From: mike.dickson@almac.co.uk (Mike Dickson)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.prisoner
Subject: MCGOOHAN INTERVIEW    8/9
Date: 23 Jan 93 18:27:00 GMT
Reply-To: mike.dickson@almac.co.uk (Mike Dickson)
Organization: Almac BBS Ltd. +44 (0)324 665371

>>> Continued from previous message

 Fifth Boy: Mr. McGoohan, when you began "The Prisoner," you began it
           in a decade in which a lot of people were used to secret
           agents. You very neatly saw the next decade coming. I thing
           you saw Watergate; the enemy within as opposed to the enemy
           without. I don't know if you can answer this, but if you
           were going to do the series again and you had to look aged
           to the 80's and you were thinking in terms of what you see
           as being the real enemy, not the storybook enemy but the
           enemy that's really going to hassle us. If you were going to
           look into the 80's now, what would you look to?

 McGoohan: I think progress is the biggest enemy on earth, apart from
           oneself, and that goes with oneself, a two-handed pair with
           oneself and progress. I think we're gonna take good care of
           this planet shortly. They're making bigger and better bombs,
           faster planes, and all this stuff one day, I hate to say it,
           there's never been a weapon created yet on the face of the
           Earth that hadn't been used and that thing is gonna be used
           unless...I don't know how we're gonna stop it, not it's too
           late, I think.

 Fifth Boy: Do you think maybe there's going to be a strong popular
           reaction against "Progress" in the future?

 McGoohan: No, because we're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison
           Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept
           those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with
           the stream to the eventual avalanche.

 Sixth Boy: We tend to view the threat, the Village there, as sort of a
           thing as something external like Madison Avenue, the media.
           How responsible are we for accepting this? Where do we
           become involved in being "unfree"?

 McGoohan: Buying the product, to excess. As long as we go out and buy
           stuff, we're at their mercy. We're at the mercy of the
           advertiser and of course there are certain things that we
           need, but a lot of the stuff that is bought is not needed.

 Sixth Boy: Did you regard the Village as an external thing or as
           something that we carry around with us all the time?

 McGoohan: It was meant to be both. The external was the symbol, but
           it's within us all I think, don't you? This surrealist
           aspect; we all live in a little Village.

 Troyer: Do we?

 McGoohan: Your village may be different from other people's villages
           but we are all prisoners.

 Troyer: Well, I know who the idiot is in mine.

 McGoohan: Yes, Number One - same as me.

 Seventh Boy: Is No. 1 the evil side of man's nature?

 McGoohan: The greatest enemy that we have...No. 1 was depicted as an
           evil, governing force in this Village. So, who is this No.
           1? We just see the No. 2's, the sidekicks. Now this
           overriding, evil force is at its most powerful within
           ourselves and we have constantly to fight it, I think, and
           that is why I made No. 1 an image of No. 6. His other half,
           his alter ego.

 Troyer: Did you know when you first outlined the series in your own
           mind, the concept that No. 1 was going to turn out to be
           you, to be No. 6?

 McGoohan: No, I didn't. That's an interesting question.

 Troyer: When did you find out?

 McGoohan: When it got very close to the last episode and I hadn't
           written it yet. And I had to sit down this terrible day and
           write the last episode and I knew it wasn't going to be
           something out of James Bond, and in the back of my mind
           there was some parallel with the character Six and the No. 1
           and the rest. And then, I didn't even know exactly 'til I
           was about the third through the script, the last script.

 Troyer: How about you colleagues, the other writers. Were they
           surprised?

 McGoohan: Yep.

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