Re:Rock The Foundation!
(Pet Enters Geek mode…..)
[b]Is No. 6 John Drake?[/b]
McGoohan did say Drake was Number 6 in a squash game with his stunt coordinator Frank Maher when he was pitching the idea and in a meeting with George Markstein in which they decided not to name Drake because it was going to be expensive. ([b]The Prisoner[/b] by Dave Rogers, p.No. 2.)
Since they figured out how expensive it would be, McGoohan has denied it. But before then, even before the hour-long series began, he always had it in his mind that Drake would resign if he found a woman to marry. No. 6 both resigned and got engaged, so personally I think Drake becomes No.6.
[b]Is Drake Gay?[/b]
“He sometimes rebels against the missions he is given. He now looks at women with much more interest, for one of them could be the lucky girl who will persuade him to leave the job and find some other less dangerous way of making a living.” — Patrick McGoohan in an ITC press kit.
(Quoted in [b]The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece[/b] edited by Alain Carraze, in the article “Danger Man” by Jacques Baudou, p.No. 206.)
(I have to thank a Drake Drooler for this next quote)
‘When the character logically indulges in torrid scenes, then I’ll play them, I don’t believe for one moment, though, that Drake would chase any of the girls he meets.
He is the sort of man who has a healthy enough respect for women to realise that it would not be fair on a girl to ask her to marry him while he is away on dangerous missions nearly all the time. His life is too full of risks, too insecure, too roving for Drake to ever fall in love. To do so would interfere with the life of adventure he has chosen. He would like to marry, and he has it at the back of his mind all the time – but it is something he has no intention of doing while risking his life so often. The fact that he is taking such risks is a vital element of the stories. With a wife in the background – and probably children as well – he would be tempted to cut down on the risks. Therefore it would affect his work. This doesn’t mean that he avoids women. He enjoys the company of pretty girls. And there are plenty of stories in the series showing him closely involved – with women. But only when the job calls for him to do so. ” –Patrick McGoohan
The Drake character also mentions in “Don’t Nail Him Yet” that he’s wondering what it must be like to have a wife and children, while playing chess with a married agent in a less dangerous position. (He loses.)
He flirts mercilessly while posing as an encyclopedia salesman in “The Mirror’s New”, as an artist in “Sting in the Tail”, as a blackmailer in “The Black Book”. He allows a very persistent girl he obviously finds both attractive and trustworthy to follow him back to London when his mission is finished in “You’re Not in any Trouble, Are you?”, and he meets and allies himself with his perfect, though Soviet, match in “Parallel Lines Sometimes Meet”, though by the very nature of their Cold War loyalties that relationship is doomed from the get-go.
He gets played and heartbroken by a diplomat’s wife in one of the books that took place during the first season (when he worked for NATO). I believe the story was designed to explain his infamous suspicion of the women he meets in his line of work. So, yes, I think No. 6 is Drake, or at least he started out that way, but I think the evidence points to him being suspicious, with good reason given the way some of the bad girls try to cheat him, but not gay.
Uh… not that there’s anything wrong with that…. 😉
Neither, for that matter, do I think that a man who thinks any day he’ll be able to escape and go back to his fiancee is gay if he doesn’t flirt with the locals in the Village.
Pet;D