?

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      6. I’ve seen it fill in words that are downright racist as well…I’m like damn…
        Apple is a great computer…complete opposite of PC but they are good.
        Typing was the one class in high school that came in so handy…when I started IT…other guys were one fingering it…
        No they didn’t! Especially if I was the one crimping!

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  8. I just finished watching this episode. 

    Not to belittle Max, who is doing an astonishing job in his write ups, but some of what he says isn’t accurate.  There is no “announcer” in the show, just the daughter explaining the traps she has set up for the spy.

    The Prisoner likes to play with the viewer, and here they are playing full tilt.  While the idea that this was a left over from Danger Man is an interesting bit of trivia, and the John Drake business is darling in its convolutedness, it is irrelevant to the episode.  Except to remind the viewer that they are being played with at every step, a master fact of this series.

    Do they make it make sense, Max ponders, and of course they do.  Roundabout and well out of our nomal reach, but they do.  Consider the illustrations from the book, explained without explanation by the end.  Consider the basis for this type of show is the cat and mouse formula, and here the cat (the McGoohan character) is very much the mouse to the daughter’s cat.  

    They never explain why the daughter wants to kill the spy, and I sense a delightful disrespect from the producers.  They never explain much of anything, but use the assumptions they never bother explaining as the premise of the whole show.  I, for one, loved how the McGoohan character, when in the boxing rink, echoes Number 6 by demanding to know WHO?  Who is arranging the cat and mouse game of this episode?  Who is Number 1?  Not much of a difference, if you ask me.

    In this episode, the McGoohan character is a spy, and on an assignment to stop the father and his bomb set on destroying London.  Google says Mission Impossible came before The Prisoner, and I love the idea that the Prisoner is sending up with way Mission Impossible started every episode.

    McGoohan encountering the daughter is explained in the show, the McGoohan character is a spy who is given an assignment.  Thus starts the cat and mouse game.  Which quickly turns into the daughter becoming the cat, the spy/McGoohan becoming the mouse. 

    The idea that it is akin to a comic-strip adventure is the Prisoner using the device of the amusement park.  The show gives you no choice, you either accept this or turn the channel. 

    But don’t get too caught up in the details.  There is no reason why when the McGoohan character has a car it is not the Lotus we are already familiar with.  The explanation that is used to wrap up the episode is painfully weak and thin. 

    Which brings us to what I think is the most fun of the whole show.  In this episode in particular, the producers are thumbing their nose at the audience.  They have taken the defiant attitude upon which one might think the show is forged on and left it in the muddy shoe so prominently displayed at the end of the McGoohan character getting instructions from his bosses.

    Huh?

    And I so love it.

    Again, do not take anything I have said that might sound like I am arguing with Max as valuable.  I am not.  I could not do what he has done in writing up this show.  The minor details above where what I saw and what he reports do not align are part of the strength of the show, and of Max’s work.  The show revels in what could be misrepresentation but ends up washed away as one ponders, does it really matter?

    I am amazed at the great work you do, Max.

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