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Tuesday 19 July 2011

Thought For The Day

    During Dance of the Dead, No.6 finds a dead body on the sea shore, and going through the dead man's pockets he finds a wallet, and a transistor readio in a black leather pouch - the radio still works. Later, No.6 is seen on the outlook above the cliffs, listening to the radio and the following transmission.........

       Nowhere is there more beauty than here.
Tonight when the moon rises the whole world will turn to silver.
Do you understand, it is importnat that you understand.
I have a message for you, you must listen.
The appoinment cannot be fulfilled.
Other things must be done tonight.
If our torment is to end, if liberty is to be restored, we must grasp the nettle even though it makes our hands bleed. Only through pain, can tomorrow be assured.

    Now what may we make of that message? Certainly I don't think it was meant for No.6 - probably for the dead man No.6 found on the beach! Perhaps he was a plant in the Village, and someone from somewhere was supposed to have come and extract this man from the Village, to liberate the Village even.
   Yet there is another point of view - and that the radio transmission, picked up and listened to by No.6 was not transmitted from out in the free world, but from somewhere within the Village itself! Well just read the first line again Nowhere is there more beauty than here, that line suggests the Village, although it can also suggest the world that No.6 dreams about - his world. And of course there is the question of liberty - whose liberty? That of the dead man? Well its too late for him. Perhaps the message alludes to the liberty of the citizens of the Village. Because there is the question of the voice of the radio transmission. I've watched Dance of the Dead dozens and dozens of times over the years, and the more I listen to that radio message, the more I have become convinced that it is the voice of No.2 of Free For All, that of Eric Portman!    I'll be seeing you.

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