Don't Get Yourself Killed

Don't Get Yourself Killed - An Unused Script for the Prisoner By Gerald Kelsey

    As the title suggests Don’t Get Yourself Killed by Gerald Kelsey is one of two unused Prisoner scripts. A brief synopsis of the plot is that No.6 encounters the escape committee, which consists of a group of villagers who claim the right to vet all escape attempts, much like the escape committees of World War 2 prisoner of war camps, No.6 initially shuns them, but is then coerced into joining them.

   Through this meeting with a member of the escape committee known as "The Miner", who appears to be attempting to dig his way out of the village, No.6 concocts an escape plan which involves The Miner and an oddball of the villages administration referred to in the script as the "HOF", the Head of Facility of the Environmental Adjustment Department. It is this bizarre figure who is responsible for the loudspeaker "re-educational lectures" which flood the village, forcing residents to repeat, parrot fashion, nonsensical slogans like "Individuality is the expression of revolt against the community" as they go about their business.

   The plot requires the "HOF" to defy No.2's orders and bring No.6 in for conditioning when he observes that No.6 is refusing to take part in the lecture. A sequence in which No.6 is brought into the facility on a Travelator device "like a parcel mechanically handled on a conveyor".

    No.6 refuses to co-operate with the "HOF" and later, somewhat unconvincingly, who suddenly declares an interest in joining No.6 and The Miner in an escape attempt, provided that he is paid for his help. As it happens, The Miner has discovered gold in his tunnel and No.6 offers to pay the "HOF" in gold ore.

   Between the three of them, they concoct an escape plan which involves stealing a helicopter from the village's 'helicopter service depot', but the plot is foiled at the very last moment, thanks to the greed of The Miner who refuses to take off without his sack of gold.

   Curiously the script of Don’t Get Yourself Killed has a Georgian House as the residence of No.2, this would have been Portmeirion's pink and white Unicorn cottage, which was originally considered for No.2's residence, and not that of the Green Dome. The Unicorn cottage was however rejected for film production reasons, those of the pair of gates, the steps, surrounding bushes and undergrowth, which would lead to poor camera angles.

   Also the finding of gold by The Miner in his tunnel, falls into line with the original background to the village, ie; that there are two old gold mines which go deep into the bowels of the earth. However the suggestion that the village has a "Helicopter Service Depot" seems quite ridiculous, and to be able to actually steal a helicopter suggests very lax security. And for there to be an actual escape committee, surely the village administration would have stamped that out long before there was time for any village citizens to form such a committee. Yet having thought about it, there was mention of  the "Jammers" in It's Your Funeral, Jammers who talk, talk about the plots they've been hatching. Escapes mostly, but plans and developments of all kinds of mischief, they did it to confuse the observers. The plots they talk about are always make-believe, non existent, but control can't know that until they've checked them out. Used to run themselves ragged investigating the schemes of "Jammers." But they don't bother any more. Now they keep a list of all known jammers, and anything control picks up from these they just let ride.

    This to me suggests a smacking of citizens working together as "Jammers", possible they had formed a committee, a previous escape committee before they became "Jammers" creating mischief inside the village, having failed to find any reliable way of escaping from the village!

   Anyway the script for Don't Get Yourself Killed turned out to be fool's gold and I feel that the Prisoner series would not have been made the stronger for this scripts inclusion. However having said that, one part of the script I found to work very well, all things considered in the village, and to be quite eerie, are the "re-education lectures" played over the village loudspeakers. Re-educating the citizens as they speak out such nonsensical slogans as they work as "Individuality is the expression of revolt against the community." Such a slogan would have fitted in very nicely in the episode of A Change of Mind.

   There were also several ideas floating about at the time for further Prisoner scripts. One such idea was that a Magician arrived in the village, and No.6 affected an escape through the Magicians magic cabinet.

Be seeing you