The Therapy Zone

   "Slippers" said the doctor on the occasion of the Prisoner medical.

"My size?" the Prisoner enquired.

"Naturally" replied the doctor.

   Well they would be wouldn't they, and well worn ones at that! They couldn't even find the Prisoner a new pair of slippers, given someone’s old cast-offs he was. Or was he, I shouldn’t wonder if this pair of used slippers were not McGoohan's own! Much in the same way that I shouldn’t wonder that the pair of spectacles No.6 found in the breast pocket of the white coat he wore in the episode Dance of the Dead, were not also McGoohan's own spectacles.

  If not, then a special pair would have had to be found, if not made, with the lenses as plain glass so that he could see properly. But if McGoohan were to have worn his own spectacles, that would have made sense. No messing about and saving both time and money at the same time.

    Some fans of the Prisoner would have it that Cobb 's presence on the hospital ward of the village hospital has something to do with his old colleague - the Prisoner, for his benefit even. But I do not agree with this prognosis, as Cobb was as much surprised to see the Prisoner, as the Prisoner was to see Cobb there. I am of the opinion that Cobb's presence was sheer coincidence. However why the subterfuge of having Cobb commit suicide by jumping out of a hospital window I have no idea. Other than perhaps the village administration, for reasons of their own, wanted the Prisoner to be of the belief that his old colleague was dead. Perhaps Cobb had gone over, defected to his new masters.

    In almost every book on the subject of the Prisoner, and I include the De Agostini Prisoner part-work in this, that contains a list of No.2's in the village, such a list has never included No.6, who attained the position, even if it was the shortest term of office served by any No.2, after the election of Free For All.

    Two ‘Danger Man’ episodes have allegedly inspired two parts of the Prisoner, Colony Three - a training camp for spies somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. And the surreal episode ‘The Ubiqitous Mr. Lovegrove’ - where McGoohan, in the character of John Drake who fights himself, just like the fight between No.6 and Curtis in ‘The Schizoid Man.’

    No.6 might have been seen to have a future with the village, but he was still a pawn to be used in someone else’s game, as in Its Your Funeral, he was used as a dupe by the heir presumptive-No.2 in the plan to execute the retiring No.2.

Be seeing you