The Therapy Zone

The Prisoner

   There cannot be many mysteries remaining in the series left to discover. Yet we can I think, find new reinterpretations, and look at the same but from a different angle. However one thing is blatantly obvious right from the outset - the Prisoner is on the side of the village!

   When the Prisoner meets with the new No.2 the Prisoner tells him to get No.1. So the Prisoner knows about No.1, okay you can say that seeing as he is faced with No.2, it follows that he has a superior, and that superior can only be No.1. But when asked by No.2 "It depends on whose side you're on, doesn't it?" The Prisoner responds with "I'm on our side."

   So it would seem that his man who was once with them. A man who showed great enthusiasm for his work, then suddenly walked out, sorry, resigned. Is a man with a conscience, and could not live with those things which played upon his conscience. But they should still know where his loyalties lie, because despite everything, John Drake still remains loyal.

   But because Drake resigned it shows to No.2 that people change, and so do loyalties. "Not mine" the Prisoner insists. And so too does that conscience of his "You imprison people, steal their minds, destroy them....".

   And so you have the reason why John Drake, the now Prisoner, resigned. It was a matter of conscience, and that fact has got him into hotter water than he might have imagined. If No.6 were only able to rid himself of that conscience of his, things might be different for him.

   I suppose the same thing could be said of Patrick McGoohan after he had escaped to Hollywood. That if Patrick McGoohan had put both his conscience and his principles aside and played the Hollywood game, things might have turned out very differently for him.

   To me both the Prisoner-No.6 and Patrick McGoohan had the same matter of conscience. The man and the character together, the one and the same.

   It was once written that "The Prisoner can never be fully explained. It isn't meant to be. It is what you see in it - and you should be free to see as much as you like."

   Well just as long as what you see isn't simply made up, misinterpreted, or made to look like something else, otherwise what's the point? But if that's your bag, then who am I to tell you differently? And its quite true that the Prisoner can never be fully explained, but if you can come to an understanding of most of the Prisoner, then you are able to sit back and appreciate that which will always be inexplicable within the series, and thereby all the more interesting.

  And what about the sections of the Prisoner which we do not see, that can never be understood, or explained by anyone? I mean the sections between say the end of Arrival and the beginning of The Chimes of Big Ben for example. What happened the next day when there was the new No.2 who took part in the Appreciation Day ceremony - how did he treat No.6 the next day? And of course the same can be said of the new No.2 of Free For All, was she brought to the village with the remit of extracting the reason for No.6's resignation, or was she to be involved in something else, simple administration work perhaps? If it was the former, then I wouldn't wish to be in No.6's shoes the next day after Free For All!

   You see, all one has to do is use one's imagination to fill in the gaps to your own satisfaction, and then you can enlarge upon Patrick McGoohan's masterpiece that is the Prisoner.

I'll be seeing you