The Therapy Zone

Continuity - Within The Prisoner!

   It's easy to spot the numerous continuity errors which crop up within ‘the Prisoner’ series, not so easy is it to spot continuity between the episodes, but I have found one example. When No.6 wakes up on the morning of ‘Many Happy Returns,’ No.6 looks at his wrist watch, which he wears in bed. Then again when No.6's mind wakes up, but in the body of the Colonel in the study of his London home during ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ he looks at his wrist watch which he has been wearing whilst asleep.

   So I wondered if this continuity runs all through the series, and low and behold it does. For as No.6 pulls No.50-Monique onto his bed in ‘It's Your Funeral,’ you can see that No.6 is wearing his wrist watch beneath the sleeve of his pyjamas. Okay, No.6 isn't wearing his wrist watch in bed the night the doctors come for him in The Schizoid Man, but that could be for convenience sake for the scene. Because a doctor injects a needle into No.6's wrist just about where the leather strap of the wrist watch would have been. If No,6 had been wearing his wrist watch in bed, the doctor would have had to remove it!

   I've not heard of anyone who wears their wrist watch in bed. I shouldn't wonder if wearing his wrist watch in bed, was one of Patrick McGoohan's own habits.

“I’m New Here!

   The episode of ‘Dance of the Dead’ lies 8th in the screening order of the Prisoner, yet there is a line spoken by No.6 "I'm new here." After No.6's arrival in the Village, he's been duped into thinking he escaped The Village during ‘The Chimes of Big Ben.’ Had the privacy of his dreams invaded. In ‘Free for All’ he ran for electoral office, met his doppelganger ‘The Schizoid Man.’ He destroyed the General by asking a question, supposedly insoluble to man or machine. Then having found that he is the only inhabitant The Village, No.6 made himself a sea-going raft and set out on a sea adventure. So to say "I'm new here"........I mean just how long does a citizen of the Village have to be a resident so as not to be new here? I should have thought by the time Dance of the Dead came along, No.6 would have been an old hand of The Village! But then again, not if ‘Dance of the Dead’ had been screened in it’s original position in the screening order 2^nd!

A Man of Mystery!

   The Butler has no name, no number, and has only become to be known to fans of ‘the Prisoner’ by his apparent job title - the Butler. Yet in the series he's made no mention of at all, not by name, number, or even his job title!

   In fact we know less about the Butler than we do the Prisoner or even No.1. So perhaps the Butler is the real mystery man of the series. It was even thought at one time by a number of fans to be Number 1!

I’ll be seeing you