"Colony Three" episode of Danger Man starring Patrick McGoohan was on the latest DVD of the series I rented from Netflix. I am extremely curious now as to when the seed of The Village was planted in McGoohan's mind.
Even though it is listed as
"Season 1, Episode 3: Colony Three Original Air Date: 27 October 1964"
on the IMDB page, for some reason it is on the third disc of the collected series. In this episode, John Drake (McGoohan) must infiltrate a base on the other side of the Iron Curtain that is set up to resemble a quaint British village, so the spies become acquainted with the atmosphere before their infiltration missions. Drake must help them become acclimated to the British way of life. The obvious parallels between my favorite television show, McGoohan's own The Prisoner, abound for any fan of the series.
First of all, it is called "the village" several times. The British workers there are told they will never go back to the real world. There are cameras and listening devices all over. At one point, McGoohan says that he only "looks after number one" in reference to himself. It was also interesting to hear McGoohan say, "Come on, back to the village!" to the one guy that was trying to escape.
This episode was written by a Donald Jonson, who wrote some TV shows, according to IMDB, and several episodes of Danger Man. I am wondering how much input he actually had in the idea, or if he deserves more credit than he's been given. It is just extremely obvious to me, with my many years of watching and studying The Prisoner that this is one of the seeds that started growing in McGoohan's mind.
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