The Therapy Zone

Patrick McGoohan: The Man Behind The Bars

  Who tried to escape by running away, to leave us wondering what it was really all about!

Questions Might Be A Burden But What's The Answer?

    The Prisoner has been described as being an angry young man. Well the Prisoner was hardly a young man at the age of 38, that makes him middle aged in my book! And why was he angry? Well wouldn't you be, if you were abducted from your known environment and placed somewhere alien to you - such as the village?

   Well okay, the Prisoner was angry before his abduction to the village, venting as he did, his anger at that balding, bespectacled man, sat behind that desk, in an office to whom the Prisoner handed his letter of resignation. Okay, he slammed the envelope down on the desk, along with his fist! And why was he angry? As Patrick McGoohan  he had become disillusioned with the kind of work he was doing with ‘Danger Man’, and wanted to do something else. As John Drake he had become fed up travelling the globe, putting his life on the line, as well as being used by others for their own personal gain, and having to clear up other people's mess, as he was called upon to do, more often than not.

How Came Cobb To The Village?

The Prisoner "Cobb!... What are you doing here?"

Cobb "And you?"

The Prisoner "How long have you been here?"

Cobb "Days - weeks - months? It's difficult to tell."

The Prisoner "How did you get here, who brought you?"

Cobb " I was in Germany. I went back to my hotel, I think I went to bed - I was here!"

   Some would say that Cobb had been brought to the Village purely for the benefit of the Prisoner. But I don't think so, as really this would have been over egging the cake so to speak, and a detail too far I should have thought, simply to have Cobb brought to the village just for a few moments while they met. The meeting of Cobb and the Prisoner, could have been an error of course, that they should never have been put on the same hospital ward. Besides what would have been the reason for their meeting on that hospital ward? No, I am of the opinion that Cobb had been taken to the Village just as the Prisoner had been but for an independent reason. Certainly Cobb had been in the Village for a good deal of time before that of the Prisoners own arrival in the village.

    As for Cobb's faked suicide, by jumping out of a hospital window. Well for reasons of their own, the village's administration chose for No.6 to believe that Cobb was dead. When in fact he was being prepared for him to meet his new masters, who at the end he mustn’t keep waiting.

   There was another death by suicide, that of No.73 who also threw herself out of a hospital window, just as No.6 burst into the private hospital room. But what's interesting, is the fact that No.6 actually went and looked out of that window, down on the body below. I think he was just making sure. Perhaps No.6 had had doubts about Cobb's suicide in Arrival, who can say.

I'll be seeing you.