The Prisoner: some nice behind the scene stuff of the classic show...
Posted by
Remlik (aka Remlik)
Mar 27 '20, 19:07
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this is taken from a conversation of J. Micheal Strynziki and former DC Comics editor Dan Didio talking about The Prisoner comics..JMS shared this story about the story of The Prisoner and who MacGoohan was actually playing on the show..
JMS: Okay, in the interests of social distancing and bonhomie during this crisis, I’ll fill you in on what I was told face to face by someone who was directly involved with The Prisoner and worked closely with McGoohan. The individual in question asked for their name never to be used, and I’m respecting that even though this person is no longer with us. The reason this person cooperated was that I’d figured out a lot of this on my own, both from studying the show and learning some of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that went on about things like what’s in the next paragraph, and went from confirming my suspicions to giving me more information than I’d hoped for.
First: in McGoohan’s mind, the Prisoner was indeed John Drake from Danger Man. He always denied this publicly because if he ever said this was Drake then by contractual requirement he would have to include in the credits certain people who produced Danger Man who he did not want to be involved with. But he also didn’t want to create a new character or give this person a new name, because again, for him, it was always Drake, so in the scripts he was simply referred to as P, for Prisoner.
Second: his backstory for the show was that the Village had been a fairly recent development, assembled in secret, and was in need of someone to run it as Number One. They offered the job to Drake, who was horrified by the very idea of it. Despite what the experts and psychologists said, he believed that not everyone can be broken, that the will of the individual could bring down anything thrown against it by nations or intelligence services. They insisted he run it. He insisted he would not, and demanded the whole program be shut down.
To resolve the dilemma, Drake made this offer: he would test the system himself. If he could go all the way through the worst they could do to him, without breaking, then the Village would be shut down. They reluctantly agreed since the very point of the Village is that anyone can be broken, so his resistance to being broken would invalidate the whole thing.
To test the system, he needed to go into the Village with a secret that had absolutely no real value other than his desire to keep it. No other lives were at risk, no nation was imperiled…it was to be strictly a matter of principle. This led to the resignation. “Why did you resign?” That was the secret. The answer was always: “Because I was offered the chance to run this and opted not to.” His superiors knew that. He knew that. All he would’ve had to do to stop the torture was simply say that.
If you watch the opening credits, there are two very quick moments where you can see that he knows the Tall Man is coming for him. The first is when he gets out of his car in front of his flat, there’s a slight smile and a glance back, and again when the gas comes in there’s that slight smile. He looks out the window to get his last view of London.
When he awakes in the Village, no one there knows his secret, and he has to be as careful as he can be to make sure he plays the game accordingly, especially given that he is under nearly constant surveillance. So he acts as though he knows nothing about any of this, because to do otherwise would tip off what he knows and what he’s done.
(My contact was a bit fuzzy when asked whether or not the various #2’s knew Drake’s secret. When Drake asks “Who is Number One?” it’s him playing the role but also seeing what #2 knows. “You are, Number Six” can thus be taken as either acknowledgement of what they know, or a dodge. Either way, the various #2’s definitely knew that he was a special case, and that under no circumstances was he to be killed or irreparably harmed. They had to break him using their best techniques so that if he finally broke, he could assume the role of #1 intact.)
There was a deadline to the amount of time they could continue to work Drake over. This is the whole reason behind the desperation seen in the penultimate episode, “Once Upon a Time.” They are literally running out of time to do their work, and bank everything they have on one last desperate effort. When it fails, and they’ve run out of time, Drake wins.
A lot of folks are confused by the surreal nature of “Fallout,” but you have to remember that Drake goes into that episode still suffering from the hallucinogenics that were used on him in the prior episode, which takes place just moments before this story begins. This distorts everything into a nightmarish perspective which often doesn’t make sense because it tends not to when you’re drugged up.
The unveiling of Number One is the ultimate assertion of Drake’s position. He sees the figure, yanks back the hood, and sees the face of a gorilla…McGoohan’s choice of an image to represent how Drake has had to play the part of the unpredictable savage in order to break the system. But behind that face lay another, the face of Drake himself, Number One facing (as my contact put it, quoting McGoohan) his “opposite number.”
Having proven that not everyone can be broken, thus invalidating the entire premise of the Village, the place is destroyed, and Drake returns to his life in London.
As for the mechanical sound of the opening door…at the time this series was produced, the first surveillance cameras were being installed in public places around London. There was a huge uproar about it in the press, with people saying this was a total violation of their rights to privacy. McGoohan’s attitude was that such public surveillance meant that the outside world was already on its way to becoming the Village. Drake got out of the Village, but the Village got out into the world as well.
McGoohan never went into any detail in later years about any of this partly because of the legal issues raised earlier. If he went into *any* of the background about Drake being offered the job, which directly leads to the whole show, he would have to share ownership and this he did not want to do. Also, and probably just as importantly, he wanted the story to stand on its own as a metaphor. To explain too much would make it too literal, and metaphors can never be literal.
Is this actually 100% what McGoohan had in mind? I believe so, and this is certainly what my contact indicated. But as noted, the show is whatever every viewer brings to it. With McGoohan’s passing we will never know the details or just how much of this is accurate. So the show must stand on its own, as he intended.
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