A question of Personalities, No.1 is an introvert, well what could be more introverted than hiding in a rocket? So it would seem likely that an extrovert would be needed to mediate with the outside world whilst the mastermind, No.1, stays hidden. He is a rational type, an Intuitional, thinking, and judging, a natural leader who prefers to remain hidden in the background until others "demonstrate their inability to lead." Could this, I wonder, apply equally to No.6? This in the latest attempt by No.1 to find such an extrovert to mediate with the outside world.
There is irony in the fact that the Prisoner is put on trial during the ‘Dance of the Dead’ for what we would deem to be a minor crime, the possession of a radio set. This when the Prisoner has broken much more serious rules, like trying to send a message to the outside world! The former illustrates the absurdity of the court and it's procedures. It would appear that justice is more a matter of theatrics, played out for the blood sport of the mob, than getting to the truth or wrong of the matter. If the sentence for the possession of a radio set is death, I wonder what it would have been had the Prisoner actually managed to get a message out of The Village!
The Prisoner is not given a costume for carnival, but his own suit is delivered especially for the occasion. Perhaps it's because No.6 is still himself. Or maybe the Prisoner is above such "bourgeois infantine!"
“Rover" the buoyant weather balloon that enforces the village laws, is perhaps the most bizarre character in television history. Originally this ominous police vehicle was conceived as a faceless, driverless Volks Wagon with a blue light on the top. Such a vehicle was actually created for the Prisoner {but a Go-Kart not a Volks Wagon}, but it failed one major test, when placed in the sea during a critical point of preproduction, it quickly filled with water and sank. Unable to retrieve this vehicle, McGoohan looked to the skies for assistance and found it in a passing weather balloon. McGoohan asked his production manager , Bernard Williams, to enquire as to the availability of such a balloon. "He took off like a rocket, and after we had done a few shots, he arrived back with a station wagon full of these balloons in varying sizes, from six inches to eight feet in diameter, as well as cylinders of oxygen and helium and various other things. That's how we got what turned out to be the best-possible menacing Rover that one could have." Rover remains the show's most expensive special effect."
It makes you think doesn't it? Well it did me when I saw a well known face in the Professor's house, that of a former No.2! I found myself asking the question "Just how long has the Professor and his wife been here in the village?" I was informed by Madam Professor that all the busts seen in her home are simple finger exercises, and I took it that included the bust of the former No.2, pictured above, and previously seen at the "Exhibition of Arts and Crafts." So it seemed reasonable enough to me that Madam Professor and her husband had been here in the village since before The Chimes of Big Ben, and so I asked Madam Professor that as an artist why she had not chosen a more original subject, after all so many citizens had chosen No.2 as their subject. "The answer is a simple one, he has an interesting face."
Madam Professor lives a more quiet life as a citizen of the village these days, and a more impoverished lifestyle now that she is a widow and not so important to the villages administration. She still holds art seminars, but in a an open area somewhere in the woods. Well Madam Professor can never be allowed to leave the village you see. And as for the Professor’s students, their education seems to have died with the Professor!
Be seeing you
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