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Saturday 14 February 2015

A Question of Time!

   The Prisoner’s – 15 Month Incarceration
    And yet just how much time during those 15 months is actually covered in ‘the Prisoner’ series?

Arrival – 2 days

The Chimes of Big Ben – 6 weeks 1 day

A B and C – 3 days

Free For All – 3 days.

Schizoid Man – 4 to 8 weeks approximately  {depending on how long it took for Number 6 to grow his beard, as well as the time it took to condition 6} We do not see all the time of those 4 to 8 weeks, however we do know what was taking place during those weeks.

The General – 3 days

Many Happy Returns – 29 days approximate {depending on whether it took the Prisoner 2 or 3 days to build his raft provision it, take his pictures. Then 25 days at sea, then 1 day to return to The Village}

Dance of the Dead – 2 days

Checkmate – 2 days

Hammer Into Anvil– 3 days

It’s Your Funeral -– 3 days

A Change of Mind – 2 to 3 days

Living In Harmony – 3 days   {Depending on whether or not this episode takes place in real time}

The Girl Who Was Death – 1 evening

Once Upon A Time – 8 days

Fall Out – 1 day

    All of which adds up to a total of twenty-three and a half weeks, plus one evening. Not much in the life of the Prisoner, not when one considers that Number 6 had been incarcerated in The Village for 15 months.    
    The viewer actually only sees a little less than a third of that time, which in turns means, that for almost two thirds of Number 6’s time in The Village there are many events that takes place to which we are not privy! Events which either relate directly to Number 6, or to general life that goes on in The Village. For example, The Village Festival, the Folk music concert, the exhibition of entertainment and mime. We don’t know how Number 6 and Number 24/Alison became friendly. And at the outset of ‘The General’ Number 6 appears not to know anything of Speedlearn, the Professor, or the General. So where’s he been prior to that episode? And after Number 6 has set sail aboard his sea-going raft in ‘Many Happy Returns,’ The Village would have come to life soon after his departure, and life there would have gone on just the same while Number 6 was away. The Village would not have been “mothballed” during that time.
   It is understandable the way the 17 episodes of ‘the Prisoner’ have been edited to tightly. Obviously the whole of that 15 month period could not be shown in the time span covered in those 17 episodes. It could be said that what we actually see on the screen is the best of ‘the Prisoner,’ condensed down into twenty-three and a half weeks!

Be seeing you

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