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Sunday 18 January 2015

Thought For The Day

    Basically ‘the Prisoner’ is all about Number 6, about “self.” Therefore we who are watching, see only that which takes place with Number 6, or scenes which affect or concern the Prisoner either directly or indirectly where he involves himself.
   We watch as Number 8 {Nadia Rakovsy} is put through an interrogation session about whether or not suicide was in her mind that time she went for a long swim. Yet we are not privy to how Number 48 came to The Village. The President said that Number 48 had never been “with it” he means with “them.” But he was, and then he went and gone! Number 48 played by Alexis Kanner was the former Number 8 who had been with them, and then he went and gone because he committed suicide. Later to be resurrected as Number 48!
   We do not see The Village Festival for which Number 6 was helping Number 24 with her mind-reading and photographic skills. Or how Speedlearn came about in The Village, nor how The Village administration attained the Seltzman machine, because they do not affect the Prisoner. Well in two respects, but not until much later when both have been up and running for quite some time.
    “Self” is at the heart of ‘Fall Out,’ as both Number 6 and Number 1 come face to face with their other “self.” And yet 6 had met with himself previously as ‘The Schizoid Man,’ which is said to be an episode inspired by the film ‘The Prisoner of Zenda,” a novel by Anthony Hope in which a King is abducted on the eve of his coronation on behalf of Prince Michael who wants the King’s throne for himself. To prevent this, a distant cousin, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Rudolf of Ruritania, is persuaded to impersonate Rudolf for the coronation to take place. Perhaps this idea works in another way in ‘Fall Out,’ that The Village is being ruled by a bad King, and so the members of court decide that Number 1 has to be replaced, but replaced by someone who looks the very image of 1, by a man of their choosing, Number 6! But perhaps that idea smacks more of ‘The Man In The Iron Mask’ in which King Louis XIV of
France is eventually replaced by his identical twin Philippe. Which in later years Patrick McGoohan would play Fouquet in the 1977 film version of the Alexandre Dumas novel.

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