The Therapy Zone

    In the episode of Checkmate No.8-the white Queen offered to help No.6 with an escape attempt if it's a good plan, at least she could tell him what not to try, a sort of one woman escape committee. Incidentally in an unused script entitled ‘Don't Get Yourself Killed,’ No.6 hears about an "escape committee" which used to be in every POW camp during both the first and second World Wars, who would assess and authorise inmates escape plans. No.6 joins the "escape committee" and meets the bottle man, who puts SOS messages in bottles and throws them into the sea. An attempt to organise a helicopter for an escape attempt is foiled, No.6 having been betrayed by the Miner, who had discovered "fools gold." And a man who had built a "pedal copter" hidden in a cave, and it was there that No.6 met the Miner.

    This script ‘Don't Get Yourself Killed’ was rejected, but I think it may have added something to the Prisoner series, because it shows that other inmates were actually involved with escape plans. After all in the actual series we only hear about escapes, or being too old to escape, apart from No.6 who does attempt four escapes from the village, other than that we only witness one escape which involves other citizens of the village, and that was in the plan drawn up by No.6 in Checkmate. Other than that there was only one other escape attempt, and one I do not count as it was "stage managed," that escape attempt of Nadia's who could not swim so far - how far? 30 miles, according to Nadia.

   Seeing as there are so many unhappy people in the village, you'd think that more people would try to escape, and the law of averages would say that sooner or later one citizen would succeed. But having successfully escaped, where would the escapee send the postcard? Anyone successfully having escaped POW camps during World war II, having made a "home run," would send a postcard to the POW camp from England.

Numbers Don't Change Only People!

   Take Number 8 for example. The first No.8 we encounter in the Prisoner is a plant - Nadia Rakovski. Then she leaves The Village and 8 is given to the White Queen in ‘Checkmate.’ Something must happen to this No.8, she either leaves The Village, escapes, or dies, otherwise why should her number be reallocated to another woman from the computer room who has a "Daily prognosis report" carried out on No.6 during ‘It's Your Funeral.’ But then there comes another change for the Number 8, this time in ‘Living In Harmony,’ but this time No.8 is a man. I wonder how the Prisoner series would have shaped up if the likes of Number 8 had remained the same character in The Village, after Nadia Rakovski had left that is. We would still have had the same characters, but their numbers would be different, and no real reason to keep the character of the white Queen from ‘Checkmate.’ Mind you, there's that doctor No.40 from ‘Dance of the Dead,’ played by Duncan MacRae, if the series had kept him for Checkmate, then there would have been no need for the doctor No.22 who we see in ‘Checkmate’ played by Patricia Jessel.

   Another extract from an interview with the late Frank Maher, stunt double for Patrick McGoohan, and stunt arranger on the Prisoner.

   Q: How did the Penny Farthing bike come about? It appears on all the props, badges and so on.

     Frank Maher: Well, at the time the bike turned up it was pulled out of the props truck at Portmeirion and put to one side. A lot of Welsh extras were around, goggling at all these funny things that were being pulled out. Anyway, this Penny Farthing was leaned up against something, and Pat came up and said "Right Stuntman - ride it!"

   So, I tried riding it and nearly broke my neck! Anyway, there was a little guy who'd been watching  -must have been seventy if he was a day - and he said "Excuse me, do you mind if I rode it?" And he made an idiot of me because he walked over to a tree, leant the bike against it, climbed up - which I hadn't thought of, sat on the bike and merrily went on his way. Pat loved it and got him to ride around the village on it as part of the background. Now I don't personally agree with the ideas of symbolism connected with the bike, I love it as a logo, but "Symbolic of Progress" and so on... no, not for me.

    Footnote: Will Parry, 'the Prisoner' extra who rode that Penny Farthing bicycle, sadly died in October 2012.

Be seeing you