The Therapy Zone

It’s All Six Of One... And None Of The Other!
In allegorical terms, if No.1 was No.6 all the time, then in all that time No.6 should have known what was going on all the time. Who No.1 is, where the village is, which side runs the village and right from the very beginning. And that being the case, No.1 must have known who No.6 was, why he was brought to the village, and how would react - surely. And that can mean only one thing - stalemate!

Ex-Secret Agent Or Scientist Even Nuclear Scientist?

   Even a Rocketier! An ex-secret agent every time! But there are those who would have believe the Prisoner-No.6 was in fact a scientist, based on the grounds that he could launch a rocket, in both episodes of ‘The Girl Who Was Death’ and ‘Fall Out.’

   Well I wouldn't say launch as in a controlled rocket launch. Because in both cases the Prisoner was in fact carrying out an act of sabotage. Pressing buttons, Turning switches, just in the same way James Bond might, and you wouldn't call James Bind a scientist would you now?

The Ebb Tide Of Dance Of The Dead!

   It's no wonder that the body of the dead man ended up in that long box in the mortuary so soon after No.6 cast it adrift in the sea. When No.6 set the dead man's body adrift so as to carry his message to someone from his world, he did so when the tide was coming in. No.6 should have waited until the ebb tide, then the body would have had a chance of being carried out to sea. But then chances are the body could have been picked up by the crew of M.S. Polotska seen in the next episode ‘Checkmate.’

The Prisoner In His Despair

    FALL OUT - the final chapter of that enigmatic television series the Prisoner. And what does Fall Out gives us, a James Bond style of ending, which McGoohan always said was not what his intention to give the audience, but did so anyway but bound it all up in a fancy pink ribbon called it an allegory! But more than that, much more than that, we finally get to meet No.1 as No,6 did, and it turned out to be himself all along, oh what a cop-out it all was, or was it?

    I have always been of the opinion that you get what you see, as No.6 finally comes face to face with No.1 - himself, his alter ego if you prefer, who No.6, as McGoohan once put it "He was trying to beat."

   Well were they, No.6 and No.1 one and the same. Or was it all delusion as most things in the village seem to be, and yet more manipulation of No.6 brought about by the villages administration, or those masked members of the assembly? You will recall Curtis of the episode The Schizoid Man, No.6's doppelganger for the want of a better word. But he died in the episode didn't he. Well we have only No.6's word for that, as not everyone is suffocated to death at the membrane of the village guardian you know. Curtis may very well have only been rendered unconscious for all we know, and that could mean that Curtis...... Well No.1, getting his own hands dirty for once!

   If this is not the case, and that in actual fact No.6 and No.1 were one and the same, the Prisoner must then surely have ended in despair, with No.6 finding out that he was No.1 after all. And do we then not share in the Prisoner's despair? Do we not, each and everyone of us, at some point in our lives, have the desire to be No.1? And for those lucky ones who achieve that goal, who do they face when they look themselves in the mirror?

I'll be seeing you.