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The Prisoner
"The Uncertainty Machine" Part 3
The Prisoner: The Uncertainty Machine #3
Titan Comics
Writer: Peter Milligan
Original plot: David Leach
Artist: Colin Lorimer
Colorist: Joana Lafuente
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Cover: Colin Lorimer
July 2018 |
Agent Breen suffers through a series of virtual realities.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue
Agent Breen (Number 6)
Number 2 (dies in this issue)
Agent Carey (Number 9)
Section (aka Number 23)
Dr. Sigmund Freud (in VR simulation only)
doctor
Number 4
Rover
zombie ward inmates
Number 1 (mentioned only)
Didja Know?
The Titan Comics version of The Prisoner is a comic
book mini-series reimagining of
the classic 1967 TV series of the same name.
Didja Notice?
As the issue opens, we learn that Breen's escape and subsequent
suicide at the end of
"The Uncertainty Machine" Part 2 was all
a trick inside a virtual reality simulation Number 2 had subjected
him to. Breen had shot himself in the head at the end of
"The Uncertainty Machine" Part 2 because he came to
realize what was happening. Breen wakes up in a VR chair here
and Number 2 asks him what gave it away to which Breen
unselfishly responds that the star patterns hadn't changed at
all with the hours and the cheese and pickle sandwich he ate had
no taste. Gee, thanks, Breen, for letting Number 2 know what he
needs to fix next time! I suppose he could be under the effect
of drugs that make him tell the truth (though he still is able
to withhold the information about Pandora that Number 2 really
wants).
Breen soon finds himself in a VR simulation of Bergasse 19,
Vienna for
psychoanalysis. This was the address of Dr. Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939), the father of psychoanalysis, where he did most of
his writing until forced to flee Austria to London in 1938 due to
his Jewish ancestry in what had become the Nazi controlled nation. The site
is now the home of the
Sigmund Freud Museum. The virtual doctor Breen meets there
is a simulation of Dr. Freud.
"Dr. Freud" tells Breen he is suffering from hysterical epilepsy
caused by repressed childhood memories of loss and guilt coupled
with a "morbid need to keep secrets". "Hysterical epilepsy" is
generally considered another term for an "hysterical seizure" or
"psychogenic non-epileptic seizure". The good doctor's analysis
of Breen's
"morbid need to keep secrets" is, of course, a dig at his
refusal to give up the information about Pandora.
On page 11, Number 2 erroneously refers to the Village doctor as
Number 4.
On page 14, Breen refers to the psych ward at the Village as a
cuckoo's nest. This is a reference to the 1962 novel and 1975
film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, about a
convicted felon who feigns insanity in order to serve out his
sentence in a psychiatric hospital rather than in prison.
On pages 17-18, Rover absorbs the guard whom Breen has forced to
swallow his tracker and seemingly dissolves the man down to his
bones.

Breen follows Rover down into the sea and into its cavern
ingress and finds a multitude of Rovers embedded in the ceiling,
what he speculates is a birthing chamber for Rovers.
On page 20, a Village worker reports to another on a cell phone
that
the commedia dell'arte have food poisoning and they'll
need a new Harlequin and Pierrot for the night's performance.
Commedia dell'arte is Italian for "comedy of the
profession", an improvisational theater form that originated in
Italy in the 16th Century.
Harlequin and Pierrot are characters that tended to appear in
commedia dell'arte performances, Harlequin a
light-hearted, nimble servant of the master and Pierrot a sad
clown.
Agent Carey becomes the new Number 2 at the end of this issue.
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Prisoner Episode Studies