THEPRIS6NER

  This is a scene from the episode Schizoid, where Two has come to the "Go-Inside" Club looking for his son. As Two passes through the club, there is a Penny Farthing bicycle suspended from the ceiling, and Two looks up and pays homage to that which has passed in The Village, in his own inimitable way.

   But if the production of THEPRIS6NER had not moved from Swakopmund in Namibia to Cape town in South Africa, and able to turn a museum into the "Go-Inside" Club, then this scene of homage paid to the logo of the original series, may not have taken place. Because when the production team found the museum in Cape Town, they found all kinds of old bicycles in the museum, including a number of Penny Farthings.

   In the original series, the episode of Free For All, the scene in that cave where men sit around a pulsating Village Guardian has been the cause of much speculation as to what the scene means. In THEPRIS6NER there is such a scene which may give cause to much speculation as to what these man in the photograph are doing.

    There's no mystery here, seeing as this photograph was taken in the "Go-Inside" Club, I would say that the men sitting at the slits in the wall, and considering the type of club "Go-Inside" is, are nothing more than "peep show" merchants! For those who do not know, strip clubs of the 50's and 60's had separate rooms where women, or men would perform all manner of sexual acts, starting from striptease and so on. Men would go into a little room, put money in the metre and sit and watch until their money ran out. In this case a shutter drops.

 

THEPRIS6NER has come and gone, but those like me, who have embraced this series, there is still the DVD box set to enjoy, and relive the series all over again......."Breath in...............breath out........More Village" as Two would say. But there are those who would have "less Village!" I have heard from some old friends who were once strong members of that Prisoner appreciation society Six of One, who gave up on the series we soon as thirty minutes into the first episode, calling it rubbish. Another who after the first episode cancelled the very next day, his order for the DVD box set of this series! they don't like it, fail to see the value in this series. Well that's fine, no-one is forced to like it, but what I cannot understand is this, why solid fans of the Prisoner didn't give this series a fair chance, but deemed to judge it after only thirty minutes and seeing but one episode! I wonder what it was that they saw in the original series, but cannot see in the THEPRIS6NER? Sometime I wonder why people became fans of the Prisoner in the first place! It would seem that when Two said that The Village is in all of us, he got it wrong, for it would seem that The Village is not at all in some people! Oh well it's their loss I have to say, for myself I "Breath in.........breath out........more Village."

DAS - BCNU