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Sunday 25 August 2013

The Therapy Zone

It Makes You A Prisoner
    Such is the powerful opening sequence of ‘the Prisone’r both visually and with the opening theme music, that it instantly makes prisoners of us all, at one time or another. Here already, during that opening sequence, there is drama, and action which sets the scene, telling the viewer all that is needed to know before ‘The Arrival,’ even to the extent of who No.1 is!

I Was Just Wondering
    Just who No.6 was thinking about  when he wrote that false message to XO4 during that episode of Hammer Into Anvil, not to mention who D6 might be. After all, there was PR12 in ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ an ex-colleague of the Prisoner whose code name is ZM73. So it follows that D6 and XO4 must be out of the same school so to speak, whomsoever they happen to be.
    There was the school, of thought a number of years ago, that the 'D' of D6 might have stood for 'Drake' - Drake6, and being a possible in-joke. Although I never gave much credence to this train of thought, thinking it most unlikely. Although there are a few so called "in-jokes" such as part of the address on the envelope the Prisoner sent to Professor Seltzman in ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling’ - 20 Portmeirion road.

Can You Smell Gas?
    Fans of ‘the Prisoner’ come up with the strangest interpretations over the years. One such explanation concerns the way that the nerve gas is introduced into the study where the Prisoner is busy picking up his wallet, passport, and airline ticket, while completing a last minute packing. Apparently the nerve gas is so powerful as it streams in through the front door, that if you watch carefully, the camera does a quick retreat backwards as the gas pours in to suggest that it is travelling a short distance. What through the keyhole of the front door, into the hallway, along the hallway turning right after a short distance, and through the keyhole of the study door! Come off it, isn't it easier to believe that the pair of undertakers had been able to acquire a front door key to No.1 Buckingham Place?
   Over the years fans of the Prisoner have put some extraordinary explanations to simple everyday occurrences in ‘the Prisoner,’ and have arrived at extraordinary interpretations in order to explain certain circumstances in the series. Circumstances, which I have found, are better explained by a much simpler interpretation, than arriving at some of the extraordinary explanations, and interpretations arrived at by many of its fans.

Have You Observed?
     How the Village has two cafes and two graveyards, but no church? I shouldn't have thought there was much call for two cafes in the Village, the one of ‘Arrival’ and the one seen in ‘The General,’ ‘Hammer Into Anvil,’ perhaps it is the improved café facilities as mentioned as being on of  the retiring No.2’s achievements listed during his speech during the Appreciation Day ceremony in ‘It’s Your Funeral.’ Mind you, the second cafe isn't in the Village at all, but then again it is if you see what I mean, not the actual village that is. Seeing as how tea, coffee and the like are also served down on the lawn of the Old Peoples Home as well.
   And that's a funny place to have a graveyard - on a beach, as seen in Arrival! If the sand were to shift, as it does from time to time, then the dead would rise up, perhaps in time for the ‘Dance of the Dead!’

It Goes Against The Grain
   In the episode ‘Once Upon A Time,’ No.6 could not bring himself to kill his opponent No.2. At the beginning of Living In Harmony, No.6 as a Sheriff, he hands in both his badge and gun, and refuses to wear a gun whilst working for the Judge in the town of Harmony. Yet the Prisoner is capable of killing, he kills the Kid and the Judges "boys" in two gunfights in the same day.
   It was the murder of Cathy which made the Prisoner kill, and we would all do it, kill that is, no matter how much you might deplore the use of violence. We are all capable of killing, all that is required is something to kill for! And the Prisoner, as it turns out, is no different to anybody else.

Be seeing you

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