How did the publishers feel about the overt drug references in the book?
There’s also some heavy violence towards the end, I assume you’d been briefed for an adult market… Actually, we weren’t briefed, and no one even acquired the show’s “bible” for us. We were completely on our own. I felt the violence was justifiable since the only one killed was an android. One thing that may come as a shock to readers are the suggestions that No.6 IS John Drake from Danger Man, and that No.1 was a three-man community. How far were you allowed to break the format? Well… It was pretty clear from the opening of the TV series that it is John Drake who is resigning and that the whole Prisoner series is a direct sequel to Danger Man/Secret Agent. Remember the Secret Agent US song lyric, “They’ve taken away your name and given you a number.” There is a direct thematic link. The only thing Dave and I were told was that McGoohan had forbidden mention in the TV series of the Drake name. (If Number Six’s pre-Village name was Horace Jones, it would be in the show’s bible the sc
