Caught On Camera

He's not in his right mind........ and even if he was...............the Prisoner would never open a double pair of doors like this!

     This is how Nigel Stock opens the doors, and ungainly it looks! On the other hand Patrick McGoohan does it another way, and with more dramatic impact!

  If Nigel Stock had done his homework properly, if he had been in the right frame of mind, and if he'd been able to watch the opening sequence to 'the Prisoner,' he would have seen that this is how the Prisoner opens those double doors of that office....... and certainly not in the wishy-washy way that he does! Stock should have remembered the mind of the Prisoner is supposed to be in the head of the Colonel!

Be seeing you

Thought For The Day

   The Prisoner having gone though his file, and to the point where he was due to meet Chambers, late of the Foreign Office, who never turned up but who was so talkative, Number 2 tells him "You see there's not much we don't know about you. But one likes to know everything {is that one as in an unspecified, indefinate person, or someone, the Number 1 perhaps}. For instance do you remember that time you retruned from Singapore, a change of climate, feeling a bit shaky. You were sickening for a cold, sneezed your way out of our camera. Deciding to take a vacation, Now where can you go? Ireland? A bit too cold that time of the year. Paris! Maybe not. What was that, sounded like a click, something in the mirror? Or was it over there, yes, over there too! As I said one likes to know everything." For example Number 2 didn't know the Prisoner ,likes lemon tea. And in his file the Prisoner's the time of his birth is missing. "Well there you are, lets bring it all up to date" Number 2 suggests. "Four-thirty-one am, ninteenth of March 1928,' apart from that the Prisoner has nothing else to say.
    Yet the Prisoner's file is still incomplete, the reason why he resigned is missing! So to the question of why the Prisoner resigned, is it really so important? What difference would it have made for 'them' to know why the reason behind Prisoner's resignation? Was it that they simply wanted to know so that the Prisoner's file could be brought fully up to date?

I'll be seeing you

A favourite Scene In The Prisoner

   In 'Many Happy Returns' when the Prisoner is descending to the beach below on the end of a parachute, he pulls up his knees. Yes he's probably preparing himself for a hard landing. However when I see the scene and the Prisoner pulls up his knees like that, I cannot help but think he's trying to delay the inevitable for as long as possible!

Be seeing you

THEPRIS6NER

  Here is a bus travelling along the desert road on it's way to The Village. Fair enough I suppose, but where has this bus travelled from in order to arrive in The Village as seen below.

   The bus is bringing "newcomers" to the Village, newcomers who are happy to see their new surroundings, excited, elated even to think of Two so soon after their arrival in The Village.

  And you will be pleased to observe that some people do still wear piped blazers or jackets in The modern day Village.

    So how do all these people actually arrive in The Village? Yes I know, they arrive on the bus, but where does the bus come from, yes I know The Village. So people get on the bus in The Village, are taken to The Village and have just arrived in The Village, which as one newcomer said "Isn't that the wildest thing!"

   People arrive in The Village unconsciously, and The Village is contained in the unconscious mind of Helen, the wife of Curtis. These are people who like, Michael in his other life, have been watched and made reports on, sending those reports up to the next floor in the Summakor building. The unconscious Helen is on the next floor. Does that mean that Helen has to read, or have read to her by Curtis, all those reports on hundreds upon hundreds of people who are to be taken to The Village? Or are we not supposed to think about it, but simply accept it? If I thought that, I'd be going against the original concept of the Prisoner created by Patrick McGoohan, and that is not to accept, or settle for things as they are, either experienced in life, or what you watch on the television, but to ask questions.

DAS

    If It's symbolism you're looking for in THEPRIS6NER, then you need look no further that these 'A'framed houses in the Village. They give conformity, and take away individuality, and reminds me of the 1962 song written by Malvine Reynolds and sung by Pete Seegers Little Boxes -"Little boxes on the hilside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same. There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one and they're all made out of ticky-tacky........... Thing is, all these houses are pink and white, with a touch of blue, but they all do look the same!

    But looking at these 'A' framed houses, are they really so very different from the house you live in? Well of course it might be construction wise, but what I mean is, don't all the houses in your street, or housing estate, all look the same?

   With all this conformity and unity in the Village, I was surprised to see that in the episode Anvil how numbered houses are out of sequence. 909 for example, lives but a few doors away from 59, now that doesn't happen in your street does it?

    I'm still wondering what it is that Two wants from Six. In the original series we knew where we stood right from the outset. The Prisoner resigned his job, went home, was abducted to the Village where No.2 wanted to know the reason behind No.6's resignation. In this case we have Michael who resigns his job, wakes up somewhere in a desert, makes his way to the Village, and finally encounters Two, who even now, after three episodes, has yet to ask Six that immortal question "Why did you resign?" Mind you having said that, Lucy back in New York was doing an excellent job on that front, untill she was brought to the Village by Two and assigned to Six as his lover.  

    I am convinced that the Village has much to do with the hallucinagenic state of M2's sedated mind, M2 being the wife of Two who administers drugs to his wife, who he brings out of her sedated state when he feels the need to converse with her. So it strikes me that Two is just as much a prisoner as Six is, perhaps more so seeing as it is he who is keeping his wife in the state of mind she is in.

    And of course it was good to see the Village guardian keeping itself active in the mountains. But it has only just occured to me, that so much time and effort had been put into keeping this membranic "thing" as the Village guardian in this series by the producers, but no mention of this membranic "thing" has been made by anyone in the first three episodes. Not by it's name, if indeed "it" has a name, nor by remark such as "What the hell is that?" It would seem that the white membranic guardian is simply there and accepted by anyone "it" encounters, accepted unquestioningly even by Six!

DAS - BCNU

The Therapy Zone

The Nightmare World Of The Prisoner

    True to say that the Prisoner has been seen as many things, so how about the Prisoner as a horror story?

    Certainly Rover - that white membranic village guardian is the most original creature ever devised - because you don't know exactly what it is, what it's made of, of this Earth, man-made or alien. Yet we know what it does, it terrifies, suffocates, and originally it was to have been seen to fill with the blood of its victims, and you can't get more horrific than that.

  Several of No.2's characters are threatening, and seem capable of almost anything. And there is the hidden face, the secrets behind the locked door. Doctors, who in the confines of the hospital, are unafraid of carrying out the most horrendous human experiments, along with the implication that the villages administration could do, if forced, adds a chilling atmosphere to the village.

   The episode ‘Dance of the Dead’ is probably the darkest of the 17 episodes, and 'Dance of the Dead' is just about right. Even the original actor to have played No.2, Trevor Howard, would have been in costume as Jack the Ripper. Murder was to have been done on No.6, at the bare hands of the screaming citizens, who were baying for blood. Would they not have torn No.6 limb from limb, had they caught up with him in the corridors of the Town Hall that evening at the ‘Dance of the Dead.’ And don't forget that originally the script called for everyone at the Dance to die, save for No.6!

   'Living In Harmony' has its fair share of this nightmare world. Yet nothing equals the creepy sight of seeing the eyes of No.8 staring at No.22 from beneath the steps, and out of the darkness. And once No.8 has his bare hands around No.22's neck, and as he strangles the poor young woman, the look on No.8's face equals any maniac you can bring to mind.

   And finally, if that bomb hidden in the "Great seal of Office" had actually been detonated by the Watchmaker, there would have been "blood, guts and smashed bone" all over the place! Which od course is what happened to Colonel Hawke-Englihe at the wicket in 'the Girl Who Was Death.'

   The Prisoner as a horror story? Its certainly equals many nightmares!

The Question Is Why?

   Why do we persist in watching the 17 episode ordeal of the Prisoner? Why do we put ourselves through it all repeatedly, over and over again? Perhaps through some perverse enjoyment, safe in the knowledge that once an episode is over, we can return to the relative safety of the real world.

  Perverse enjoyment did I write? Well perhaps that's right. After all there we sit, watching a man, a prisoner such as No.6 being put through a series of ordeals, waiting for him to attempt to escape, but knowing full well that escape is not possible. Oh the anticipation we enjoy with ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ for example, as time draws ever closer to the hour of eight, when Big Ben will strike the hour upon which No.6 will realise that he has been tricked. That he has not escaped the village at all. And again with ‘Many Happy Returns,’ the viewer knows full well that despite his having escaped the Village, having been allowed to escape the village, that he will soon be returned there. We watch with excited anticipation as No.6, dangling at the end of a parachute struggles to slow his descent to the beach below. And in ‘Fall Out,’ the Prisoner has finally escaped the Village, only to discover that he's just as much a prisoner at the end as he was at the beginning!

   Except in the Prisoner’s end is his beginning, and in that knowledge we subliminally want No.6 to remain incarcerated in the village. The viewer actually enjoys watching his confinement, sharing with grim fascination, the various ordeals of No.6's inquisition, and confinement in the village. In short we don't want the Prisoner known as No.6 to escape. Should he do so, then the perverse enjoyment which the viewer extracts from the Prisoner's confinement, the experiments used against him, and the dangerous situations he is both physically and mentally put in, are no longer open to us - the viewers perverse pleasure cut short.

   In the prisoners escape, our pleasure is lost, and so are we.

I'll be seeing the Prisoner-No.6 soon!

Pictorial Portmeirion

   You may very well have seen an earlier Postcard From The Village regarding a hermit, Uriah Lovall who lived in the woods at Portmeirion. Well here is a photograph from the 1920's which I found in my own collection of Portmeirion postcards which I have collected over the years, it is of Uriah Lovall at his camp site.

   
    Described as being the most courtly and accomplished old hermit of high degree, whom many visitors to Portmeirion remembered with real affection. He lived in the woods in a plaited wigwam. He made his living by weaving baskets, and conversing philosophically by the hour. It is said that he kept his little hid-out neat and tidy, and himself almost dandified in his own handsome person, with his grey curly hair, gold earrings, an yellow silk scarf, and brown moleskin coat.
    Clough Williams-Ellis had not counted on a resident hermit, but Uriah Lovell simply arrived and settled in, just as some wild creature might have done, thinking that he might be happy there. And so there he remained for several years, keeping himself to himself, yet friendly to those who crossed his path, and never cadged anything from anyone, yet he accepted any little gift that might be brought to him.
   Uriah Lovall was perhaps as happy as any man could possibly be. But alas, he was cruelly run down by a motorcycle, he never fully recovered, and one day he simply crept away - and died.

Be seeing you

Teabreak Teaser

In 'The Chimes of Big Ben - why the cross piece?

BCNU