Therapy Zone

Here’s A Question

    Once having arrived in the Village in the episode of’ ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ and his duties there having been explained to him, exactly how much persuasion, or coercion was used against the Colonel to make him undergo the mind exchange process?

   Did he undergo the process willingly, calm and collective in both manner and thought. Carrying out orders without question as he must surely have done as a Colonel in the Guards Regiment at one time, he's wearing a Guards tie. Or was it the case that the Colonel had to be taken kicking and screaming to the "Amnesia Room," makes for a pretty picture if you care to imagine what it must have been like for him. Or possibly the Colonel had to be tranquillised for the operation to be carried out, such might have been his state of mind the Colonel had got himself worked up in. Agitated, questioning, afraid of what might happen to him. The possibility of the possibility that he might not be a whole man again must surely have weighed on his mind.

The Colonel

    There are four separate encounters with the Colonel seen in the Prisoner, during The chimes of Big Ben for example. This Colonel is a desk man, desk -bound if you like, save for when he's been seconded to the village. But even then when he is, he's still in his office, albeit a replica!

    The Colonel in ‘Many Happy Returns,’ does get out and about, and is prepared to take action, even to help an ex-colleague like No.6. A more hands-on approach is adopted by the Colonel during ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ as he, like one of his predecessors, is seconded to the village by the highest authority. And once having arrived at the village the Colonel had no choice but to take part in the experiment, to change the minds of two people, that of the Colonel's and No.6. They, whoever 'they' are, were taking a hell of a risk with not only No.6, but also the Colonel. If things had gone wrong, which in the case of the Colonel, they did, No.2 would surely have to pay the price!

    Then last but not least, Colonel Hawke-Englishe who was on the trail of a mad Professor Schnipps who had built a rocket with which to destroy London. But who came to a nasty end whist playing in a cricket match. Blown to bits as he was, whilst at the wicket one run short short of his century.

   It is usual for agents like Mr.X to go out into the field, even using a standard disguise. But not so superiors such as the Colonel, even disguised or not. They are the men who sit behind large oak desks in elaborately decorated offices, who have nothing more to worry about than not having "proper biscuits," the ones with the cream in the inside! Administrators who send the likes of John Drake out into the field to face what dangers there may be to face. Perhaps never to return if captured or killed in the process.

    It was suggested back in the late 1970's that the Prisoner had secured it's place in the highest rank of Romantic Art. Can this be right, to consider the Prisoner as Romantic Art?

Imaginative - Yes

Visionary - Yes

Literary - No

Visually stimulating - Yes

Excitable - the Prisoner's definitely that!

Impressible - certainly not!

Romantic - the Prisoner's surely not that

Art - well Portmeirion is certainly pleasing to the eye.

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