THEPRISONER

    Just when the series was enjoying a more straightforward approach, they hit you with Darling! The main thread running through this episode is 'love.' Two believes that if he gives Six love, then takes it away from him, he'll be able to see the Six inside, whatever that means. Well that's all fine and dandy, and if readers will recall, that was once tried before in the original series, it didn't work then, and it didn't work this time.
   Two brought Six and 4-15 together through the village dating bureau. But Six had met 4-15 before, her name is Lucy, and Michael is with her in his flat in New York. They make love, and fall in love. But at the same time Two has brought Lucy to the village so to make her fall in love with Six, and he with her through the use of genetically engineered genes.
   11-12, Two's son, steals three pills from his fathers safe, and takes them to the doctor 313 at the Clinic and asks her to analise them, to discover what they contain. One turns out to be a sedative. A second is an hallucinagenic, and the third pill is made up from unknown compounds. So Two is keeping his wife sedated, and hallucinating. The village would seem to be in the head of Two's wife M2, and it is she and Two who have created the village. and should M2 remain awake, then the village would slip into oblivion. And it is when M2 is awake that holes begin to appear in the village, in the sand actually. These holes are described by Two as an anomoly, a nothing. At the bottom of which is 'oblivion!" And so as to prevent panic, it is subcribed that everyone in the village is to "Keep a pig," and it is the methane which pigs emit that will help stablise the village, and keep it together!!!!!
    The episode of Darling has parallels with episodes of the original series, A B & C for one, in the way that Two and the doctor-313 carry out an experiment on Six in a laboratory. And Free For All when the lady running the dating bureau speaks to Six through his television set one minute, and is at the door to his apartment the next, much in the same way as No.2 is when the mountain comes to Mohammed! Then there's Checkmate in which No.8 is hypnotised into thinking that she is in love with No.6, and he with her. And finally Living In Harmony, in which No.6 is given love and has it taken away from him.
   Six was to have married 4-15, but 313 is in love with Six herself, and kisses Six just before the wedding. 4-15 sees this and runs off into the desert with Six chasing after her. And it is then, in the mountains that 'Rover' appears to 4-15 to block her way. This because Six thinks he's going to lose 4-15. Which he eventually does, as 4-15 throws herself into a hole that has appeared in the village, escaping back to her other life back in New York, only to die in a gas explosion in Michael's apartment. So really Six/Michael, loses Lucy/4-15 not once, but twice!
 Be seeing you.