Official Prisoner Companion

"On a different note, in their "Observations" regarding the episode 'A Change of Mind', the authors suggest that "it is easy to make comparisons between the committee in this episode and McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee of the 1950s."
If the authors knew a little more about the period when The Prisoner was filmed they might have made the rather more relevant observation that the various events in this episode very closely resemble the excesses of the Chinese Cultural Revolution - of the 1960s."

Even worse than missing the importance of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the authors show even less knowledge of US history. McCarthy was NOT a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was a Republican Senator from Wisconsin, thus, not even a member of the House.

HUAC's primary interest in those days seemed to be in rooting out left-wingers from Hollywood. McCarthy made his fame from claims, never established, of as many as 205 Communists or sympathizers (whatever that might mean) in the Army and the State Department. McCarthy never undertook investigations of former spies nor did his tactics, based more on implications of guilt by association or skillfully worded queries of the "do you still beat your wife?" type, that trapped witnesses into unintended and incorrect answers, ever kidnap or imprison those suspected of wrongdoing.

In the days of the Red Scare, simply implying a person was "soft" on Communism could ruin a career.

The information on McCarthy and HUAC is readily available. Errors of this sort mean sloppy research by the authors. What, then, of their critique can we trust?

I suspect that a lot of the shortcomings of this book are due to it being written no less than 20 years after the original airing of the series. Put this together with the fact that the authors are (apparently) Americans, and you can begin to see why the book fails to show any great depth of understanding of what is a very profoundly British TV series.

At one point, for example, we are told that the Scots, Irish and Welsh Napoleans (in 'The Girl Who was Death') "represent various components of the British Commonwealth". I guess they meant the British Isles, or the United Kingdom - though neither of those groups includes Ireland, of course, only Northern Ireland. And in any case, how does this explain the Yorkshire Napolean?

On a different note, in their "Observations" regarding the episode 'A Change of Mind', the authors suggest that "it is easy to make comparisons between the committee in this episode and McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee of the 1950s."
If the authors knew a little more about the period when The Prisoner was filmed they might have made the rather more relevant observation that the various events in this episode very closely resemble the excesses of the Chinese Cultural Revolution - of the 1960s.

I was also less than impressed by the actual episode guides. Most of these are written in a very uninspired style and contain regular, if largely trivial, errors of fact and grammar.
In the commentary for 'It's Your Funeral', for example, one of the photos shows McGoohan standing beside the helicopter with Eric Portman sitting at the controls and holding a phone. In fact, Number 2 in this episode was played by Andre Van Gyseghem (with Derren Nesbitt as his stand-in), whilst Eric Portman played Number 2 back in episode 4 - 'Free for All'.

Having said that, the book is certainly not a complete waste of space, containing material from production company handouts, script fragments, etc. As in The Prisoner itself, the reader simply needs to be careful about sorting fact (official material) from fiction.

Be seeing you 8¬)