Search This Blog

Thursday 1 December 2011

The Therapy Zone

It’s A Suffocating Experience!

   The white membranic mass of the village guardian, "Rover" as it is called, seems to me to be the ideal "thing" best suited to the job of village guardian. Certainly I can think of nothing better suited, but it might not have been so, had "Rover" MK1 been the success that it might have been, instead of the complete and utter failure it was.
   This "Rover" MK1 prototype had been designed to travel over land and water, under water as in submarine, to emerge from the water onto land as in hovercraft. To be able to climb steps and walls, and do all sorts of marvellous things with its blue light flashing. In fact it was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of mechanical things. But the end result was that this beast of a thing sank without trace, somewhere out in the estuary it has been stated, but never found!
   It was made from a go-kart with a dome structure on top. With a blue light and slit for the driver of the said go-kart to see out of. It was noisy with its 2-stroke engine, so noisy that it is all the sound man could pick up on his sound equipment! On tarmac it was a wonderful machine, but it couldn't travel on sand, let alone go up steps, and climbing up walls would be completely out of the question. the thing as prop-man Mickey O'Toole described it; "It was a go-kart which was adopted to take a dome which was made at the MGM studio, a great dome was put on top with a lovely frill all around the bottom as well, and a blue flashing light was mounted on the top of it with a 12-volt battery strapped on your back to keep it going. I was supposed to drive it. I got it out and tried it on the tarmac and it was fine. We went up and down and it was lovely, but your vision was limited. There was just a small slit in the front of it, it was like a horse with blinkers on. Two guys had to put you in there because of the dome which required two men to lift it on and off. It was quite heavy that dome, you couldn't get out of, if the thing caught on fire, if the battery exploded and you were underneath this thing. It didn't even make it past the road down here. They got rid of it."
    With the question of how the white membranic village guardian came about is questionable. The story goes that after the failure of "Rover" MK1, Patrick McGoohan was looking up at the sky and spotted a weather balloon. and said that's it, that's what I want, or words to that effect! Then there is the other side of the story, that it was Don Chaffey who put the suggestion to Pat, and that hundreds of these weather balloons were acquired from a nearby meteorological station in North Wales. There was no such meteorological station anywhere near Portmeirion, well so it has been said. It was also said that "Rover" MK1 sank somewhere in the estuary at Portmeirion, but no trace of this contraption has ever been discovered. That there are no photographs of "Rover" MK1, that no extras ever saw it! In fact it has been documented that many people , including noted Prisoner authority, no not me by the way, believed that "Rover" MK1 never existed at all! Such were the stories going about at the time. But today we know different, don't we. We’ve seen the photographs.
      


   So the MK1 "Rover" didn't exist! Perhaps with none of the extras reporting not having seen it, it was probably the case that the MK1 "Rover" was tried out before the days filming began to take place. It is often the case that when rumours begin, that go on as stories, and story become close to fact. Did the MK1 "Rover" actually sink to a watery grave out in the estuary? Well that too is debatable, if it wasn't much good around the village I couldn't see them humping that "thing" down onto the beach. No more than likely the MK1 "Rover" was put back aboard the truck that brought it to Portmeirion, disassembled some place and the go-kart returned from whence it came. Perhaps it was the same go-kart which Drake used in the Danger Man episode The Paper chase.

Be seeing you.

9 comments:

  1. Hello David

    Here is a link to a science fiction equivalent of Rover:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOLGrXOtuwQ

    The special effects of the day probably could have pulled off something similar if Rover had been shot in studio using a 'blue screen'.

    The story about Don Chaffey ( from the version I have read) sounded more like he grasped a personal symbolism for the balloon Rover as faceless minions of government rather than any claims of 'invention'.

    Further research on the part of Fareclough revealed that the weather balloons were indeed still being launched around Portmeirion so the Bernie Williams/Patrick McGoohan version of Rover's re-birth is the most credible.

    Mr. McGoohan in an interview expressed regret that MK1 Rover was not part of the series and then went on to say that the series had intended to have 'people in bubbles' at some point in the series. Perhaps these were the 'Orbit Tubes" seen in Fall Out.

    Sincerely

    Mr. Anonymous

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Mister Anonymous,

    Thank you for the link, I'll be taking a look at it later in the day.

    I read that 'Rover' is symbolic of a persons fears, when you are faced with the village Guardian you are faced with that which you fear the most, you are forced to face your own fears. No.6 tried that on the beach in 'Arrival' but was found wanting!

    The content of final paragraph of your comment is new to me. I wonder if the idea of the Village Guardian absorbing it's victim, and turning red with it's victims blood was part of that idea of having people in bubbles in the series? Yet that idea was abandoned, as it was deemed to be too horrific for the televison viewer at that time.

    Have a good weekend
    David
    Be seeing you

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello David

    Rover could be 'what we fear' there are two 'conditioning' scenes involving Rover. One is in Arrival where the famous 'Golbldygook Man' is seen and the other in Change of Mind, both episodes heavily influenced by Mr. McGoohan.

    What No.6 sees when Rover 'smothers' the victim at the pond is his own face:

    http://www.acbm.com/concours/prisoner/images/rover/etouff.jpg

    The mighty Rover maybe nothing more than a weather balloon, a screen, that a Rover 'victim' projects their own "id' fears onto and then black out.

    Rover then is just a conditioning trigger conjured up in the hospital and controlled by The Village.

    Sincerely

    Mr. Anonymous

    PS I posted this else where but it seemed to have a home here in response to your comment. I also made a few corrections.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The go-kart part of the Mk1 Rover certainly could not have gone into the water but maybe they tried floating the bubble part with some buoyancy. If Mk1 was to climb walls, it equally would have had to be detached from it's kart and pulled up by a rope or something out of the camera eye-line. Thinking about how Mk1 would have actually have been used leads you to realise the *mental jump* to the balloon was not quite as huge a leap of imagination as first seems the case.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hello Moor,

    Now that is an interesting comment, and very imaginative if I may make so bold. No, the Mk1 model of 'Rover' certainly could not have gone into the water, perhaps the bubble dome was detachable from the Go-Kart section!
    I've always thought that what we get with 'Rover' MK2 is what we should have had with the MK1 model, only the use of a meteorological weather balloon made it far simpler. The only problem the production crew encountered with using a balloon, was how to control it! They did so with a mixture of air, helium and sand for bouancy, that with the aid of fishing line! What's more there were many of these meteorological weather balloons used in the production of 'the Prisoner,' as they burst rather easily when inflated to their ultimate size. As for the effect of 'Rover' emerging from the sae, it was a diver who released the balloon from the bottom of the estuary, the divers name - Brian Axworthy, a local man to Portmadoc, who owned the Jet boat used in 'Free For All,' Brian Axworthy also doubled for Patrick McGoohan in that chase scene between the Jet Boat and helicopter as No.6 was trying to escape.

    Enjoy the weekend
    David
    BCNU

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello Mister Anonymous,

    I took a look at the link, yes that's McGoohan alright, being suffoctaed by the Village Guardian. But how do you account for the fact that after that chap in 'Arrival' has been running about the central square, when 'he' is being suffoctaed by the Vilage Guardian, it's actually McGoohan's face we see?

    The Village Guardian is activated by the command 'Orange Alert,' but having the Village Guardian symbolise fear is carried on in THEPRISONER09, because it is Six's own fear that conjours up the Village Guardian, each time he thinks he is going to escape, or when he is about to lose someone. Two tried to make Six face up to his fear in the form of the Village Guardian.

    Regards
    David
    BCNU

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hello David

    http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/wizard-of-oz2.jpg

    I am suggesting that Rover is nothing more than The Village version of the "Wizard of Oz'.

    "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!!" I am the great and all powerful OZ (No.1).

    Rover is the result of the conditioning we see in Change of Mind where a Village inmate is shown images of Rover and No.2. Overlay the image of the face of No.1 and Rover becomes an manifestation of No.1's authority over the whole of The Village.... much like the Universal images of 'Big Brother'.

    Sincerely

    Mr. Anonymous

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hello David

    For reference:

    The Wizard of Oz

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE

    Sincerely

    Mr. Anonymous

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hello Mister Anonymous,

    Thank you for the video link. I've never seen 'The Wizard of Oz' but I do understand that the film was one of Patrick McGoohan's favourites.

    As Ever
    David
    BCNU

    ReplyDelete