Who Is Number one?

    Well that's a question that's been done to death, and if you don't know the answer to that............ because only a meglomaniac would make himself No.1!
   Who is No.2 might be a more interesting question. Well I can say where two came from, one is the former Colonel Ross of British Military Intelligence in the three Harry Palmer films, The Ipcress File, Funeral In Berlin, and The Six Million Dollar Brain. Another No.2 originated from somewhere in the Houses of Parliament.
   Who might the other citizens of the village be? Well they're prisoners, warders, ordinary people recruited to the village through the Labour Exchange of the time, and Employment Bureaus for their particular skills. Then there are those like the Professor and his wife, who came to the village of their own free will. And others who are born of the village, possibly like No.50-Monique, who's father is No.51 is the Watchmaker in It's Your Funeral. I mean, the watchmaker may very well have been recruited to the village simply for his profession, but was his wife also brought to the village, along with his daughter? We never see the watchmakers wife, and can only assume that she has died, and lies buried in the village cemetary, and perhaps No.50 was born in the village and has possibly known nothing else. Certainly there are three children in the village, we are witness to them in The Girl Who Was Death.
   But the thing about the citizens of the village is, we never see them twice! Only in their particular episode so we see No.9, who gave No.6 the Electro Pass. The electrician of Arrival, is not the electrician of either the General or Checkmate. Nor is his twin brother, the gardener in Arrival, the gardener in Checkmate. The only time you see any citizen of the village in different episodes is No.99-the Shopkeeper in both Arrival and Checkmate, but by the time of Hammer Into Anvil, there's a new Shopkeeper! It's a pity we do not see more of citizens we once meet on one episode, in other episodes. As that would have added a little continuity between the episodes. Because I feel that the village suffers from a great turnover of citizens. Which leaves me with one question, Not where do they come from, the citizens of the village, but where do they go?
Be seeing you.