An Interview With Jonathan Blum and Rupert Booth,
Authors of The Prisoner -- The Prisoner's Dilemma
by Simon Morris

Q: Okay, let's start with the big one. Who do you think you are, trying to write The Prisoner -- Patrick McGoohan or something?

JB: Bwaaahahaha! I'll settle for Anthony Skene, that'd be accomplishment enough.

Seriously, just in case anyone's wondering, I have no desire to diminish Patrick McGoohan's work, usurp his place, or anything like that. But in another sense, I believe that you don't have to be God to make a Biblical epic. Anyone from John Huston to Mel Gibson, Michaelangelo to a guy who paints baby Jesuses on black velvet, can take these powerful images and themes and ideas and feelings and present a resonant interpretation and extension of them.

Patrick McGoohan is a true original. But he and George Markstein and David Tomblin and everyone else created a tale about individuality which, ironically, is bigger than any individual one of them. Patrick's work is in some ways very personal and passionate; I can't copy that note for note, and I'm not out to replace it, but the best I can do is make my take on these ideas personal and passionate for me as well.

I don't think I can necessarily plot tighter than George Markstein or be as much of an extravagant visionary as Patrick McGoohan -- but I might be able to plot tighter than Patrick McGoohan and be more extravagant than George Markstein, who knows?

RB: Well, it isn't a sacred text. It's an entertaining, complex and multi-layered TV series. There's no way we are going to be able to "do" a McGoohan, but then we shouldn't really try. We're working in the universe he and the production team created... I say universe, okay, village, and hopefully we can capture some of the ethos of the series in those terms, but obviously we are writing from a different perspective as well as a different medium.

Q: So what sort of new material or perspectives do you think you can add?

RB: Nylon.

JB: Hmm, well the big advantage we have is nearly forty years of hindsight. We know where a lot of the trends being pointed to in The Prisoner have led since then -- we can see the way in which instant information has transformed the world. And ironically we live in an era now where individuality is our top-selling consumer item. "Reeboks let you be you" and all that. That hadn't mainstreamed yet at the time of The Prisoner -- it was created in a time when the idea of working for IBM in a grey flannel suit for your whole life was still being challenged, but I don't think they'd yet worked out how successfully the grey flannel suits would co-opt that sense of rebellion right back.

RB: To add to that, we also have a completely different world to reference, new politics, new leaders, new wars, so that's obviously going to plug in to the storyline. That's kind of traditional for The Prisoner though, since the series frequently took on the concerns of the time. Hopefully it's not going to be too jarring to cover some current issues.

Q: How would you describe The Prisoner's Dilemma? What's its style, its approach?

JB: Hmm... "Sprawling" is a good word. Also "Byzantine". A whole bunch of angles on a bunch of related ideas.

RB: Unpredictable, with any luck. We were both quite keen to make it... accurate as well, recognisably The Prisoner. And hopefully it has moments of Many Happy Returns-esque complete bastardliness.

Q: How much of a background do you have in the show? How long have you been fans?

RB: I first saw The Prisoner in the womb. Only in black and white though.

JB: I discovered it in the early '80s, thanks to Maryland Public Television. Every time I've revisited it, I've been impressed in a whole different way -- last time I ended up watching it back-to-back with some of the Emma Peel Avengers which were airing at the same time, and that really underscored just how glossy and spectacular the show is. The Avengers is obviously no slouch in the style stakes, but even they never did anything as relentless as Arrival.

Q: How did you get the job of writing this book?

RB: Jon Blum came up to me in a hotel room in LA and said, with a big grin "Hey, do you fancy co-writing a Prisoner book with me". I thought for exactly one eighth of a second then replied "Yeeeaahhh".

JB: What happened was, earlier that evening Mateo Latosa had taken me and my wife Kate Orman to dinner for a meeting, because he was interested in getting her to write an original work for Powys. He talked with a lot of enthusiasm about the Space: 1999 line, and how it was going... he mentioned that because they were happy with the results, Carlton had offered him other licenses, but he wasn't sure if he could take any of them up. They'd offered him The Prisoner but he didn't know how to pull it off, they'd offered him UFO but he wasn't sure if there was a market... The conversation went on, but my brain had frozen at the word "Prisoner". I think I offered him a book before we got to dessert!

I'd thought I could co-write the book with Kate, the way we usually do, but she didn't think she could pull off writing for Number 6, which was very sensible indeed. I didn't want to write it by myself, because I figured it would take a ridiculous amount of time. Fortunately, Rupe was in LA for the same convention as us... I'd been a fan of Rupert's writing for years -- I'd first encountered him before either of us turned pro, back when we were both doing Doctor Who fan videos ten years ago. He'd done a hell of a lot of short films, most of them surreal and blackly funny, sort of Salvador Dali meets The Goodies done on sixpence. He'd been breaking into short stories recently, and I knew he was a mad Prisoner fan... it seemed like a perfect match. We had about half our proposal in place before the end of the night...

Q: How did the co-writing work? Who did which sort of stuff? How did you manage writing on opposite sides of the world?

RB: Hmm. I should know this, I was there.

JB: With this book, usually we'd divide up bits to write, we'd each do a draft, email them to each other, then come up with rewrites. Which was mostly me putting my grubby fingerprints on Rupert's stuff rather than the other way round. If you want a quick guide, most of the Number 2 material, most of the Irrationals, and the stuff with the Fish are Rupert's scenes, and the first big interrogation scene is him with bits of me. The Minister, Number 101, and Number 54 are pretty much all me. So is Rover. A bunch of scenes are intermingled almost line by line. The last half of the book is much more me, because Rupert suddenly got a chance to do a sketch-comedy TV pilot which had to take priority, but the climax action is mostly him. Any bit where the characters talk too much is probably me!

RB: It was also often the case that there were things each of us brought to the initial plotting and thrashing out of ideas. Jon was very into Number 101 for example, so handled pretty much all of his material because he knew where he wanted to go with it. I came up with the whole gameshow angle and therefore most of the middle section where Numbers 6 and 18 are being put through the various tasks was mine.

Q: How did that co-writing process compare with your previous books or short stories?

RB: Jon was five million miles away rather than down the road like my usual co-writers.

JB: Well, usually I'm sleeping with my co-author, but we decided to skip that bit! With me and Kate, there can be a bit more friction... oh God, let me rephrase that. Since Kate and I are both experienced novelists, if we disagree we each defend our own judgement to the hilt, and go back and forth over things in incredible detail. But Rupert tended to assume I knew what I was talking about, the poor fool!

RB: Yes, I did definitely start out like that. Having said that, Jon generally tended to let me do pretty much what I wanted with the bits wot I wrote. I think the most discussion came about when we were evolving the skeleton, or as normal people call it, the plot. At that point, it was a case of anything goes, and indeed a lot of material went. Once we settled into actually bashing out the prose, we had defined guidelines that we had set out so there was less room for conflict.

Q: How aware were you of the legacy of the show? What did you feel like you just couldn't do? Content limitations, limits on sex or violence, things you couldn't nail down?

JB: The things I felt we couldn't nail down were the sorts of things that are better left un-nailed-down anyway! I tend to feel establishing who really runs the Village or whatever would be a distraction from the real strengths of the series, its implications and psychology.

I do remember feeling very cautious about any physical contact between Number 6 and Number 18 -- but not absolutely rigid about it. McGoohan seems to have been very unpredictable on the subject -- he wouldn't dance with his Observer in Dance of the Dead, but he dances with B in A B & C...

That said, there are a few things where we consciously went beyond things the TV show could get away with. Mainly in terms of serial content -- we didn't need to worry about everything being back at the status quo by the end of an episode, we can resolve the current story but leave implications hanging for the next book. And there's at least one thing in this story which the authorities at Portmeirion would never have allowed them to shoot!

RB: Yeah, we had a budget massively bigger than Lew Grade’s cigar fund, so in terms of events, we could do what we wanted. And did. I was always the more conservative of the two of us, I think, wanting to keep it as closely tied to the series as possible, which wasn’t necessarily a good idea. We both agreed that we didn't really want to explain too much, delve too deeply into the background of the Village and so on, work out what the hell Rover actually is. The reasoning behind this is twofold. 1. The show thrives on unsolved mysteries, it's part of what has kept it going for so long. 2. It would be fannish bollocks.

Q: How much of a period piece would you say The Prisoner has become? Is the book consciously "'60s", or does it try to be timeless?

JB: I think the show was trying to be timeless even then. Look at the Villagers' dress-code -- aside from a the women's make-up and hairstyles, there's almost nothing there which would look any more out of place in 1930 than in 1970.

In terms of content... one of the ideas of the show is the idea of the Village as a prototype for the world of the future... which means that they'd be going through test cases of what we're living with now. The scary thing is, at the same time they were making The Prisoner DARPA was developing the basics of the Internet, we were getting the growth of the modern mediasphere... it really was the birth of the Information Age. So things which people think might be anachronistic were already there, in their early stages.

RB: The series is dated in trems of excecution. Of course it has, it was made in 1967. Very well made, I hasten to add, it's something that stands up now in many ways, but it is still very recognisebly a product of its time. The novel doesn't have the constraints of being made on 35mm film with limited technological resources, so hopefully is able to use what IS timeless about the series: the central concept, many of the themes, Wanda Ventham...

Q: Is The Prisoner still relevant, or is the whole I-am-not-a-number thing too obvious now?

RB: It’s not about being a number or not though, is it. It’s about individuality and maintaining that in the face of coercion. I think that the fear of numeralisation is a very 60’s psychosis that means nothing to most people today, it’s part of life.

JB: Well, the very nature of the Village does sort of blunt the relevance a bit -- people will just assume that anything the Village is doing is something over-the-top and fantastical, too grandiosely evil for anyone to take seriously... which can obscure your point if what you're having them do is actually going on right here right now.

But if anything, we had a bigger problem, in that things we kept coming up with which we thought were ludicrously satirical then more or less happened! It was really hard to keep the book a step ahead, as it slid from parody to today's headlines to yesterday's news. God, I don't envy satirists these days. I mean, millions of people get their news about WMDs from a TV network co-owned by a company that made nuclear bombs. How can you send that up?

But anyway, I think it's hugely relevant, but the tricky thing is convincing people that it's not simplistic.

Q: What would you say Prisoner's Dilemma is about, thematically?

JB: The ways in which we define each other, I guess. We were exploring the questions thrown up by the series' viewpoint... it's not enough just to be an individual, what matters is what sort of an individual you are. The show sees it as a virtue to be true to yourself... but what if yourself is a selfish bastard? What else factors in there?

RB: Basically, it's about trust.

Q: How does the book slot into the TV series?

JB: The book range as a whole is supposed to fit just before Once Upon A Time. The order of the TV series is obviously up-in-the-air... but in most of the usual orders, the episodes just before the final two show Number 6 at his most cool and copeful, someone who's really good at playing the Village game, who can be smooth and even charming and manipulate the authorities right back. Then, by Once Upon A Time, he's this almost monsyllabic, obsessively pacing figure whose only interactions with other Villagers are downright bizarre. I figure the books can show him developing from one state to the other, and we give him a big nudge in that direction as the book goes along...

RB: I always held the firm belief that it is set between the words "I am not a number" and "I am a free man" in the title sequence.

Q: So how do you try to evoke in prose a show which ended with a bunch of white-robed goons in theatrical masks doing a musical number?

RB: By going for lots of long walks and thinking heavily.

JB: Sort of Dangerous Visions - era New Wave SF prose tricks, really. I'd love to go back and put more description of the colours in.

Next page: tricks and traps of characterizing Number 6, what's in store for future books, and a chance to ask questions of your own...