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Danger Man aka Secret Agent


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#1 Guy Haines

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Posted 21 January 2012 - 08:58 AM

I bought the DVD set of the hour long Danger Man episodes a while back, but have only started watching them this past week. The first episode "Yesterday's Enemies" had Patrick McGoohan as John Drake sent to Beirut to investigate a private spy network run by a blustering British ex-agent who is selling secrets to an enemy power.

I was struck by the fact that, while Drake uses his fists and his wits, he rarely uses a gun, and given who plays him, romantic encounters of the James Bond kind just don't happen. (McGoohan was a moral conservative and fiercely resisted any director's attempts to have him caught in a clinch on screen.)

The end of the episode also struck me because of the sheer ruthlessness of Drake's boss, known as "The Admiral", and played by Peter Madden, who was, I think, Kronsteen's chess opponent in From Russia With Love. Drake manages to prevent the renegade British spy escaping to the East, and arranges to return him to the UK on certain promises in exchange. The Admiral sends another agent to Beirut to collect him. On Drake's return to London, he learns that The Admiral sent the second agent out to execute the renegade British spy - and kept Drake in the dark about this. Drake's disgust at his boss's actions is palpable.

A hint of that "crisis of conscience" which was repeatedly hinted at when McGoohan's successor character, Number 6, resigned at the start of "The Prisoner"? I wonder? McGoohan always maintained that Drake and "6" were not one and the same, but there were those involved in both series who were quite convinced that they were.

#2 Dustin

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Posted 21 January 2012 - 12:20 PM

I haven't seen that many Danger Man episodes but to me the claim that Drake and Number 6 aren't identical sounded always a bit phoney given the various similarities. CHIMES OF BIG BEN or A, B & C for example allude more than just a bit to Drake and his former series. If you wanted to absolutely avoid Number 6 being identified as Drake there would have been ways. But THE PRISONER's appeal lies exactly therein, an ambiguity, a familiarity that is just a tad off, which denies connections the audience makes and yet plays its cards in just the way to invite their conclusions. Insofar it's essential for Number 6 not to be John Drake. Not just John Drake.

#3 Guy Haines

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Posted 22 January 2012 - 12:26 AM

I haven't seen that many Danger Man episodes but to me the claim that Drake and Number 6 aren't identical sounded always a bit phoney given the various similarities. CHIMES OF BIG BEN or A, B & C for example allude more than just a bit to Drake and his former series. If you wanted to absolutely avoid Number 6 being identified as Drake there would have been ways. But THE PRISONER's appeal lies exactly therein, an ambiguity, a familiarity that is just a tad off, which denies connections the audience makes and yet plays its cards in just the way to invite their conclusions. Insofar it's essential for Number 6 not to be John Drake. Not just John Drake.


I've never known a series as "ambiguous" as The Prisoner, truly a series where the viewer could read whatever they wanted into it, and I imagine that was McGoohan's intention, in part at least. Also, it is alleged that the character John Drake was never mentioned in the series because royalties would have had to be paid to the producers of Danger Man. Nevertheless, there were people involved, notably George Markstein, who claimed to have come up with the idea of "The Village" , who maintained that "6" and "Drake" were the same person.

#4 Brisco

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Posted 23 January 2012 - 08:47 AM

I'm glad to find such reasonable Prisoner fans around here! You go some places and even hint that Drake and Number 6 might be one and the same and fans get downright indignant. But to me, the connection seems unavoidable. I've never fully bought into McGoohan's categorical statements that they were NOT the same. Supposedly in the first draft of the Prisoner pilot, the character was referred to as Drake throughout. To me the only reason for claiming otherwise on the part of McGoohan and the producers is as Guy suggests: because they didn't have the rights to Ralph Smart's character. But it almost doesn't matter if they are or aren't what matters is that the extratextual relationship is there, and so viewers will make the connection no matter what. I think it's more important than Number 6 is PLAYED by the guy who played Drake than that Number 6 IS Drake. Viewers will be bringing his secret agent baggage to the table and the producers use that baggage to good effect. If there's ever a Prisoner movie (let's just forget about that miniseries), the actor playing Number 6 should be someone who brings similar spy baggage with him, someone who audiences associate with a spy role already, no matter what spy it is.

Guy, "Yesterday's Enemies" is one of my very favorite Danger Man episodes. I love the bleak ending. And it certainly does seem like it could be a prequel to The Prisoner. But there are many great Danger Man episodes--both in the hour-long and half-hour format. (I might even prefer the shorter ones.) It's such a wonderful show, often criminally overlooked in favor of its more famous successor series. But Danger Man is really just as good a show as The Prisoner; it just didn't break boundaries the way that series did. Instead of defying genre conventions, it was content with being a truly excellent example of its genre.

#5 Guy Haines

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Posted 10 January 2015 - 11:42 AM

Trapped by the weather last night I watched The Champions, another one of those ITC spy/crime adventure series I was "brung up" on as a nipper in the late 1960s. I've got all those ITC series on DVD together with all the surviving episodes of The Avengers - not ITC but around at the same time.

 

Mention is made here of The Prisoner and Danger Man, and one of the three episodes of The Champions I watched last night was "The Interrogation". I think it's a great episode, one of the best of that series and one of the best from those ITC programmes full stop. The premise is simple - Craig Sterling (Stuart Damon) finds himself in an interrogation cell, having been drugged up to the eyeballs and growingly uncertain as to whether or not he has cracked under pressure of a skilled interrogator who intervenes from time to time. (A first rate performance in that part by that great Irish actor, Colin Blakely.) There's little violence save in the odd flashback to previous missions, but its a war of nerves between Sterling and the interrogator and it's well played by both actors involved. Sterling doesn't know who is holding him or where he is - sounds familiar doesn't it? In fact it's a bit like a one hour, one set compressed take on "The Prisoner", with Damon in the Number 6 role and Blakely as Number 2. Indeed, I think Colin Blakely would have made an excellent Number 2 in The Prisoner.

 

If you haven't seen this episode I won't spoil it for you by giving away the ending, but of all the episodes of this series, one of my favourite series from my childhood, this one certainly has similarities with the plight of a certain man who is not a number in a certain village.