Search This Blog

Saturday 12 December 2020

Prismatic Reflection

     When it comes to interviews with McGoohan post ‘the Prisoner,’ I have learned to take what he had to say about the series with a large pinch of salt. For example, when it comes to the 7 episode serial or mini-series he suggested for ‘the Prisoner,’ when asked about it in different interviews he never gives the same suggested 7 episodes!
   What has to be remembered is, there is a great deal of difference between what McGoohan said at the time during the production of ‘the Prisoner’ and what he said post ‘Prisoner.’ To give you an indication of what I mean in a newspaper cutting I read McGoohan stated that he had written the last episode ‘Fall out’ first, and worked backwards from that. However it is on record that as the production was working to the end of the series, McGoohan actually went to Lew Grade and told him that he couldn’t find an ending to the series. So the question is why did McGoohan choose to lie about it in a newspaper article when there was absolutely no need to? for myself I think the truth of the matter is far more interesting than the lie!
   Lew Grade said he wanted 26, possibly episodes to ‘the Prisoner’ so to make it easier to sell it to the American television syndicates. McGoohan said he would prefer a 7 episode mini-series, but they settled on 17 episodes. Remember this was long before McGoohan wrote the script for ‘Fall Out.’ So the 7 episodes would be ‘Arrival’ {2 3 4 5} ‘Once Upon A time’ and ‘The Conclusion’ as McGoohan called it. So what would the remaining 2 3 4 5 episodes have been? To my mind three of them would have been the three other episodes filmed at Portmeirion, so we have;

Arrival

Dance of The Dead

Free For All           

Checkmate

?  ?  ?

Once Upon A Time

The Conclusion
  So what would be number 5? The answer can be found in the production order. The first four were filmed at Portmeirion in September 1966, and then completed with the studio scenes filmed at MGM Studios. ‘Once Upon A Time’ went into production in December 1966. So what of number 5? It has to be ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ which went into production at the end of September into October 1966.

Arrival

Dance of The Dead

Free For All

Checkmate

The Chimes of Big Ben

Once Upon A Time

The Conclusion

    It makes sense to have ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ as the 5th episode as it runs consecutively with ‘Once Upon A Time’.
   So there you have it, the 7 episode mini-series, of course the last few seconds of ‘Once Upon A Time,’ after the Supervisor enters the Embryo Room, were edited in because of ‘Fall Out.’ Originally the episode would have ended with the body of No.2 lying on the floor in the cage.
   I realize this subject has been talked about and debated by fans of ‘the Prisoner’ for years and decades in fact. And all of them have come up with their own idea of what episodes McGoohan would have used for the mini-series. And of course Patrick McGoohan himself, post ‘Prisoner’ production, mused about it in a few interviews when asked. But what fans forget, or choose to forget, and what McGoohan forgot in later years, is that at the time when he first suggested the idea of a 7 episode mini-series none of the remaining episodes had been made! So it makes little sense to bring episodes such ‘The Schizoid Man,’ ‘The General,’ or ‘Many Happy Returns’ into the equation, because if McGoohan had had his way over a 7 episode mini-series, none of the remaining episodes after ‘Once Upon A Time’ would have been produced anyway apart from ‘Fall Out.’.
    As for McGoohan telling Howard Foy about ‘Once Upon A Time’ and ‘Fall Out’ originally being conceived as a single (possibly 2 part) entity, well I take that with a large pinch of salt. Certainly there is no-way he could have envisaged ‘Once Upon A Time’ and ‘Fall Out’ as a single entity, because when ‘Once Upon A time’ went into production he had no conception of ‘Fall Out,’ or of any ending to the series if it comes to that. But what he did have was another 9 episodes to produce after ‘Once Upon A Time’ before he came to ‘Fall Out.’
    And there lies the nub of the matter, when McGoohan was interviewed years, even decades after the production of ‘the Prisoner,’ he could say anything because no-one would have known any different. And when he’s talked about the idea of a 7 episode mini-series introducing episodes like ‘The Schizoid Man,’ ‘The General,’ or ‘Many Happy Returns’ he was talking with hindsight.
   When it comes to ‘the Prisoner’ some sources can be rather misleading. It’s true that originally ‘Arrival’ was intended to be 90 minutes in length. The opening sequence would have been much longer than it is, which would have made it rather monotonous to say the least. Also ‘The Girl Who Was Death’ was also originally to have been a 90 minute feature, but would also have been rather monotonous. For example there were originally more scenes in which Mr. X continued his pursuit of the Girl, but these were cut from the script and never filmed. But those were the only two episodes which were intended as 90 minute features.
  So either ‘the Prisoner’ envisaged by McGoohan as a 7 episode serial, well the THE HERALD-MAIL COMPANY, HAGERSTOWN, MARYLAND dated SATURDAY, JUNE 22. 1968 Reported the following: “Patrick McGoohan has admitted that his series, The Prisoner, didn't turn out exactly as he planned. (The format is his and he is also listed as executive producer.) He only wanted to do 13 episodes and resolve the prisoner's dilemma in the last one. But ITV, which put up the money, insisted on more episodes. So they compromised on 17. McGoohan now thinks he would have been better off making a movie of the idea.”

   So a 13 episode serial would have looked like this;

Arrival

Dance of The Dead

Free For All

Checkmate

The Chimes of Big Ben       

Once Upon A Time

The Schizoid Man

It’s Your Funeral

A change of Mind

A B and C

 The General

Hammer Into Anvil

The Conclusion        

This of course is judging by the production order of the series. Had McGoohan all 17 scripts in front of him at the very outset of production, he might have chosen one or two of the other scripts against one or two of the production order. But its quite impossible to say which of the episodes McGoohan would have chucked away, but I can think of three strong favourites for the wastepaper basket!   Although we must not forget Lew Grades idea of a 26 episodes series, which is rumoured could have been two 13 part series, in which case ‘Once Upon A Time’ was to have been held back to become the final cliff-hanger episode of the first 13 part series of ‘the Prisoner.’ That way No.2 would have remained dead in the cage in the Embryo Room.    

Be seeing you

No comments:

Post a Comment