Tomblin and written by Tomblin and Ian L. Rakoff. The series' lead star and co-creator, Patrick McGoohan said in a 1977 interview that the episode was created as the series was short of a story and he really had the desire to act in a Western. According to Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner had originally been conceived by him as a serial of seven episodes, but ITC managing director Lew Grade had the intention to sell the series to an American network and therefore demanded twenty-six episodes. As CBS would only purchase the series as a summer filler, they made a compromise and decided upon seventeen episodes as evidenced by the October 1966 CBS Press release: "the network recently purchased a British adventure series titled The Prisoner. The series stars Patrick McGoohan of Secret Agent and consists of 17 hour shows in color." After a break in production after the completion of the first 13 episodes, a further four storylines were created, one of which was "Living in Harmony". As McGoohan would later state, the goal of "Living in Harmony" and other padding episodes, was to "make them as visually exciting as possible but still retaining within them part of the theme of violence doesn't pay off". With script editor George Markstein having quit the project after 13 episodes, taking his team of writers with him, McGoohan and Tomblin asked the production crew to submit ideas for further episodes. Music editor Eric Mival submitted two ideas ("Friend or Foe" and "Ticket to Eternity"), and assistant editor Ian Rakoff, film librarian Tony Sloman, and assistant director John O'Connor one each. Only Rakoff's storyline was accepted, and as a result McGoohan commissioned him to write the episode. For the theme of the episode, Rakoff drew largely upon his personal experiences as part of a leftist movement in South Africa during its apartheid regime, as he believed the policies and philosophy of the apartheid regime resembled that of the village. The idea of a sheriff refusing to bear arms was directly inspired by an incident that occurred while Rakoff was in South Africa, when during a night out he had the intention of shooting a man he considered to be a racist but was stopped by another group member. Rakoff explained "Later, I was warned. If I'd wanted to go from associate to full member of the group, I'd have to be more disciplined