"Drinian" <sailracer6@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2sgml7F1k5naqU1@uni-berlin.de...
> Josef 'Jupp' Schugt wrote:
> > Some days ago I bought 'The Andromeda Strain' (a 33 year old movie)
> > on DVD. Brief sketch of the beginning of the story: A space probe
> > crashes in the middle of a remote New Mexico village. All but two
> > people in the village die - seemingly due to an infection. To find
> > out how to fight against the postulated 'Andromeda' strain the
> > subterranean high-tech 'Wildfire' laboratory is used that (no
> > surprise, we are in the middle of cold war) has been built for B
> > weapon research. During the analysis of the reproduction of the
> > Andromeda strain the computer faces an input overload and displays
'601'.
> >
> > I tried to find out if there is a computer system that actually
> > displays this error message. In our irreal universe such system
> > seemingly does not exist but in the real universe of NGE it does (to
> > be more precise: it will exist) - in the fifth Evangelion episode
> > "Rei I", the same error code is displayed on a computer console
> > operated by Dr. Ritsuko Akagi.
> >
>
> Interestingly, I had read a while back that "Error Code 601" in Evangelion
> is a reference to the BBC series "The Prisoner" in a Slashdot comment:
>
> http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/11/1948231.shtml?tid=168
>
> I have watched the entire Prisoner series (which is *excellent* if you
> haven't seen it) and am not sure where this reference is; perhaps the
> author of the Slashdot comment simply extrapolated from Patrick McGoohan's
> character, Number 6, who is constantly looking to find out who Number 1
is.
>
> "The Prisoner" definitely did influence Eva, though. I won't say more
> without spoiling the series for those who haven't seen it.
>
> -- 
> Drinian

"601" could be imagined to be a reference to "The Prisoner".  The actual
Prisoner usage is in an exchange between the characters "No. 2" (Leo McKern)
and "No. 6" (Patrick McGoohan) in the very important Prisoner episode "Fall
Out":

No. 2:  6 of 1
No. 6:  5
No. 2:  half dozen of the other

That is, six of one is the same as a half dozen of the other.

A Prisoner fan club in England named itself "Six of One", possibly from this
conversation.  Anyway, if you say "six of one" quickly, you get "six o'
one", or "601".  But the numbers "601" don't appear anywhere in the Prisoner
series, as far as I know.  I think the Slashdot poster was taking liberties
with the popular "Six o' One" label.