Caught On Camera!

   “Now come on lad, let’s get this lighting right! In the last scene the lighting was all wrong. Pat’s blazer had a definite brown hue to it when it’s supposed to look black on the screen!”

   “I dunno, it still looks brown to me through this camera lens. What do you think Sid?”

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Fall Out The Schizoid Man

    It isn’t until the finale to ‘the Prisoner,’ that of ‘Fall Out,’ that we discover who the anonymous character of Number 1 is. As it is it turns out to be Number 6 himself, his alter ego, or rather the evil side to his nature. Although it could be interpreted that Number 6 met his evil self in a much earlier episode, in the guise of The Schizoid Man.

   “What the devil!” utters Number 6 as he first meets himself in his cottage. Never “Oh my God,” or Oh for God’s sake,” nor does he tell 6 to go to hell! While the Supervisor-Number 106 tells Number 2 that in Haiti they’d say “He’s stolen his soul.”
    Perhaps Number 1, his evil self came to Number 6 in his nightmare during ‘The Schizoid Man,’ throughout which Number 6’s doppelganger can be heard laughing maniacally. It is the same laughter which pervades the control room of the rocket as Number 1 is pursued by Number 6. And it must not be forgotten that the idea behind ‘The Schizoid Man’ originated from a high source, perhaps via Number 1 himself. Perhaps it’s Number 1 masquerading as The Schizoid Man. Yes Curtis was supposed to have died towards the end of the episode, but there was time for him to have been resuscitated, if the length of time it took for them to resuscitate Number 2 is anything to go by!

   Therefore it’s possible that in ‘The Schizoid Man’ Number 6 does meet with his evil self. It is an interesting observation, that although Number 6 fights with his doppelganger, the double is not overpowered by Number 6, but by the membranic Guardian. And that it is Number 2 who thwarts Number 6’s attempted escape. Therefore it would appear that Number 6 cannot defeat his evil self and escape The Village by his own efforts!

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More Village!

    When the trailers for THEPRIS6NER began to appear on ITV towards the end of 2009, I wondered what a bus marked ESCAPE was doing in The Village. Eventually when ITV finally got round to the screening of the series in mid April 2010, it seemed a hell of a long time from the autumn of 2009 {when the trailers for the series began} to April 17th 2010. I finally found out why the ESCAPE bus, it was to take holidaymakers to the Escape resort! Other busses take citizens on bus tours of The Village, and apparently the highlight of the tour is to see the Clinic, where people are taken for treatment, treatment of all kinds!
   The above bus is a Mercedes because they forgot to remove the Mercedes emblem from the front of the bus. The second type of bus used in The Village, is unknown. In fact all of the vehicles used in The Village have all maker’s names and emblems removed, so that the only way to identify the vehicles is by actual visual recognition. I did identify a Volvo, simply by the “V” on the hubcaps! And the Mercedes cars are always easily recognisable. I have made a small collection of die-cast vehicles as seen in THEPRIS6NER. At one point I purchased a “Bubble car,” Isetta, the only trouble was it had four wheels. 1960’s “Bubble cars” had only three wheels. However I added the car to my collection anyway. But then when I watched the series soon after, I saw the Bubble car on the TV screen, I froze the picture……the Bubble car had four wheels!

“See how the sun makes it all glow. The kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive!”
                {Two - Arrival}
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60 Second Interview With No.261

    No.261 “Calling Electrics control….”

    No.113: “I know you are busy Two sixty-one, but can you spare me a moment of your time?”

    No.261: “If you make it quick, Number Six's lights has just gone out!”
    No.113b “Smile” {click goes the camera}

    “There's just one thing our readers wish to know.”

    “And what's that?”

    “Exactly what is a two stroke D?”

    “Well, basically it's a light bulb.”

    “Then why not simply call it  a light bulb?”

    “It sounds boring. To say we need a two stroke D replacement sounds more technical.”

    “I see. Thank you for clearing that up for our readers.”

    “Calling electrics control…….”

Reporter No.113

Photographer No.113b

I Am Not A Number - I Am A Free Man!

    "I am not a number, I am a free man," a bold statement for a man whose identity has been taken away from him, and replaced by a number. Well they may have taken his identity away, but not his name, because we don’t know what his name is, or we are not supposed to know. And as for being free, the Prisoner-Number 6 is far from that. He’s an inmate in The Village which, dress it up as much as they like, is nothing more than a detention centre!
   Oh Number 6 does like to protest, but at times me thinks he doth protest too much, after all he’s only got himself to blame if ‘Fall Out’ is anything to go by. But then if it had not been for ‘Fall Out, if Patrick McGoohan had not written the script for that episode, but had given the task to a scriptwriter, Anthony Skene for example, then Number 1 may well have turned out to be someone completely different. A collective organisation perhaps, the members of the Assembly who are all representative of each and every aspect of society.
   For myself, I am not a Number, I am a free man. Well as numberless as anyone can be in society, and as free as anyone can be. Oh I’ve been pushed, filed, stamped, briefed, de-briefed, and numbered in my time, and there had been times when my life was not my own. I had obtained a position of authority. But after a while I decided that I wanted my life back, and so resigned my position! No-one tried to talk me out of it. Well actually they did, those under my command at the time, members of my team. But Number 1 accepted my resignation, and decided to let me go. I didn’t end being abducted to The Village, probably because I didn’t know too much or too little, but just the right amount!
    So now I am a free man, able to do what I enjoy doing best. I write about ‘the Prisoner,’ both series. Well it had to be I suppose, ‘the Prisoner’ has been in me since I was a boy of 12 years, and I expect to take ‘the Prisoner’ with me to my grave. Oh but I‘m in no hurry, I’m not yet ready to escape just yet.
   It may be said by some that what I do does not rate very highly in the World rankings. And yet others the World over enjoy reading my ‘Prisoner’ based blog every day, the daily statistics back that up. And there are many enthusiasts for ’the Prisoner’ who do not wish me to stop, but to keep writing. Perhaps that’s the prison I have made for myself. And yet how can I be a prisoner of something I enjoy doing so much? If one was to believe in destiny, then perhaps I am now living my fate, of something which I have immersed myself in these past 48 years. But I’m not the only one to have done that. Perhaps I am a prisoner of ‘the Prisoner,’ that I built my prison up with every screening of the series. So to sit here writing an almost daily blog about ‘the Prisoner’ was inevitable. If I were a prisoner in The Village, no doubt a doctor would have me either in a house writing articles, or worse, sitting in a barren plain white cube, void of anything but a table, chair, laptop, a few books and ‘the Prisoner’ on DVD for reference. So that everyday, locked away in a cube, all I had to do was write more and more about ‘the Prisoner.’ There’s a short story in that somewhere, where’s my pen?

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Exhibition of Arts And Crafts

               “Freedom – Knowledge – Escape!”

BcNu

Quote For The Day

    Number 6 is asked by Number 2 if he could spare the Awards Committee a few minutes of his time. The members of the Awards Committee are intrigued by Number 6’s abstract sculpture, but a little mystified.
    Number 2 “And here he is, our very own Epstein.”
    Number 6 “Can I help?”
    “We’re not quite sure what it means.”
    “It means what it is.”
    “It means what it is. Brilliant. Oh no, you mustn’t allow me to influence you. You are the Awards Committee
    “What puzzled me Number Six is the fact you’ve given the group a title…..Escape.”
    “This piece, what does it represent to you?”
    “A church door?”
    “Right first time.”
    “I think I see what he’s getting at.”
    “Yes, this other piece here of the same general lines but somewhat more abstract as you’ll notice, representing freedom or a barrier, depending on how you look at it. The barrier’s down, the door is open you’re free, free to go, free to escape, to escape, to this the symbol to human aspirations. Knowledge, freedom, escape.”
    “Why the crosspiece?”
    “Why not?”
    “Good, splendid. I was really quite worried for a moment. The only really thing I don’t understand.”
    “Yes.”
    Where is Number Two?”
         {Number’s 2, 6 and the Awards Committee –
                                                                  The Chimes of Big Ben}
    I’ll say this for Number 6, he has the ability to think on his feet. After all he had no idea that he was going to have to explain the symbolic meaning behind his abstract sculpture.
    That “crosspiece,” that has been seen by fans and enthusiasts of ’the Prisoner’ who have a religious nature, as representative of the cross. And that’s fine, if that’s what people interpret that crosspiece to be, as I do not wish to commence upon a religious debate regarding the possible religious content within ‘the Prisoner.‘ But why the crosspiece? Well on a purely functional level, Number 6 had crafted a coracle or boat out of a tree trunk. He had a crosspiece strapped to a pole. The pole is the mast of the boat, and the crosspiece the spar from which Number 6 would eventually hang a sail, or in this case Number 38’s tapestry! But why Number 6 had to actually use those 2,000 free Work Units to buy Number 38’s tapestry I don’t know, unless he was feeling generous towards Number 38. Seeing as he thought he was not going to be around in The Village for very much longer, he perhaps thought the 2,000 Work Units would do her better good than himself. After all, it was at dead of night when Number 6 and Nadia took the parts of his sculpture from the Recreation Hall to assemble them on the beach. Number 6 could easily have taken the tapestry then! And that’s one further point, seeing as how Number 2 knew precisely what Number 6 was about. It then must follow that Number 2 saw to it that the Recreation Hall was left open that night, so that Number 6 and Nadia could retrieve the parts of the boat, Number 6’s sculpture in order for them to make good their escape! Plus the Supervisor had to be in on it, otherwise had the Observers seen Number 6 and Nadia at the Recreation Hall, or down on the beach after curfew, an Orange Alert may well have been issued too soon, and that would have put paid to the escape somewhat prematurely. And that’s something Number 2 wouldn’t have wanted!

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