The Therapy Zone

The Prisoner - Its A Bloody Nightmare!

    And it all starts after the Prisoner has handed in his letter of resignation. His abduction followed by two men in black - Undertakers - who having rendered him unconscious, then carry a coffin into his home, and carry it out again with the Prisoner inside. A coffin which they place inside their hearse and calmly drive away.

    The village where everyone appears to be happy, citizens who have everything they could wish for, save for their freedom, their individuality, and a name to be called by! The village - which gives the air of a seaside holiday resort, which hides something dark and dangerous, like the hospital where experiments are carried out on the patients therein. Leucotomies, the isolation of the aggressive frontal lobes are carried out on patients without a qualm. To make nothing of the "aversion therapy" room.

   ‘Free For All’ has the first No.2 who doesn't care what happens to No.6, or how she goes about getting what she wants;

     "Will you never learn..... this is only the beginning... We have many ways and means but we don't wish to damage you permanently... Are you ready to talk?"

   In the Village they have taken away his former identity {although I’m not sure he had one} and give the new identity of Number 6. But then in ‘The Schizoid Man’ they take even that away from him, and make him out to be someone else!

    I hate to think what this No.2 puts No.6 though during the following days, probably just was well we do not witness that! But I suppose the darkest time during the nightmare of the Prisoner must surely come with the ‘Dance of the Dead,’ and as the title suggests, it's all about death. The dead body found by No.6 on the beach - the brain dead citizens - the termination order set against Roland Walter Dutton, but in his case death would be a happy release I should think! The use of the dead, first by No.6 as he uses a corpse to send a message to the outside world, and then again by No.2, who sees a massage sent to confirm a known fact, that No.6 has died in an accident at sea. And of course No.6 is sentenced to death at his trial, simply for the possession of a radio! But originally, the script for Dance of the Dead called for everyone at the dance to die, save for No.6 who then could be likened to be death itself!

Hero Or Anti Hero?

    From remarks made by former colleagues and friends in the episodes of ‘Many Happy Returns’ and ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ Thorpe excepted of course, it would appear that the Prisoner-No.6 is a much respected and well-liked man. Full of integrity, loyal, and extremely competent.

   His Fiancée Janet Portland is so devoted to him that she has been waiting for her fiancé to return to her for a year, and has remained faithful to him in all that time! and when her fiancée finally does return to her, albeit in the guise of the Colonel, she accepts his bizarre story, that this complete stranger is her missing lover. It would seem that despite the mind of the Prisoner being wrongly housed in the body of the Colonel, the Prisoner still kisses the same way!

The Rook

  Some would have it that the Rook-No.56 had been brought to the village in order to protect the secret of his invention of a new electronic defence system. Well that doesn't quite ring true, because the plans had already been stolen, by some petty bureaucrat who had let his bag get swiped!

   No, No.56 had been brought to the Village to keep him out of harms way, by causing harm to the homeland, because of his belief that No.56 thought all nations should have his invention, the electronic defence system which would have ensured world peace! It certainly helps protect the Village!

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