The Therapy Zone

The Prisoner - Nerve Gassed?

    A friend's son, has come up with something which has never occurred to me in all my 40 years and more of Prisoner appreciation. During the opening sequence, as the Prisoner is busy gathering up his passport, visa papers, photographs, and two suitcases, an undertaker pumps nerve gas into the study, the Prisoner, standing at the window looks up confused. My friend's son noted that the show would have been a very different show, had the Prisoner not jerked his head up looking confused, but instead had opened the window.

    What is it they say "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings....." And this above only goes to confirm that which I have thought to be the case for many a year, that the Prisoner is better viewed through the eyes of a child rather than those of an adult. There is something about the logical mind of a child, their reasoning to behold. As Oscar Wilde once said "I wish I had thought of that!"

The Prisoner Real Or Just A Dream?

   Well I suppose it all depends upon what ‘the Prisoner’ means to you. The village, and indeed the whole series is open to interpretation. On the surface it's an exciting action adventure, visually stimulating, which you can simply sit back and enjoy without thinking about it at all, as watched as pure entertainment.

    On the next level there's the allegorical, I don't care for this too much, as it leaves nothing solid that you can pin down about the Prisoner, as being allegorical you can make something mean anything at all, and that means that there is no logical progression of incidents throughout the series. That there is no need for a credible solution, well that's right for sure!

   Then there is the symbolism, the social comment of it's time, the questions, all of which means that there is an enormous pool of thought, ideas and theories to dive into beneath the surface of ‘the Prisoner.’

   And then we are told that there were such places as the village, where undesirables and recalcitrant agents were put. So it is through this that the village gives it's air of reality, even that of a holiday camp, which for the Prisoner’s it is not.

   So, if the village is not reality, then the alternative is a dream. And if a dream, then possibly you’re worst nightmare and a recurring one at that, which makes the reality of the village just that bit more attractive.

   But at the end of the day, reality or dream, ‘the Prisoner’ is basically a television series, let us not forget that.

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