Patrick McGoohan - A Prisoner Of His Own Secrets!

   I can understand what Patrick McGoohan was trying to do with the Prisoner, to make people sit up - to question - to take notice and not simply sit there Zombieonic watching Coronation Street. Not to simply accept things as they are - to make people angry {well he certainly succeded with that last one, the telephone lines into ATV were jammed with angry people phoning up to complain about the series, and in particular the final episode Fall Out}.
    Originally the general public saw the Prisoner as either a work of art - a piece of imaginative televison - or the biggest load of old rubbish ever seen on British television! So you either took to it, or you didn't. You see the vast majority of people didn't understand the series, they didn't get it, possibly it was far too over their heads. I remember that it was said of the Prisoner that it was ahead of it's time. But the thing is, those people who watched the series, thought as I did, that all would be explained in the final episode. Oh, the television viewer was not told that it would be, it was simply expected. But as we all know, any such answers were not forthcoming, and certainly not from the lips of Patrick McGoohan. And I can undertsand that, why should he have given all the answers away? Where would the fun have been in that? So Patrick McGoohan left us alone to figure out what the Prisoner is all about for oneself, and I, like many others, have spent many years and decades trying to do that. And we have succeeded to some extent, although if you put a dozen fans of the Prisoner in a room together, you would get a dozen interpretations about the series. And there's nothing wrong in that. I have my own particular understanding of the series, and I like to think that I'm right. But that's not to say that a dozen others are not right either. The Prisoner means what it is, and what it means to you.
    I was not one of those angry television viewers back in 1968, I was one of the disappointed ones. I was twelve years old at the time. Okay, I don't presume to say that I understood the Prisoner at that time. But certainly as an adult the series has become more complicated for me, or rather I have made the series more complicated for myself, well that's what adults do, they over complicate matters. Oh I had questions, of course I had questions, who had not? But I wasn't angry, disappointed, because there the Prisoner was, gone, and I never knew when I would be able to see it again. All I had of the series, is what I could remember.
    Over the years and decades, it has often been said that the Prisoner raises more questions than it answers, but the answers are there if you bother to look for them - such as the reason why the Prisoner resigned. The television viewer was told the same time as No.2. But like No.2 I don't think the viewer was listening! Fans have spent too much time reading things into the series which quite frankly simply are not there, nor were ever intended to be there. Time has also been spent looking for mythical, non-existent hidden meanings, they are not there either. I know, because I've looked, and found them to be wanting!
    Could people really, at the time of the original screening of the Prisoner have expected Patrick McGoohan to put the anwers on a plate for them - what would have been the point in that? If he had, people like me would have nothing to write about the Prisoner almost forty-five years on. Mind you, as a tweleve year old boy, who had just finished watching the Prisoner, it would have been nice to be told what 'Rover' was, where it came from? Was it man-made, or something alien to this world? It would have been nice to have been told where the Village was - but then we were, in the opening credits of Fall Out!
    If Patrick McGoohan wanted to explain the Prisoner to us, I'm sure he would have done. He did give us the basic information, or at least he gave the scriptwriters the basisc information. And if that's all he gave the scriptwriters, then  why should we television viewer, expect to be given more? Patrick McGoohan never liked to give interviews. But on the rare occasions he did, he would still give nothing away about the series. I sometimes wondered if he ever completely understood it himself. I suppose he did, to his own understanding the same as anyone else. Yet by far and away McGoohan was always more and more enigmatic when asked about the Prisoner. 'Now you know what it's all about' McGoohan once stated to radio broadcaster Simon Bates, without actually explaining anything at all! I suppose McGoohan liked to be enigmatic, thought it clever to be so. And there was that infamous so called L.A. tape, have you watched it? My wife and I sat with a friend to watch it, so boring is it, that we kept fast forwarding the video trying to find something interesting, an hour long interview with Patrick McGoohan, by the end of which we were no more enlightened than we were at the beginning! At the end of the L.A. tape, McGoohan is walking along a Californinan beach, and he comes across a wire coat-hanger in the sand {planted no doubt} and he stoops to pick it up, and holding it up as if to say 'There's your answer.' Pity, I couldn't remember what the question was in the first place! I don't know anyone who has bothered to sit through the entire L.A. tape, to wade through so much gumph. Thanks for that Pat, but no thanks! And the same can be said of the documertary Six Into One: The Prisoner file first screened on Channel 4 in 1984.
    Six Into One: the Prisoner File, almost as infamous as the L.A.tape itself, and such a complete waste of time, money and effort. The programme was screened in 1984 after Fall Out, and I, like many of my kind, sat up late to watch, in the hope we might learn something - what an anti climax  -I was left empty and disappointed by it. You see I was on my own at the time, when it came to appreciation for the Prisoner. I thought I was going to learn something, not being a member of any group or society connected to the Prisoner, or knowing anyone who shared my passion for the series, and long before the advent of the Internet. Both 'they' and the presenter of Six Into One: the Prisoner File Saul Richlin, too enigmatic, being far too clever for his and the documentary itself, which was supposed to get deep into the mind of the Prisoner once and for all, and gain the answers to questions which, for years fans had been asking. But of course in the end Six Into One: the Prisoner File, was a wasted opportunity, a chance wasted. So scrub it, wipe it, we'll have to start all over again! well it was words such as that which presenter Saul Richlin used to end the documentary with.
    In my opinion, and it is but my own personal opinion, in not being forthcoming with answers to questions about the Prisoner, not being more open or approachable, Patrick McGoohan actually became a prisoner of his own secrets. Perhaps if he had opened up a little more to fans and journalists, in answering their straightforward questions with a straightforward answer, then perhaps he would not have been hounded so much, the first two words on their lips the Prisoner whenever he was interviewed.
    Today we understand much more about the Prisoner than we ever did before. We know where the Village is, why the Prisoner resigned, which side it is that runs the Village. We know who No.1 is, and why there are so many No.2. Interviews have been carried out with members of cast and production crew, even if actor Victor Madden couldn't actually remember having been in the series when asked of his experience with the Prisoner! Perhaps if Patrick McGoohan had been more open, more accessable regarding the Prisoner, he might have been more a free man!  I'll be seeing you.

   {The above article was originally written some years before the passing of Patrick McGoohan. And it seems that in his later years, he did become more amenable to approach, especially when talking about Danger Man}