The Therapy Zone



Jammers - Plotters - Saboteurs - Escapees & Anachists

    Life in the village is not all that pleasant for many, for whose hearts and minds lay further a field in another world. You might like to think that No.6 is public enemy No.1, and to intents and purposes he is. But there are others, and not always like No.8-the white Queen, or No.14 the chess champion. There is disloyalty within the machine itself, cogs such as No.12 of administration who tired to help No.6 get the Professors message out to the people of the community in ‘The General,’ and who thought nothing of doing a spot of sabotage on the side!

   Then there are those who feel dissatisfied, the stout shopkeeper No.19, or is it 56? It could be either. But whichever it is, he along with No.14, the painter-No.42, amongst others, and don't forget those Jammers, whose plots for mischief caused control to run themselves ragged checking out the schemes of Jammers. But who then couldn't see that as a way of escape! Then there's No.50-the Watchmaker in ‘It’s Your Funeral.’ He was going to wake the citizens up, to wake them out of their lethargy, through the assassination of the retiring No.2. An anarchist in anyone’s language!

   No.48 who had been with them, but who later went and gone! And don't forget that list of malcontents to which the heir presumptive-No.2 referred to in an interview with No.6. No, there has been a air of dissatisfaction within the village for a very long time, certainly long before the Prisoner-No.6's arrival in the Village!

He Certainly Gets Around!

   No.256, he saw the Professor as being a great man, and was most certainly was with the Village. However attitudes change, and so too it would seem do numbers!

  Here for example is No.93, standing at the podium whilst confessing. "They're right of course, quite right - I'm inadequate!" The man is the same, only his attitude along with his number have changed. Yet this one time Unmutual, has been brought back into the fold through his confession, which must have done him an immense amount of good, because he turns up once more as a staunch delegate on the assembly in ‘Fall Out.’ He reads out the charge against the Priosner-No.48, "The Prisoner has been charged with the most serious breach of social etiquette... total defiance of the elementary laws which sustain our community... questioning the decisions of those voted to govern us...unhealthy aspects of speech and dress not in accordance with general practise, and the refusal to observe, wear or respond to his number!

   And this man had once been an Unmutual, now a staunch member of those who govern us, and sits as a delegate on the benches of the Assembly. But one last thing, once No.256, later to become No.93. Is that promotion or demotion I wonder.

The Prisoner - All Things To Everyman

    "Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know"  

                                                                                                 {Aristotle}

    It has been written that there are those who use the Prisoner as a means of shoring up one's personal bias, forcing bits of the series into bizarre justification for blinkered views and muddled thinking, which is a tremendous shame. Because all Patrick McGoohan wanted us to do was to think. To question ourselves, others, together with the status quo.

   Well some of that is just about right, or was in past years. I myself have questioned, put forward ideas and theories. One thing I hope I have not done, is to have formulated muddled thinking.

  True I have researched the Prisoner series to a depth never previously achieved, and in that process I have tried to hit upon the truth of the matter, as far as I have been able.

  I have learned from the Prisoner. I have rebelled, questioned. Have spoken out against those in power, in the hope to improve a situation. And I've resigned, walked out, and washed my hands of things. Not because walking away was the better option, but as it happens for "peace of mind!"

   I have, and still do have, opinions regarding the Prisoner. But now I also know much more about the in's and outs of the series. How certain things came to be, why they are there, the origins and adaptations which originated long before the Prisoner, but which now help the Prisoner to be the series it became.

Be seeing you