ALICE IN PRISONERLAND

"I declare it's marked like a large chess-board!" Alice said at last. "There ought to be some men moving about somewhere-and so there are!" she added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. "It's a great huge game of chess that's being played-all over the world-if this is the world at all, you know..." Lewis Carroll's "Alice" stories can also legitimately be considered to have had influences on the 'Prisoner' series. They both feature a disjointed storyline, with the action taking place in surroundings which appear real yet are unreal at the same time. Like Number Six, Alice constantly struggles to retain her sense of identity, despite constant distractions, drugged food and drink, and characters who appear and disappear without rhyme or reason. She's constantly thrust into complex situations which seem to have been created just for her, which have little or no connection with what went before and which make very little sense when considered out of context.

While there's no direct Lewis Carroll text in The Prisoner, there's the "Checkmate" episode which seems to have been influenced by "Through The Looking Glass" in that the story is based on the concept of a human chess game. Both Alice and Number Six take the role of the Queen's pawn and both ultimately achieve their goal, only to have their victory - and their elevated positions - taken away from them by higher powers. The chess board and "pawn" analogies feature in other episodes as well. Jonathan Miller's adaptation of "Alice In Wonderland" was made for BBC television just 12 months prior to "The Prisoner" and it features Number Two to-be, Leo McKern, as The Duchess. At the point in the story where the Queen Of Hearts gives her "Either you or your head must be off. And that in about half no time!" speech, the Duchess turns to go and is escorted away by two diminutive people, one of whom is no other than Butler-to-be, Angelo Muscat. The departing figures present an eerily familiar silhouette.

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