Lexx.com Board……
quote:
Originally posted by Fatguy:
I believe that nobody producing the show knew how it was supposed to end (especially with regard to number one), not even Patrick. So with 48 hours left to go before his deadline, Patrick started to write the final episode; and this is when he came up with the idea of who was to be number one, etc.
Well, McGoohan (as reported in Alain Carraze and Helene Oswald’s [i]The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece[/i]) has always claimed that he knew the answers to all the questions and how the series would wrap up from the beginning. He did write the final episode, “Fall Out,” (and the segue from the penultimate episode, “Once Upon a Time”) in a weekend under extreme time constraints (the episode was completed a mere 2 weeks prior to airing) — in fact, the script was so incomplete that Kenneth Griffith improvised his own role as the President.
quote[quote]I think he said something to the effect that The Prisoner was being produced by an American network (correct me if I am wrong here) and the final episode was one of the most widely watched episodes in the history of television.[/quote]
Indeed it was. However, it was produced by ITC for British television. It was quickly picked up by ABC in the States, but its finale was seen first in the UK, and only shown here approx. 8 months afterward.
quote[quote]Patrick’s idea of the show’s sureal ending and plot seemed to really rackle a lot of common viewers who had felt they were cheated; however I quite liked it.[/quote]
Ditto here. I thought that it was really the only sensible way to bring the show to an end. [i]The Prisoner[/i], from its first episode, was extremely surreal (in a very Magritte kind of way) and it made sense that it explode in exponentially increasing chaos as it came to an end — as McGoohan put it, “revolution time.”
quote[quote]He also talked about the weather ballons being used as a last minute substitute (for a robot?) as the protectors of the village.[/quote]
Ah, Rover. Perhaps one of the more indelible images of the series: that white balloon bobbing menacingly around the village while everyone remains completely still, or rising out of the sea. Yes, the original plan was to have a motorized sentinel that would pursue those in need of “correction,” and it worked fine on land. However, the first time they tried to get it in the water, it sank like a stone. Fortuitous, really, because the Rover became so remembered, and is so out-there that it’s timeless — a mechanized thing would have dated very badly (especially within the confines of the anachrosistic dress and architecture of the Village).
quote[quote]The village itself is real and was made as a think tank community for the world’s elite minds.[/quote]
Actually, it was designed by renowned architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who was inspired by the sterility of then-current design. He planned it as an “ideal village” in which he could prove that ideas and inspiration from disparate areas of art and design could be presented as a harmonious whole. Opened to the public in 1926, he soon realized that in order to keep the village in existence, he’d have to turn a profit on it. He then opened a hotel and began charging admission to the village. While it has never been sealed off enough for it to be considered a “think tank,” it has attracted great minds to reside there such as Aldous Huxley and Ernest Hemingway (and currently attracts somewhere around 100 thousand people a year).
–Aleck