old-type-40 asked:

BTW I think The Prisoner, Rumpole of the Bailey, and Doctor Who resonated with people in the 60s and 70s because they all featured characters who asserted their individuality and rejected social conformity.

tinsnip answered:

I definitely picked up on that vibe, yes. That said, oof, that final episode, the Youth, I mean… it felt parodical? Did it resonate at the time?

[old-type-40]

From what I’ve read and heard, people were very upset after the last episode aired because it was so bizarre.  People have speculated that this meant it was all a dream.  One person who caught the series on KTEH for the first time (like me) speculated that all the events were just a stream of consciousness musings by Number 6 as he’s on his way to resign because the series ends showing him behind the wheel of the car much in the same way the series opens.  I think Appel mentions this theory in the playlist in the previous post.

As to whether the Prisoner is John Drake, in the next to last episode, after Number 6 is regressed to his school days, Number 2 says, “Mr. Drake, report to the headmaster’s office.”  I think the reason why McGoohan kept insisting the character was not Drake is that he wanted the series to be about every individual’s resistance to being a prisoner - whether a prisoner to conformity or a prisoner to one’s self.  He did not want people to take the series as a literal series of events in the real world.