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As I tend to “unfinished business” at the Sadgeezer site (shameless excuse for returning to Logan’s first-class forum); there has always been a nagging question. This question has the propensity to rock the Prisoner Fandom to it’s very foundation! The question I ask…..Nay!…..that I demand to be answered is this:
Is The Prisoner Gay?
This question has been driving me crazy (and no I am not gay; nor am I a homo-phobic Sadgeezer) and I need some input here. I mean – did anyone ever see Number 6 pinching any bums or leering at any shapely asses passing him by – and were these male or female posteriors? What about Patrick in his real life. If he had a part in the creation/writing of the episodes – and was a gay guy – then it stands to reason this sexual attitude would be telegraphed onto Number 6. I need to know (I did a Google search and came up with nothing…..). Thanks in advance…..
Maurice
A very interesti9ng question and one which I have to admit, I have NEVER considered before. 🙂
Yep, No. 6 has never been considered a womaniser, in fact, as a James Bond type agent he is severely lacking a good set of chat-up lines, no letcherous smiles, no dribbling and no checking out bums as an attractive lady walks past. So, he’s definately not a SadGeezer!!
I mean, can you imaging chatting with Number 6 in the pub, what would you talk about? I bet it wouldn’t be if the YAnkees were gonna win the World Series again (coz their TOO good for any of them there other crappy baseball teams!), or If Manchester United would get stuffed by Liverpool (again!) or if Lita Alexander really was a 36DD.
Yep, I can’t imagine any of that!
But having said that, I certainly can’t imaging him chatting to his girlfriends about the colour of the front room wallpaper, or if he would look good in a pink halterneck sweater….. Naaa.
Number 6 is too macho. I think he is just single minded, respectful of the ladies (except when he gave one a slap in one of the episodes!!) …. and no fun at a party!
SadGeezer wrote:A very interesti9ng question and one which I have to admit, I have NEVER considered before. 🙂
Yep, No. 6 has never been considered a womaniser, in fact, as a James Bond type agent he is severely lacking a good set of chat-up lines, no letcherous smiles, no dribbling and no checking out bums as an attractive lady walks past. So, he’s definately not a SadGeezer!!
I mean, can you imaging chatting with Number 6 in the pub, what would you talk about? I bet it wouldn’t be if the YAnkees were gonna win the World Series again (coz their TOO good for any of them there other crappy baseball teams!), or If Manchester United would get stuffed by Liverpool (again!) or if Lita Alexander really was a 36DD.
Yep, I can’t imagine any of that!
But having said that, I certainly can’t imaging him chatting to his girlfriends about the colour of the front room wallpaper, or if he would look good in a pink halterneck sweater….. Naaa.
Number 6 is too macho. I think he is just single minded, respectful of the ladies (except when he gave one a slap in one of the episodes!!) …. and no fun at a party!
I beg to differ, Sadgeezer. Look at the facts:
1. Appears to have always been single (though not crucial to the argument).
2. Stylish dresser.
3. Slim build.
4. Fastidioulsy maintained swank townhouse and cute little two-seater sports car…..
5. Secret agent.
Come on Tony…..what more evidence do you need? Was the reason he resigned based on the need to “come out”? Was this the terrible, dark, secret – the unspoken truth…..
Remember that The Prisoner was produced in an era to which homosexuality was taboo. The Prisoner’s latent homosexuality never had a chance to shine. Imagine the real story; had the writer free rein on the storyline. Is it not more natural – as opposed to Number 6 screaming at Number 2 to “die…..die…..die…..” in the second to last episode – that Number 6 stop short of killing Number 2; and instead, cradle Number 2 in his arms with one long passionate soul-kiss and a delicate brush across the whimpering Number 2’s genitals….. Thinking along these lines…..Is Number 6 so obviously in the dominant role in this new reality…..or is he more receptive (i.e. a fudge-packer or the recipient?).
If this is the true story: Of a secret agent – coming out – in a hostile world. Then I submit that this should be the basis of the new movie….. Just some random thoughts as I sit here wasting another Sunday afternoon…..
Maurice
Is he? Did Number 6 and 9 come together for a…?
Perhaps he is. He did seem to get a certain perverse pleasure as he was smothered by that big bouncy ball (Rover).
One things for certain, Number 2 is: “I feel a new man!” (Fall Out)
By the way, it obviously has been way too long since you saw the show. It most definitely was “a delicate brush against Number 2’s whimpering gerbils.”
And as for the “fudge-packer” reference, you’re obviously confusing The Prisoner with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Before you all go further down the road to perdition (and before Streudel finds this thread 😉 ), just wait.
I cranked up the old memory cells and have a vague impression that No.6 had a fiancee–I think she showed up in the episode where he switches minds with someone and escapes to England. Is that a hallucination or was there such an episode?
Now I realize that a fiancee is not necessarily conclusive evidence of anything, but still….and if No.6 is John Drake, there’s no getting around the fact that John Drake was definitely a lady’s man. (You will resist the temptation to make a joke here Logan 8) )
The series is so cerebral, I don’t remember No.6’s sexual orientation actually registering in that sense. Though McGoohan registered just fine with me…. 😀
elmey[/i]
Hi Elmey, and WELL COME to the Village! 😀 And good call!
There definitely was such an episode, Do Not Forsake Me Oh my Darling, and his fiancee was Janet, though so much of The Prisoner is such a “mind trip”, I also sometimes can’t remember if I dreamed the episodes or hallucinated them or what. He switched minds with The Colonel btw.
Oh, off-topic for no good reason other than it involves a mind-switch, has a fiancee, is late 60’s sci-fi TV, and Captain Kirk is gay ;): Remember that Star Trek TOS ep. where Janice Lester (Kirk’s ex-fiancee I think) switches minds with Kirk? Shatner was really campy as her — played her like a drag-queen.
BTW, you’re right *sips his courvoisier*, Drake is such a ladies man that they named a skanky national holday after him. As Leon would say, Drake Day “is the only national holiday dedicated to gettin’ it on.”
No matter what his sexual orientation is, as Leon said, “it will definitely involve the” but I needn’t get into that.
BTW, I’m keeping a very large hose handy for when Streudel arrives — a fire is gonna need to be extinguished, that’s fer sure. 😛
😕
You’re all forgetting that Patrick McGoohan is a devout Catholic with strict moral standards and a respect for women.
I only have vague memories of Secret Agent/ Danger Man, bit I remember reading that in that show and The Prisoner he wanted the sex and violence downplayed, as they had no place being broadcast into people’s living rooms where young children might possibly see something they shouldn’t.
Haven’t forgotten, just ignoring it! 😆 (j/k) But anyway, it seemed clear that he wanted the viewer to draw their own conclusions — no doubt, however, not this thread’s conclusions! 😉
“Happiness is a warm gun” (the Beatles)
“No sex please, we’re British”He did want the sex and violence played down. There were plenty of Batmanesque “pow, phwunk, wham” fight scenes, but those were included at other’s insistence — like The Prisoner, he was selective in choosing his fights. In fact, I seem to remember that McGoohan has pascifistic leanings. You’ll notice the lack of guns, and people getting killed by guns in the series. There are exceptions, especially in Fall Out which was written by McGoohan. I loved the inclusion of All You Need is Love in that scene (I thought it a tad ironic ;)). I just thought of something tangential, perhaps all No. 6 needed was some good lovin’.
It never crossed my mind that he was gay. I thought he was more a man with a mission and wasn’t going to get distracted by silly little things like SEX when he had more important things on his mind (Unlike James Bond).
I think the problem in the village was that everybody could be an enemy agent, so he wouldn’t want to get too smoochy with anybody.
The powers that be there must have thought he was heterosexual because they kept throwing lovely ladies at him.There was that foreign housekeeper type bird who turned out to be number 2
And that Russian swimming woman he rescued
Wasn’t there something with that female doctor who had him dreaming about a party where he was meeting up with some agent.
I remember the fiance.
(sorry I’m a bit vague, haven’t see it for a while)
Anyway, I don’t remember him ever waking up to find a bare chested young man wearing a bow tie making and omlette for him in the kitchen. (*sigh*)
Oh another thing, just out of interest, when somebody shows no interest in sex, why are they assumed to be homosexual? He didn’t show any interst in men either which to me says asexual.
Oh another thing, just out of interest, when somebody shows no interest in sex, why are they assumed to be homosexual? He didn’t show any interst in men either which to me says asexual.
A person who shows no interest in sex is hiding something. Ready for this…..If the Prisoner is not interested in men or women; he could be: A PEDOPHILE!…..Oh the humanity…..
Fatguy wrote:Oh another thing, just out of interest, when somebody shows no interest in sex, why are they assumed to be homosexual? He didn’t show any interst in men either which to me says asexual.
A person who shows no interest in sex is hiding something. Ready for this…..If the Prisoner is not interested in men or women; he could be: A PEDOPHILE!…..Oh the humanity…..[/quote]
You’re right! 😯 He could have had something to hide! He could have been a closet heterosexual! Burn the witch!! 😛
Maybe he was a paedophile, in which case the village would be the best place for him. No children there. No, hang one, there were some in ‘the girl who was death.’
Can’t remember any animals though and he didn’t show much interest in them either. 😯
OK, OK, I’m only joshing with you.
I’m still of the opinion that he was single mindedly on a mission and job came first, sex came second (the man was permanently on the job! Ho Ho! 😆 )
If The Prisoner is John Drake (which McGoohan has denied many times) perhaps his “theme song” explains his lack of interest in sex:
SECRET AGENT MAN
(sung by Johnny Rivers)There’s a man who leads a life of danger
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger
With every move he makes another chance he takes
Odds are he won’t live to see tomorrowSecret agent man, secret agent man
They’ve given you a number and taken away your nameBeware of pretty faces that you find
A pretty face can hide an evil mind
Ah, be careful what you say
Or you’ll give yourself away
Odds are you won’t live to see tomorrowSecret agent man, secret agent man
They’ve given you a number and taken away your name—— lead guitar ——
Secret agent man, secret agent man
They’ve given you a number and taken away your nameSwingin’ on the Riviera one day
And then layin’ in the Bombay alley next day
Oh no, you let the wrong word slip
While kissing persuasive lips
The odds are you won’t live to see tomorrowSecret agent man, secret agent man
They’ve given you a number and taken away your nameSecret agent man
😯 WOW! If I was No. 6, I’d be wary about getting too intimate with the opposite sex, the same sex, or unknown sex – especially in a place like The Village where it’s hard to tell the warders from the prisoners.
MM
(We’re all pawns here)(Pet Enters Geek mode…..)
Is No. 6 John Drake?
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. (The Prisoner 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.
Is Drake Gay?
“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 The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece 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
nursewhen wrote:…I think the problem in the village was that everybody could be an enemy agent, so he wouldn’t want to get too smoochy with anybody.
Exactly. Interestingly, early on in Arrival The Prisoner is introduced to the French tongue by a lovely taxi driver, however certain smoochiness is discouraged in the Village: “A still tongue makes a happy life.” No french tongue please, we’re British.
nursewhen wrote:…The powers that be there must have thought he was heterosexual because they kept throwing lovely ladies at him.
Maybe they should have tried men. 😉
nursewhen wrote:Wasn’t there something with that female doctor who had him dreaming about a party where he was meeting up with some agent….
Yes, didn’t that female doctor teaching him something about the birds and the A. Bee C.s? She was his “dream girl.” When he confronted her he recognised her “from his dream,” but she only took a professional interest in him — she shot him down for obvious reasons when he tried to chat her up. He did dance rather prococatively with the agent (the lambada wasn’t it? ;))
nursewhen wrote:Anyway, I don’t remember him ever waking up to find a bare chested young man wearing a bow tie making and omlette for him in the kitchen. (*sigh*)
You mean the Butler? 😀 Alas, the Butler didn’t do it this time.
nursewhen wrote:Oh another thing, just out of interest, when somebody shows no interest in sex, why are they assumed to be homosexual? He didn’t show any interst in men either which to me says asexual.
Good point! Actually, I’d argue that the rather egotistical No. 6 did show considerable interest in himself “I, I, I…” which may indicate hermaphroditic qualities. But I kid. He was very much a man of principle, some of his apparent arrogance comes from this.
nursewhen wrote:Can’t remember any animals though and he didn’t show much interest in them either.
Remember what he said, never trust a female, even the four legged variety.
”Micromary” wrote:“Beware of pretty faces that you find
A pretty face can hide an evil mind…”If I was No. 6, I’d be wary about getting too intimate with the opposite sex, the same sex, or unknown sex – especially in a place like The Village where it’s hard to tell the warders from the prisoners.
The Village authorities threw women his way as a means to extract information, but it always failed, he saw through the ploy. They did never actually try to throw men his way, did they? On occasion No. 6 used his masculine charms to turn the tables; at least for show like in the Chimes of Big Ben with
On a side-note, McGoohan himself has been called mysoginistic be some (sp?) because of his character’s attitude towards women: Can’t trust ’em. However, considering the high ranks that women were given in The Village (and many of the best roles in The Prisoner), I don’t buy it. Remember how Gene Roddenberry used a woman as No. 2 in the most excellent Star Trek pilot? But he was forced to change this? The Prisoner was way ahead of Star Trek when it came to gender roles.
pet wrote:(Pet Enters Geek mode…..)
Erm, wouldn’t “greek” mode be more appropraite to this topic. 😉 That was a great read btw, thanks.
I wanted to say more, but i’m late.
”Number wrote:On a side-note, McGoohan himself has been called mysoginistic be some (sp?) because of his character’s attitude towards women: Can’t trust ’em. However, considering the high ranks that women were given in The Village (and many of the best roles in The Prisoner), I don’t buy it. Remember how Gene Roddenberry used a woman as No. 2 in the most excellent Star Trek pilot? But he was forced to change this? The Prisoner was way ahead of Star Trek when it came to gender roles.
Funny how people judge a man based on one character. I know people who hate him because he played Longshanks.
One of the things which impressed me about Danger Man, on which McGoohan had just as much influence over characterisation as the Prisoner (though not of the plots) was that the women weren’t just thrown in as action candy to give the hero a weakness. I hate that character in any film or TV show no matter who plays her!
That’s not to say that he doesn’t come to the aid of Damsels in Distress, but they are just as likely to rescue him. Perhaps the formula hadn’t been set in stone yet.
The women on Danger Man were heads of international corporations, assassins, ambassadors, leaders of vigilante groups, nuclear scientists, and master spies on both sides of the iron curtain. So were the men for that matter. So were the Asian, Indian, African, Central American and Middle Eastern characters of both sexes.
And the idiots and bimbos were just as likely to be men as women on that show, I might add.
I think if he was judged on Danger Man that belief would be totally different.
83;)
Re Pet: I can only conclude that your submission in this thread is to consolidate PM’s place as a magnificant stud with the ladies. That obviously “phallic” photo does not hide the obvious. So I do you girls a favor and edit the photo to be more in keeping with your real libidos:
Maurice
Fatguy wrote:Re Pet: I can only conclude that your submission in this thread is to consolidate PM’s place as a magnificant stud with the ladies. That obviously “phallic” photo does not hide the obvious. So I do you girls a favor and edit the photo to be more in keeping with your real libidos:
Odd. All I saw was a man opening a bottle of champagne on new years day. Quite a normal piece of imagery given the time of year.
Since YOU saw a phallic symbol, Fatguy, and YOU strove to ‘improve’ the photo. I would say that the image says more about YOUR libido than mine.p.s. I stopped being a ‘girl’ a long time ago.
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