The Therapy Zone

Don’t Worry Number 6. You’ll Be Cured

"I’ll see to it" says No.2 "No more nightmares. If you have so much as a bad dream, you will come whimpering to tell it to me. Whimpering!"

   So No.2 sees No.6 as in need of being cured, but what of. I mean No.6 isn’t ill is he? Perhaps it’s to do with No.6’s supposed persecution complex amounting to mania - paranoid delusions of grandeur. Well, we’re all guilty of delusions of grandeur from time to time, aren’t we?

   Such is No.6’s defiance of the village, that he can make the act of simply putting on his dressing gown seem a gesture of defiance. And No.6 isn’t afraid of putting on weight, in having given up sugar on the advice of his doctor 3 months ago. And not of being reduced either, as he drops three lumps of sugar with great deliberation into his cup of tea.

   But fear ye not. There’s a cure for al this, and No.2 will see to it!

The Subtlety Of Number 2

   During the episode of ‘Dance of the Dead,’ No.2 demonstrates her subtlety, by releasing the Village Guardian on the evening No.6 made it out of his cottage and out into the night. Subtle in the way No.2 uses the Village Guardian to test No.6, who puts himself to the test against the Village guardian in a race along the beach. A race which No.6 has no chance of winning, and Rover runs No.6 to his knees on the sand.

The Electro Pass

   It synchronises with the alarm-system and lets you though. It also tells the time, but the date is not 19th of March, Patrick McGoohan's birthday, as some fans used to once think. as filming did not commence until the September of 1966. So the 19th of September would be favourite.

The Zendazoid Man

    Shave him and he’d look like No.6!

   Well allegedly a favourite film of Patrick McGoohan’s at the time of the Prisoner was The Prisoner of Zenda - starring Stewart Granger in the roles of Rudolf Rassendyll and King Rufolf V, who are not only cousins, but the very image of each other, just as Curtis-No.12 and No.6 in The Schizoid Man. Each also has a moustache - Rassedyll and No.12, as a way of telling the two apart.

    In the film The Prisoenr of Zenda, the soon to be crowned Rudolf V, is both drugged and kidnapped, and Rudlof Rassendyll is recruited to impersonate his cousin, and attend the Coronation in his cousins stead. This to stop the crown from being usurped by the brother of Rudolf the V. There is even a character named in the film, I forget his name, who knows Rudolf the V intimately and so keeps his eye on him throughout the Coronation. The named character has a glass eye and it is his glass eye which he uses to watch the newly crowned King. Leo McKern has a glass eye - the left one!

   So both the episode The Schizoid Man and The Prisoner of Zenda are likewise linked by the use of identical look-a-likes. Well what if we carried this idea forward to ‘Fall Out.’ No.6 who has now become known as Sir, is about to go through an Inauguration ceremony. Swap the word Inauguration for Coronation, and you could have the President and members of the Assembly attempting to usurp the "throne" upon which Sir now sits, by using a look-a-like for No.1, and to place him permanently upon the throne. There is even a man present at Sir’s pending Coronation who has a glass eye, his right eye - No.2 with which he gives No.1 a stare!

   I find it fascinating as to what can be done with the Prisoner, placing different interpretations on aspects of the series, by what is there already. Don’t you?

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