A. B. and C.
episode of The Prisoner (S1 E3)
"A. B. and C." is an episode of the allegorical British science fiction TV series The Prisoner. It was written by Anthony Skene and directed by Pat Jackson and eleventh produced. It was the third episode to be broadcast in the UK on ITV (ATV Midlands and Grampian) on Friday 13 October 1967 and first aired in the United States on CBS on Saturday 22 June 1968.
The episode stars Patrick McGoohan as Number Six and features as Number Two Colin Gordon – the only actor other than Leo McKern who would play Number Two in more than one episode.
Plot summary
Number Two is directed by Number One to step up efforts to extract information from Number Six—specifically relating to what information he is believed to have sold, leading to his resignation from the intelligence agency he worked for. Two directs Number Fourteen to prepare a machine she has developed. With the help of an injected drug, it will allow observation of, and influence on, the dream-state of a person connected to it. They have prepared three dossiers of foreign agents that Six was known to have met during an elegant party hosted by Madame Engadine prior to his resignation, suspecting that he has sold out to one of them, the whole event plays out as an alternative life if the village hadn't gotten to him first. The dossiers are labelled "A", "B", and "C".
On the first two nights, Six is sedated through his evening tea, brought to Number Fourteen's laboratory, injected with the drug, and connected to the machine.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A. B. and C.” is episode of The Prisoner (S1 E3). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through episode and Prisoner, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “episode of The Prisoner (S1 E3)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16001288. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967 and 1968.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “A. B. and C.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.