The Prisoners Double Meaning

    The Prisoner works very well as a continuation series of ‘Danger Man,’ dealing with what happened to John Drake after he resigned. Of failing to see that No.6 and John Drake are the same character, a spy series where a man who resigns is abducted to the village to have the reason behind his resignation extracted, and coercion used against him to turn him towards The Village, seeing as this man has a future with The Village.

   You can watch ‘the Prisoner’ as an action adventure series, a spy series as I think the majority of television viewers did at the time. As a man whom we know little about is abducted by persons unknown to a Village he knows not where, or why.

   The Prisoner can be seen as symbolic of the times we live in, as an allegory, or parable. There is much symbolism and surrealism within the series. And even after 47 years there are still many questions which remain unanswered.

   And then came ‘Fall Out’ and all hell broke loose, would we find out who No.1 is, well we know who No.1 is don’t we, it you, me everyman. But in this particular case Patrick McGoohan turned out to be No.1, after all he’d been the boss during the production of ‘the Prisoner,’ Where is the Village, well that depends on how you look at it. The simple answer would be in North Wales. Someone once said it was somewhere at the end of the A20 , close to Dover on the south coast of England. Did the Prisoner escape? No, he was just as much a prisoner at the end as he was at the beginning. Why did the Prisoner resign? Well I personally think it was because he found out that he was No.1, responsible for The Village in the first place. After all towards the end of ‘Fall Out’ we see the Prisoner driving past the Houses of Parliament on his way to park in that underground car park we see in the opening sequence, to go further to hand in his letter of resignation. But imagine if the former No.6 had accepted, and that the violent fire-fight we see, and the evacuation of The Village had not taken place. The former No.6 would have become No.1. and even if he had been allowed to leave The Village to return to his London town house, no doubt he would have been at the beck and call of The Village Administration at any time. this in the same way No.2 was sometimes brought back to The Village. The former No.6 can never be free of The Village, as he is Village, despite the fact of his resignation!

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