On the old IMDB message boards, I posted a couple of Prisoner sequel short-takes.  In one, Harry Palmer wakes up in the Village to find that Col Ross is No.2, which totally works as Guy Doleman played both and he wasn't to be trusted in the film series...hell, no one was.  The other had David Callan, from the Edward Woodward series end up there and find out that Lonely is No. 2.; but, only after he is first duped into thinking lonely is a prisoner there, as well.  Both characters work really well in the world of the Prisoner, as they were both in the security world under duress and used by their bosses for dirty work.


I think No.6 is actually John Steed's next-door neighbor, who got the wrong mail and was just returning it, which cause all the kerfuffle.  He stopped by Steed's office and handed it in at the desk and then got the wrong people tailing him. 

Not quite finished with things. I have been watching the original Danger Man, with Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. I am up to the second season, which was done in 1964, after the series had been cancelled, after it failed to draw enough business in the United States and lacked funding to continue. With the Bond craze, Danger Man was revived for a second season, with a bigger budget and episode lengths expanded from a half hour to a full hour (about 48 minutes actual run time), with a new theme song (in both countries) and a new US title, Secret Agent (complete with the Johnny Rivers classic song...)



Here's the British intro...



I kind of like the jazzier UK theme, though I've always loved the Johnny Rivers song. The lyrics, though, don't really describe John Drake, who does not romance the ladies and rarely resorts to gunplay.

Now, to the episode that concerns us...

Colony Three

Writer: Donald Johnson
Director: Don Chaffey



Episode Quotes: John Richardson: One would have thought that she would have realised by now.

John Drake: Realised what?

John Richardson: That when people enter Colony Three, they - cease to exist



John Drake: There's nothing we can do about the girl, I suppose.

Admiral: Of course not - we've never even heard of her.

John Drake: As Richardson said; she no longer exists.


John Richardson: You realise that none of the residents can leave the village - ever.

John Drake: Of course, it's, uh, security.

Synopsis: A clerk at a Citizens Advice Bureau prepares for a long voyage and then is arrested and interrogated. He doesn't understand what is going on. John Drake observes via closed circuit tv. He asks a couple of questions, as does his boss. he is then tasked to replace the man, a communist who was defecting to the other side of the Iron Curtain. Drake is told that over 700 average people have defected and then disappeared, no further trace of them. They do not have strategic knowledge and no propaganda is produced with them. Drake is tasked to replace the clerk and find out where the defectors have ended up. He flies out of London and lands in a foreign (unnamed country), where he is collected in a van, with all windows covered. He is transported to a train station and locked aboard a train with the windows also covered. The only other people in the car are also British: Randall, an electrical engineer who had been with the SOE, during the war, and Janet Wells, a librarian, who is going to be reunited with her boyfriend. They believe that Drake is Fuller, the clerk. Randall speaks the language (he operated in Yugoslavia, during the war), but gets few answers to his questions. Drake, as Fuller is quiet and reserved, listening but not offering much information. Randall is protective of Miss Wells.


The train finally arrives at its destination and the three passengers get off and see an astonishing sight: a London double-decker bus, with the name Hampden New Town on it. They are taken to a nearby village, which is still under construction and meet John Richardson, who shows them around. They see English police constables, a modern planned community, with a shopping area, administrative offices, residential area, and a training school. The three of them are there to help train spies to live and act as if they are British. They train there for three years, before being sent to the UK, for their missions. All the "instructors" are British. Their quarters are bugged so that the trainees can hear real conversations between British people, with their slang and inflections. Randall is disappointed to find out he will continue to be an electrician, thinking he was recruited because of his war background. He becomes more and more bitter and rebellious. Janet finds out that her boyfriend is dead and that she was brought there to replace him as librarian. She is shown his grave and grieves for him. Drake/Fuller expresses curiosity and leaves the other two, as Richardson gives him a tour of the school, including the interrogation room, where he is locked into a chair and given shocks, while Richardson questions him. It is interrupted by Donovan, the head of the school. Drake is quartered with Randall, who isn't happy, as he believes Fuller (Drake) is currying favor with their new masters. He pushes Drake, who just wants to get along in peace. Drake begins his job, which entails helping "citizens" with government forms and advice on procedures for various activities. In this capacity, he is aiding them with new identity documents in the UK. His typewriter, which was searched, has a camera built into it, with a wire recorder, on which he retains images of the trainees, then hides the wire segments in hollowed pencils.

At a party, Randall continues to be belligerent, while Drake seems to continue to curry favor. Later, Randall borrows a pencil from Drake's coat pocket and discovers the hidden wire. He confronts Drake, who pushes him outside, away from the microphones and threatens him with exposure of his own hoarding of food, in what looks like a plan to escape. he warns him that they, including Janet, will all suffer and that is obviously what happened to her boyfriend. Upon arrival, they were told not to try to leave the village, as it is remote and the temperature plummets to 30 below zero (though they don't specify on which temperature scale) in winter, and is miles from any other habitation. Randall does attempt to escape and Drake hunts him down and stops him and they are picked up by a helicopter patrol and brought back. Drake hides the wire recordings in a hollowed out shoe heel, which he dons before Richardson comes in with Randall, who confesses to telling them everything, including Drake's photography. Drake has gotten rid of the pencils and uses their absence to refute Randall's claims. Drake sends out a signal to be extracted and the school gets a notice that Fuller is being reassigned to the capital. Donovan doesn't like it and feels that it is a power play by rivals within their organization. he tasks Richardson with arranging an accident. Drake boards the train, with Richardson, who says his training time is up. At night, Drake goes to change into pajamas and hears the external door open. He secretes a soap dispenser bottle ina toiletry bag, as a weapon and checks things out and is attacked by Richardson, who uses an axe to try and knock him off the speeding train. Drake appears to fall out and Richardson leans out to check and Drake, who is clinging onto the outer railing and step swings under Richardson, plants his foot into his midsection and executes a judo throw (also known as a monkey flip, in wrestling), tossing Richardson off the train. He then climbs inside and completes his journey and returns to the UK. He is debriefed and his images are studied. He succeeded in photographing 2/3 of the students, but there are some missing. he asks about getting the girl out and is told that they can't even find a record of her existence. Drake remarks what Richardson had said, that she ceased to exist.

Thoughts: This is probably the most like The Prisoner of any episode of the series. Most are typical Cold War spy plots, with stolen information, counter-intelligence, criminal schemes, endangered spy cells in foreign countries and the like. This one is quite different, as it doesn't have a positive ending. Drake escapes, but has to leave Randall and the girl behind. he doesn't even have complete records of the students. There is the same sensation of bewilderment and sinister undercurrent. This village is also remote and well guarded, with little chance of escape. It has all of the amenities, but no freedom. Janet Wells wasn't even there voluntarily, as was Randall or the original Fullerton. She was brought under false pretenses, to replace her boyfriend, making her fate all the more tragic. She is an innocent bystander, trapped in a game between nations. Even Drake can't save her. This is why Danger Man/Secret Agent was a kind of anti-Bond; he didn't always succeed or completely succeed.

The surveillance culture is there, via wiretapping and observers, though not the secreted cameras of The Prisoner. The episode shares elements with similar stories in other 60s spy dramas. The IPCRESS File has Harry Palmer seemingly held in an Iron Curtain country, where he is imprisoned and subjected to extremes of heat and cold and mental conditioning, to program him to become their sleeper agent. He uses pain to defeat the brainwashing techniques and escapes, only to discover that he has actually been in a warehouse, near London. The Avengers, in the 4th season (1st with Emma Peel) episode "Room Without a View," a scientist has been kept prisoner in what he believes to have been a Chinese prison, but is actually a secret room beneath a hotel, where he had been staying. There, he is subjected to brainwashing. Mission Impossible's 1st season included the episode "The Carriers (broadcast 4 days after my birth) features guest George Takei as one of the agents on the team, who discover an replica American town, behind the Iron Curtain, where spies are being trained to spread a deadly virus.

So, McGoohan didn't exactly have an original idea, with the Prisoner; but, he certainly had a unique presentation of the idea.

The first season of Danger Man featured half hour episodes; so the plots moved quickly. There was some character development; but not as much and the schemes were kept relatively simple. They are exciting, shot on film (The Avengers was shot on video until the Emma Peel years) and used stock footage for establishing exotic locations, while Drake carries out his missions. He has a number of bosses, as his NATO allegiance puts him in various locations. With the revived show, he is part of the British agency M9, is said to be British (he is Irish American in the first season), and lives in a flat, not unlike John Steed's apartments, in The Avengers (right down to decorations of flintlock pistols and daggers). The doubled length allows for more intricate plotting and character development. It continues to feature noted actors, as I have observed Vladek Sheybal (Kronstien, in From Russia With Love), Peter Bowles (who also did the Avengers and starred in the romantic comedy series To The Manor Born), Howard Marion Crawford (Dr Petrie, in the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films), Mervyn Johns (Bob Cratchitt, in the Alistair Sim A Christmas Carol), Francesca Annis (Dune, Krull) and multiple people from The Prisoner. You also see some of the same writers, directors and crew, as wardrobe is handled by Masada Wilmot, who did the early Prisoner episodes, and Rose Tobias Shaw, who was the casting director for both series (which probably also explains a lot of the same actors being used, though they also appear in other ITC adventure series of the period). David Tomblin is an assistant director here and would continue on The prisoner. Brian Clemens is a writer, who worked on The Avengers and The Professionals and writes several episodes. Don Chaffey directed much of the Prisoner. Charles Chrichton directs and he also directed The Avengers and some of the Ealing comedies of Alec Guinness, like The Lavender Hill Mob, as well as John Cleese's A Fish Called Wanda.

McGoohan in Colony Three is very much like No.6, though he plays Drake with less flair than No. 6. We also see touches of his righteous anger, in the episode "No Marks for Servility," where he masquerades as a butler to a crooked government representative, who abuses his young wife. In both "A Fair Exchange" and "A Room in the Basement," we see his compassionate side and a willingness to defy authority. In the former, he must stop a friend who is off to kill an East German security man who tortured her to the breaking point, before she causes political problems, as well as destroys herself. In the latter, he comes to the aid of a friend's wife, who contacts him when her husband is seized by Romanian security agents, in Switzerland, and held in their embassy, while they deny they have any knowledge of his whereabouts. Drake contacts other colleagues and sets up an operation to infiltrate the embassy and free the man, in direct defiance of his orders.

From these episodes, you can see why people would believe that Drake is No. 6, as McGoohan plays both with similar traits; but, there are also differences. they are certainly men from the same line of work, though No. 6 seems to be the one who is at odds with his profession, while Drake questions and defies orders, he still carries out his missions. You could make the case for No.6 representing Drake after he has come to an impasse, possibly after a mission that has gone wrong, or too many like "Colony Three" or "Fair Exchange," where innocents and friends are sacrificed. Perhaps he compromised one too many times and could no longer do so. or maybe they just look alike.

Anyway, I recommend checking out at least the Secret Agent (or Series 2-4 of Danger Man, if you prefer) series for both excellent spy drama, as well as a look at why John Drake might be No. 6.

What about the 4-issue comic book miniseries from Titan Comics in 2018?

I haven't seen that one.  I do have a source the read it; maybe I'll add a review of it in a bit.