Village Life!

   It was announced by telephone that Number 6 had come to pay a call on Number 2. Number 2 said to the person on the telephone “oh really, send him in.” And there the Butler is, showing Number 6 into Number 2’s office. You can’t get clearer than that, it’s as plain as a pikestaff, it was the Butler who made that telephone call announcing Number 6 to Number 2. who else could it have been, there was no-one else there. There’s a general rule that if something was done, it was the Butler who did it. Anyway who said the Butler couldn’t speak, just because we the television viewer do not hear him, it doesn’t mean to say he can’t speak. Anyway, the reason why the Butler is never heard to speak on screen was because of Angelo Muscat’s strong Maltese accent!

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A Touch of Science Fiction!

    The Prisoner has been described as science fiction, although the series can fall into a number of different genres, science fiction on the face of it does not seem to quite dovetail. And when it does it does only in ‘Fall out’ because of the rocket, and the Guardian could be seen as an alien arrived somehow from another planet, and is kept prisoner in order to do its captors bidding. One science fiction scene might well be when after the rocket had lifted off out of its silo, the Guardian is seen in what looks like an alien environment, a glimpse of life on another, if inhospitable looking planet.

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Harmony Times

Harmony Can Be  good Town  

                                Says The Judge

   Harmony used to be a hard bitten frontier town, not fit for decent folks to live in. There used to be two saloons, a gaming house, and Madam Sal’s Place, the local whore house. Gunmen ruled the streets, killings and murder became the norm. And when the cattle men come to town whooping it up on a Saturday night, Harmony was as wild a place as Dodge, Warlock, or Tombstone. Well decent women folk just weren’t safe on the streets. Then there was the Bank, that used to be robbed every other day by either the James Boys, the Dalton Gang, or Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid and the Hole in the Wall gang! Whisky drummers sold fire water to the Apache Indians, and gun-runners sold them guns. Crime was rife in Harmony, that was until the Judge came to town. He soon got things organized. He bought the Silver Dollar saloon, and put the Tanglefoot saloon out of business. The Judge bought the Bank, and nearly every other business he could. Those he couldn’t he burned to the ground! Old Sam Toovey, owner of the Golden Nugget gambling house was shot dead at the Ferris wheel by Johnnie Elder. Elder said the wheel was rigged. Elder was hung the next day, from the hanging tree. The Bank then foreclose on the Golden Nugget, and now the Judge holds the lease. He got rid of the gunmen, by bringing in his own men to clean up Harmony, amongst them the Kid, Frank ’shoot em up’ Maher. Two gun Les Crawford, and Bill “buckshot” Nick. These hard bitten gunslingers  ruled the streets, they kept law and order but without the badge. As for the Judge, well he’s organized the crime here in Harmony. He runs the whisky and guns to the Apache. He’s legalized prostitution, and cut himself in and takes fifty percent of Sal’s take. We don’t have a Courthouse the judge holds court in the Silver Dollar Saloon. At those times the bar is closed. And the Judge always gives a man, or woman, a fair hearing before he hangs em. Well all except that Johnson boy. Yeah, Harmony’ a good town alright, but I kinda get the feeling it still needs cleaning up! So that’s just what I’m gonna be doing from tomorrow. Sweeping the streets, picking up litter, and cleaning out the municipal privy’s, seeing as how the Judge has just bought this newspaper. But he couldn’t buy me no siree! Its about time this town woke up and did something about the Judge!

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Living In Harmony!

    The definition of “Living in harmony” is basically to live in peace together. Harmony in The Village? That’s what Number 2 wanted in ‘A Change of Mind,’ but only when everyone’s aggression had been surgically removed! For peace to reign The Village had Number 2, in the town of Harmony there was the Judge! But ‘Living In Harmony’ is a trick, created through the use of mind altering hallucinogenic drugs. The Prisoner wakes up one morning to find he’s an American Sheriff who hands in both his badge and gun. Doesn’t he find that strange? Have all unpleasant memories of The Village yet again been wiped from his memory? They had to have been for this latest experiment to have worked. But when the Judge was supposed to have shot The Man With No Name, he wasn’t, well no-one can die in a dream, you wake up before you die. And I think the same rule can be applied in this instance. He got up from the floor wearing his Village attire, which he had been wearing all along. Then outside he heard the music, a Brass Band was playing, the sound he followed led him to The Village, and all quickly became clear. It was no better in the town of Harmony than it was The Village. It looked fun to be playing cowboys, a bit rough at times, but no doubt in a way, it took Number 6 back to his childhood. Well we all liked playing cowboys and Indians as children......didn’t we?

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Caught On Camera!

    The door to Number 6’s cottage opened automatically for Number 14, but we are given to believe that it generally only does that for Number 6. If you recall in ‘It’s Your Funeral’ the Supervisor made sure that the cottage door was unlocked, so that Number 50 would have access, because Number 6 doesn’t always answer when people come knocking on his door. Mind you in the first film cut of ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ the cottage has a door bell which Nadia rings. Mind you the maids seem to come and go pretty easily, the door opening automatically for them, as it does on several occasions for Number 2, as well as for the ladies sub appeal Committee. Not to mention Number 86, Number 8, Alison, Mrs. Butterworth, the electricians, Number 12. In fact the door’s pretty much automatic for everyone. But have you noticed, not counting doors in the Town Hall, how it’s only ‘6 Private’ and the Green Dome which enjoy automatically electronically operated doors? In one episode even Number 6’s bathroom door is electronically operated, whilst in others where the bathroom door features it’s manually operated. So at one point the bathroom door received an upgrade. However that upgrade doesn’t appear to have been successful, as by the time of ‘Once Upon A Time’ the door is once again manually operated!

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The Prisoner!

    No.2 “This is it then!”
    No.14 “What do you mean?”
    “Well it’s Not Danger Man is it.”
    “I was in an episode of Danger Man, I played a Russian spy.”
    “No wonder they brought you to The Village!”
    “No, he’s done that with this new creation of his, its why we’re all here.”
    “I don’t like it, it’ll never catch on. What’s it called?”
    “The Prisoner.”
    “He resigned you know.”
    “Who the Prisoner?”
    “No, Patrick McGoohan. They tell me he stormed into Lew Grade’s office one day and told him he’d had enough of Danger Man, said it had become stale and repetitive, and all the ideas had dried up. So he resigned from the role of John Drake. Instead he wanted to do a series about this Prisoner chappie.”
    “Why are we here?”
    “To discover the reason behind his resignation.”
    “Well that’s it.”
    “What’s it?”
    “The reason why he resigned, you’ve just said it yourself.”
    “By jove Number Fourteen, we did it, your drug actually works. There he is bursting into Lew Grade’s office about to hand in his resignation. Who would have thought it could have been that easy?”  
    “We had better wake him up.”
    “In a minute, I want to see Lew Grade’s face, he’ll have a fit when McGoohan begins shouting the odds!

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Rover MK II

    Was it Number 6, Patrick McGoohan, or the scriptwriter Terence Feely who gave the Guardian a name, Rover. It might well have started as an in-joke, because of the way the Guardian behaved, acting like a guard dog, or a retriever. In the series Rover is a name which did not stick, only in the minds of its devotees. Before ‘The Schizoid Man’ the Guardian had no name, it wasn’t even referred to as the guardian, in fact it wasn’t referred to in anyway. The word guardian only refers to the human guardians, not to that membranic thing. In ‘Arrival’ the Prisoner asked Number 2 What was that?” “That would be telling” Number 2 replied. And after ‘The Schizoid Man’ the Guardian went back to its anonymity and was only referred to once more, when in ‘Once Upon a Time’ Number 2 told Number 1 that he could remove that thing! So if it had not been for ‘The Schizoid Man’ the Guardian wouldn’t have had a name, would have been hardly referred to at all!

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