The question is, whose are these children, fictionally not factually you understand, and why should anyone trust Number Six to 'bayby sit' their children, more to the point, why should he want to? In a recent email, or was it a comment, anyway, from a friend and fellow fan of 'the Prisoner,' suggested that they could be Number Seventy-three's children {Number Seventy-three of 'Hammer Into Anvil}. Well its a different train of thought certainly, and the children proof that the Village is a growing community. But then again, no that would be silly, the children might have been brought to the Village simply as part of a ploy to get Number Six to open up to children. But that is too ridiculous, and I dispell it from my mind instantly, perferring the children to those of Number Seventy-Three, and why Number Six doesn't mind bayby sitting them, and telling them his fairy tale, in rememberance of their mother perhaps.
Thanks Steve.
I'll be seeing you
If it wasn't a recent email, I think I mentioned this to you elsewhere!
ReplyDeleteWe do indeed think 'outside the box'!
BCNU );oB
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteBlimey, that was quick! I knew I had read it somewhere from you, thinking outside the box, which we both like to do, as indeed does ZM72.
Have a good day
David
BCNU
Given the evident age of the children, it seems unlikely to me that they would belong to 73. Curiously enough, one of the criticisms I've read of the episode The Girl Who Was Death is that it uses children as a plot device and yet children had never been seen in the Village up to that point - yet another myth, as children first appear in the cowboy episode. I wonder if McGoohan introduced children into Living in Harmony precisely for the purpose of utilising the device of children in the very next episode? Children were specifically requested for Living in Harmony, according to Frank Maher, who said he provided his own as two of them.
ReplyDeletehttp://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/mcgoohan-on-my-mind-harmonising.html
The other child/children in 'The Girl Who Was Death' could belong to 'single parent' Curtis...
Delete...this would explain why they seem so comfortable with Drake!
BCNU );oB
Hello Moor,
DeleteAn interesting email, containing an interesting prognosis. However, fictionally speaking, there is one difference between the children in 'The Girl Who Was Death' and 'Living In Harmony,' the children in 'Living In Harmony' didn't physically exist, like the majority of the Towns people, they were all in the hallucinagenic mind of the Prisoner.
Regards
David
Be seeing you
It has always baffled me as to why there was so much confusion as to the identity of 'Number Six', considering at the time of its premier, 'The Prisoner' was shown immediately after the series 'Danger Man'.
ReplyDeleteHad Frasier not been addressed by his name in his tv spin-off to 'Cheers', I'm sure American audiences would have taken it for granted the two disfunctional psychiatrists were the same character.
A British example would be the brilliant sit-coms 'Porridge' and 'Going Straight'. Had ex-convict Norman Stanley Fletcher not been referred to by name in 'Going Straight', British audiences would still have connected the character to the former criminal in 'Porridge'.
So why is it so diificult to get our heads round the idea that the ex-secret agent in 'The Prisoner' is former secret agent John Drake in 'Danger Man'?
At the time, McGoohan only revealed Drake was No6 privately to friends and crew members. I suspect he encouraged audiences to keep guessing simply because he knew 'The Prisoner' (in colour) would have a longer shelf life than the B&W 'Danger Man' and so his identity would be irrelevant to future audiences...
But look at it like this.
The resignation sequence has a far greater impact and shock value if we KNOW the character! This man who had a billiant career and who's record was impeccable IS John Drake. Otherwise...WHY SHOULD WE CARE???
BCNU );oB
**McGoohan only revealed Drake was No6 privately to friends and crew members**
ReplyDeleteWhich friends and crew members? I recall Frank Maher suggesting that it was said to him that the new show would be some knd of continuation of the Drake persona, but he was only a stunt-man, not a part of the creative process. The only other person I can think of that made such a claim, makes it very indirectly, and that was Tony Sloman who claims that early Call Sheets [I think] had the name Drake on them. However, I'm not clear how he would have seen such things because he did not join the team until quite some way into the production. They're about the only two I can think of immediately. McGoohan WAS Drake at the time, to be fair, so it's not surprisng that people arounf him at the time could not get that idea out of their head.
George Markstein spoke of how it was *obvious* that Six was Drake, but his view was very similar to yours I think. This was how HE imagined his way into the series. However, I would think that for anyone seeing The Prisoner for the first time after about 1970, none of those would have had the faintest idea about John Drake since Danger Man was virtually unseen again until the 1990's and then only now and again, as monochrome shows have never been popular with modern TV companies. It's clear that very many people cared very deeply about The Prisoner without ever knowing that McGoohan had done Danger Man. When they discovered he had played a secret agent before, it would have intrigued them of course, and then they would read all that fan club stuff, which for some reason took Markstein's story and ran with it for many years.
Personally, I like to link Drake to Six to Jones to Brenner because it's fun, and McGoohan clearly saw the fun too and it is of course McGoohan, the secret agent actor, who can be seen to link all four of these characters in my head. It's commonly called type-casting and is the bane of many actors, but McGoohan seemed to see the funny side. At the end of the day however, if you are trying to contend that in order to care about the plight of Number Six, you have to know who Drake was, then I think you are completely wrong.
Moor.
Hello Moor,
ReplyDeleteI couldn't see your comment here, then I found out why, the machine had decided to 'spam' your comment, I've just 'un-spammed' it.
Regards
David
BCNU
Thanks David. Something odd did happen between my computer and Google last night. This must be why. I thought the comment may have ended up spammed in the short term so did not attempt to post it again.
ReplyDeleteMy comment was of course in reply to the comment by stevejailbirdmatt. The Drake/Six thing has a number of levels of debate. The one where McGoohan is accused of only being motivated to avoid calling the character Drake for reasons of avoiding royalties to Ralph Smart is the only pernicious one.
Given the conversations elsewhere on your estimable blog about how royalties for The Prisoner were due to ATV rather than Everyman, the whole *argument* is quite bogus anyway. If the issue had been over the aspect of monies due to the creator of "Drake" then Lew Grade would have been only too delighted to pay Smart in order to keep McGoohan playing John Drake. Like McGoohan said, Lew would have liked him to keep playing Drake forever.
bcnu
Moor
Hello Moor,
DeleteMaking Drake a Prisoner in fact! {sorry couldn't resist that one}
Regards
David
BcNu
I think you might mean "making McGoohan a prisoner", but that would only have been the case if McGoohan had agreed to remain a prisoner called Drake.
DeleteIt's noticeable that in Ice Station Zebra, the agent has a name no more convincingly individual than Peter Smith was: David Jones. And Nelson Brenner had such a convoluted and covered-over past that he could have been almost anybody, but at least one of the pictures on his wall is of Number Six from Chimes of Big Ben... ;-D
Hello Moor,
DeleteYes I probably do, but seeing as McGoohan and Drake are one and the same, but then McGoohan went and resigned and made a Prisoner of himself.
I agree with you, the name used in 'Ice station Zebra' David Jones, is completley unconvincing. To my mind, McGhooan is still Drake. I know the character isn't, but it's McGoohan's performance which is Drake. Even if Patrick McGoohan had accepted the role as James Bond, I'm sure he would still have come across as being John Drake. Which brings me to the conclusion that perhaps McGoohan played the role of John Drake for too long.
Ah, good you observed the picturs on the wall of Nelson Brenners home in 'Identity Crisis,' there is also one from 'Fall Out' with McGoohan and KAR 120C. They must have been McGoohan's private collection, as there are other framed pieces to do with McGoohan's other work in films and television.
Kind Regards
David
Be seeing you
** McGoohan went and resigned and made a Prisoner of himself **
DeleteThat's part of the cult-belief, but McGoohan said he didn't:
"I didn’t resign, in any way, I just decided that……….. I enjoyed doing Danger Man but I thought that we’d done enough of them and the ideas started to get a bit thin and before they sort of got thinner and thinner and thinner, until there was nothing there, I thought it was a good idea to stop; and I went to Lew Grade and said that would be about enough. And then discussions went on about other things."
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/mcgoohan-in-his-own-terms-i-didnt.html
A key event that led to the decision also seemed to be that CBS did not renew their interest in Danger Man for the season after 1965 and without that sale, there was no future in Drake. This also makes for another very good reason to not make another show about Drake; CBS had already rejected him, so to offer them another show about drake would have been commercially stupid.
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/mcgoohan-in-his-own-terms-i-didnt.html
I take your points about McGoohan's personal characterisation informing both Drake and Number Six. I guess we should not leave John Connor out of this continuum, as perhaps the ultimate fate for a Nelson Brenner degenerate... :-D
It should be noted that McGoohan once remarked that John Drake was about as different to his own personality as any part he had ever played, so I think in that way he was bound to cling to the Drake schtick as a way of getting himself into the secret agent frame of mind, seeing as he couldn't use the personally reflective Method.