The Therapy Zone

Ups And Downs

   Edgar Allen Poe had The Pit and the Pendulum, the Prisoner has the Control Room and the See-Saw. The Pendulum is seen as an instrument of torture during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, and this tool was used to convey fear into the inhabitants of the land. But can the See-Saw of The Village underworld be seen in the same way, as an instrument of torture? The definition of See-saw is an up and down, back and forth movement, but I don't think that the two men sat at either end are being tortured, but the simple "up and down, back and forth" movement helps prolong the two observers attention to their monitors that bit longer.

   Yet in the deeper underworld of The Village, in that dark and dank cavern of Fall Out, this see-saw device is put to a more obscene purpose, now fitted with heavy machine guns, that it should protect the community, as the President would have it. But that's not its purpose in the underworld, it is to maintain security at the trial of three rebels!

   In The Village a child’s innocent toy is employed to prolong observer’s observational duration. Some might say that it evolves into a symbol of the unfair rise and fall of power, and ultimately becomes a symbol of war, rendering both death and destruction.

The Manipulation Of A Scene

    During No.6's speech in the Council Chamber in Free For All, No.6 addresses the "tailors dummies" he holds up the latest issue of The Tally Ho and asks "Is this, Is this how they tried to break you till they got what they were after?"

   Yet in Once Upon A Time - during No.2's review of the progress report on No.6 - in that same clip of film, he is heard to ask the "tailors dummies" "Is this how they started to break you before you gave them what they were after?"

   I wonder what caused Patrick McGoohan to re-dub the line, or was the scene filmed twice, and the other used for the clip seen in Once Upon A Time? we shall never know. But it is a curious point.

It Depends On Whose Side You Are On!

   "I risked my life and hers to come back here, because I thought it was different. It is, isn't it? Isn't it different?"         {Number Six - The Chimes of Big Ben}

   No.6 tried to convince himself that one of two sides, the East, could sink so low as to put order above freedom to the extent of abducting him, and confining him in The Village. No.6 continues to put his faith in the West, in his own people even though they are his ex-colleagues, to whom he continues to escape to in any given opportunity.

   But surely No.6 must begin to have his doubts as the Colonel begins the debriefing of his ex-colleague during The Chimes of Big Ben. Of course it isn't different, it's just the same, only the interrogator is different, either that or there are an awful lot of British Intelligence personnel who are double agents!

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