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Sunday 4 December 2016

Quote For The Day

    “What’s it all about?”
                                 {The Prisoner- Arrival}

    Yes what is it all about? It’s about a man in isolation. Well not really, because if he was in isolation he would be all on his own, but as it is he’s in The Village isolated from the rest of the world. He says his life is his own. Well that maybe so, but they seem to know a good deal about it, the only thing they don’t seem to know is the reason behind the Prisoner’s resignation. The Prisoner protested that he would not be pushed, filed, stamped, briefed, de-briefed or numbered, but the thing is, he was.
    There’s something special about Number 6, no extreme measures are to be used against him. Well the 17 episode ordeal looks pretty extreme to me, if it isn’t extreme to take away a man’s identity, to condition him to believe he’s someone else. Fill him full of hallucinatory drugs, put him in a dangerous environment, then I don’t know what it. Unless of course what they did to Number 6 was “everyday” that there are far worse extreme measures which they did not use, because as we know they didn’t want to damage him permanently.  Because this Number 6 is seen to have a future in The Village, what, as a prisoner? That’s pretty obvious. What happened to the former Number 6, or is Number 6 the first Number 6? If he is then The Village hasn’t been going that long at all! He might be given a position of authority, well he was, and we know what he did when he got it!
    So how long has The Village been going? Before the war, since the war, which war? According to Number 240, who was Number 6’s observer at the time, The Village had been going a long time. And that’s the crux of the matter. No-one knows just how long The Village has been going. If it’s a physical place, or a place to be found in the deepest recesses of the subconscious, or a mixture of both. Certainly it was conjured up in the mind of one man, or possibly two, depending on who you believe. Personally I like to think that Patrick McGoohan had the original idea, and then he and George Markstein {script editor for the Prisoner} worked together in order to fill in the fine detail. They used scriptwriters to expand the original idea. Because no matter who had the original idea, to produce ‘the Prisoner’ was by no means a one man band affair, it took a large team to create and evolve ‘the Prisoner.’ And Number 6 wasn’t always Patrick McGoohan, on many occasions Number 6 was Frank Maher, even Nigel Stock got to play, not Number 6 exactly, but in his former life as ZM73. But even then the Colonel felt happier as himself, because he wasn’t back in London five minutes before he had discarded the black polo shirt, the charcoal grey suit, and elastic-sided boot {they go all the way back to Victorian times those elastic-sided boots} for his own suit of clothes, the white shirt, double breasted blazer. After all he was living in ZM73’s house, which only confirms Mrs. Butterworth’s story about her having a ten year lease for
No.1 Buckingham Place as being a complete fabrication, because ZM73 still had occupancy. But by the time of ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ wouldn’t the lease have run out anyway? Perhaps, if that was the case, the authority behind The Village gained temporary occupancy of ZM73’s former home. And so that the Colonel felt happier as himself, they moved some of his clothes into the house. But then if that was the case, its not the Colonel who should be feeling happier as himself, dressed in his own clothes, it should have been the Prisoner, seeing as its his mind that occupies the Colonel’s body! Ah I have it, perhaps it was actor Nigel Stock who felt happier as himself, preferring not to go about dressed like Patrick McGoohan!
   So what’s it all about? It’s whatever you believe it to be!

Be seeing you

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