Thought For The Day

    Why, when the Prisoner eventually returns to London in Many Happy Returns, does he not telephone his fiancee Janet Portland from his former home? After all he's been away some months now, she would natually have been worried about him, but would she? Then his call in town could have, and probably should have been made to Sir Charles Portland, rather than the Colonel. You will recall that even Sir Charles Portland didn't know the whereabouts of his future son in-law, or so he said.
   Perhaps its because the Prisoner is so single minded, that he wanted no distractions as he worked towards the goal of his next mission, to discover the location of the Village, that he didn't at least telephone Janet Portland. But then again, at the time of Many Happy Returns neither Janet, of Sir Charles Portland existed. Their characters would not enter the Prisoner series until much later in Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling. And that is where the series suffers in my opinion, from too many scriptwriters! But perhaps that was the idea. Maybe Patrick McGoohan didn't want any continuity between the episodes, which having only one or two scriptwriters would have given the series. Because with continuity throughout the Prisoner series, this would have allowed the television viewer to have been able to build up a picture about the Prisoner-No.6. For example when Nadia asked No.6 during The Chimes of Big Ben if he had a wife, or was engaged to someone, No.6 could have said 'Yes.' And then later on in the series we get to meet No.6's fiance, Janet Portland. But of course Janet wouldn't have been too worried about not having seen her fiance for months on end, knowing what kind of work he did for her father Sir Charles.
   Without continuity between the episodes, one cannot build a firm picture about the Prisoner, because things keep changing. Like the fact that No.6 gave up sugar on medical advice. Yet by the time of It's Your Funeral, when he's at the Old People's Home having coffee with Monique-No.50, he helps himself liberally from the sugar bowl! Too many scriptwriters made the Prisoner too ambiguous a character in some ways.
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