The Therapy Zone

The Girl Who Was Death

   Originally, like Arrival, The Girl Who Was Death was to have been a 90 minute feature.

    McGoohan and David Tomblin loved the idea suggested by script writer Terence Feely for this episode so much they flew to the south of France where he was holidaying. Discussion took place as to whether it would stretch to a two parter. However, budget restrictions at this late stage decreed that it would be a single episode. Certainly this is not an essential episode of the Prisoner series.

Our Diminutive Friend The Butler

   The Butler serves without question each new master-No.2, that comes along. He is loyal and obedient, and is never heard to speak a word out of place. However there is more to our friend the Butler than at first meets the eye.

    During the prize giving at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition during The Chimes of Big Ben, it is the Butler who actually hands out the prizes. This makes our friend more important than No.2!

    In the episode Checkmate for example, as he makes his way to the top of the Bandstand, so as to follow the human chess match, he has his open umbrella and wooden chessboard carried for him by a Top-Hat Administrator. What's more that same Top-Hat official holds the Butlers umbrella aloft for him, to protect him from the sun, during the whole chess match! And our friend is also involved with the Appreciation Day ceremony of Its Your Funeral, as he stands holding the Great Seal of Office on a crimson cushion.

   Then during A Change of Mind the Butler can be seen in the committee chamber. What possible business can the Butler have there?

   And of course during that teeny-weeny week in the embryo room, there was the Butler helping his master-No.2 during "Degree Absolute." Not to mention doing the cooking, washing up, making the beds etc, etc. And then in Fall Out the Butler knew about that Scammell Highwayman transporter lorry, because as his friends leapt into the cage, the Butler, without asking, went round the back of the lorry, climbed into the cab and drove the vehicle along the tunnel, crashing through the gates at the end!

   Our diminutive friend may not involve himself much with village life. However there is evidence that the Butler knows far more than he lets on!

You Know When You’ve Become A prisoner

.......... When you can't leave it alone! Just in the same way the Prisoner lives with me day after day. When a day does not pass by when I don't write something on the subject, just as I am doing now.

   "A Prisoner of the Prisoner" was a phrase often used. Well I can no longer control the Prisoner - the Prisoner dictates to me, but only because I allow it to be so!

It’s A Question of Why John Drake Resigned

    Why did John Drake resign? Perhaps he became disillusioned with the kind of work he was doing, more often than not in having to keep cleaning someone else’s mess up for them! But then someone has to do it, someone’s got to do it..... I suppose.

   Not only that, but the scripts for Danger Man were getting somewhat repetitive, and thin, and that's why McGoohan didn't walk out, he resigned! A man, who the new No.2 in Arrival refers to as "Showing great enthusiasm for his work." Well that's as maybe, but not towards the end he didn't!

Be seeing you.