The Annotated Prisoner - Checkmate 3
A dose of prison medicine
Catch-Up
Before our last look around ‘Checkmate’, an update from the last entry.
Sod’s Law was proven again. The day after I published that last entry, where I was straining to find good examples of the phenomenon of a writer-for-hire enlivening a series not his own, I stumbled on the episodes of The Baron written by Brian Clemens under the pseudonym Tony O’Grady - ‘The Long, Long Day’ and ‘The Maze’.
They are textbook models of it, and they dropped into my lap 24 hours too late. And this series was made by the same studio immediately before The Prisoner, which makes it extra-useful as an illustration.
Clemens’s scripts lift the whole thing, though he doesn’t try to turn The Baron into something else. On paper, the central conceits - a witness protection siege, and a hero’s ’lost 24 hours’ fugue state that must be unravelled - are not distinctive in themselves, though they are familiar Clemens devices. The two central characters do the kinds of things they usually do. But the fibre of the scripts is stronger, more intriguing, more thrilling. Clemens brings out what is already there, sharpens it, and spices it up. He gets at its heart.
The somewhat blank stock-heroic character of John Mannering, the Baron himself, is made dynamic and beguiling. In ‘The Long, Long Day’ Clemens wryly points out the unique quirk of this particular adventurer, that he is an action hero and an antique dealer. You needed that in episode one, not episode 26 of 30, but ‘script supervisor’ Terry Nation didn’t think to do it. And it’s not done mockingly; Mannering comes out of this exchange looking super-virile and Connery-level cool. Clemens respects the character, respects the premise, enhances it, shines it up, and sells it. Steve Forrest, who plays the Baron, suddenly looks exciting.
‘The Maze’ brings the relationship between the two leads into focus. But it’s a distinct relationship of these two people, not a carbon copy of the Clemens repartee of Steed with Mrs Gale, Mrs Peel or Tara. (And all three of those sets of banter are written quite differently, we should note.) The Baron’s plucky assistant Cordelia, another rather misty stock figure in previous scripts - though enlivened by Sue Lloyd’s marvellously offbeat performance - suddenly solidifies into three dimensions.
Both episodes are told much better than previous ones, with genuinely surprising turns and twists, and guest characters you actually care about. In effect, it is all much the same as usual … but much, much better.
And The Prisoner format somehow did this in reverse to all of its writers. It perked them up - every last one.
The World Outside - Human Chess, Gulag Medicine and Traitors With Plans
There are three outstanding items of interest in ‘Checkmate’. All three are real world things, and one of them is, I’m afraid, not very pleasant at all.
Human Chess
In the real world, there seems to be no reason for this practice, except that it looks good. Gerald Kelsey remembered seeing such a tournament on a holiday in Germany, from which he adapted the legend of Colouris as an ex-Count whose ancestors are rumoured to have beheaded their retainers as they were wiped off the board. I’ve had a good look and can’t find any direct source for this. In fact, medieval Italy rather than Germany seems to be the source of the game, and it seems to have been developed as a carnival spectacle, a diversion for what we would now call an ‘open day’ at the local manor. Human chess was an agreeable display of power and glamour.
The town of Marostica in northern Italy still holds a human chess game every two years in its main square. This is a tourist attraction, part of a festival celebrating the town and its pageantry and produce.
In the Village, the chess game is interesting not only as a choice of diversion, but because of its sanction from the Village authorities, and the keen professional interest that they take in it. A piece moving on its own initiative is enough of a bad sign that the Supervisor positively snatches up the phone to Number 2, who gets the Rook bundled off immediately to hospital, in full public view and with maximum fanfare.
The Queen describes the Rook moving without orders as ‘the cult of the individual - it’s not allowed’. This is a telling phrase in 1967; it was how Khrushchev described the personality cult around Stalin about ten years before. Krushchev argued that Stalin's personal glorification - through propaganda, statues, and the demand of absolute loyalty - distorted key Marxist principles, and elevated one man above the collective good. In the Communist lexicon the cult of the individual means a leader who thrives on charisma, control, and myth-making, at the expense of shared responsibility.
This is interesting in the context of the Village (though, of course, the use of a phrase strongly identified with one side of the Cold War could very well just be part of the smokescreen). The rapid changeover of Number 2s means that no one person can take permanent control of the Village, or develop a personal following. True, there are often photographs and icons of the current Number 2 about. But, like Stalin’s associates ironically, such individuals can very easily become non-persons. It is the office of Number 2 that matters, not the man or woman currently in the chair.
A few more observations on the chess game. P is a pawn of the White Queen, which is the same position held by Alice in the game in Through The Looking Glass. Alice, who is constantly being bemused by impossible things one after the other, is an obvious forebear of P, but thankfully this is never dwelt on or laboured over. (The chess motif in Looking Glass is woven into that book in a truly mind-boggling way that makes The Prisoner’s chess game look like a walk in the park - which I suppose it literally is.)
P’s question to Colouris - how can he tell the sides on the board apart - is a little odd when you stop to think about it. Because it’s easy. The two sides are facing in opposite directions.
The Village seem to use the human chess game both to indulge Colouris, and to test the behaviour of the pieces. It is a therapeutic device that instils obedience and acts as an early warning system of personality ‘problems’. If you misbehave, break the rules, you’ll be ‘well looked after’ by the ‘best specialists’.
Which leads us neatly on to -
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