Therapy Zone

What The Prisoner means To Me Today

    I watch the whole the Prisoner series once a year, and the odd single episode once in a while. But these days I mostly write about the series, well there's hardly a day goes by when I don't write something about the series, regular readers of my blog here can vouch for that. A good few years back now an old, old acquaintance once said that, "Everything that can be written about the Prisoner has been written." Well a decade or so on, and I'm still finding new things to write about the Prisoner series, so I've been happy to prove him wrong.

   I don't collect Prisoner merchandise so much, well there's not so much merchandise produced these days, and even when it is, I'm rather choosey. I mean I was foolish enough to purchase that book Fall Out by Alan Stevens & Fiona Moore, I got about half-way through it, and gave it up as a bad job, and haven't opened the book since. I've written a superb manuscript called The Butler Speaks, it's the result of a 4 year long in-depth study which cuts deep into Prisoner appreciation, having found answers to questions fans have never asked, and real answers to those which they have, and the origins and reasons why things are in the series. It's my "magnum opus". But I cannot find a publisher willing to take it on, well not yet I can't, which means I'm not giving up.

    I no longer go to Prisoner conventions. I'm no longer a member of any Prisoner related group or society, I no longer feel the need to be. Yet the Prisoner is as much part of my life as it has always been, perhaps more so, since the day I heard that first crack of thunder over 43 years ago.

   Through a 4 year in-depth study of the Prisoner series I have arrived at an understanding which suits me, it probably wouldn't suit you. Oh I can give explanations, interpretations, answer questions. But in the end we must all, each and everyone of us, arrive at our own unique understanding of an outstanding television series. But having said that, no-one has to understand anything about the Prisoner and his Village. Just sit back and enjoy, and sometimes I just do that. But the Prisoner never lets go, he's always there taunting me with this or that when something I see in the series pops into my head, I just have to write about it. That's why I'm a prisoner!

The Colonel’s Not Fooling Anyone!

   In my opinion it would have been better if McGoohan's stunt double Frank Maher had played the role of the Colonel. In that way we would have seen someone who could carry-off playing the role of the Prisoner, giving as good a performance worthy of McGoohan himself. Nigel Stock, good an actor as he was, didn't come close to the role. Because don't forget although Nigel Stock is the figure we see as the Prisoner in Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, his mind is supposed to be that of the Prisoner's, and so being his reactions too. And that being the case, Frank Maher would have been much better suited to the role. But then the Prisoner's mind may very well have felt more at home in Franks body, as the Colonel, and may very well have done a runner instead of going looking the Professor Seltzman, and that would have been the end of the episode, and possibly the series as well!

Be seeing you.