Your Move Young Man!

    Chess figures largely within the village, from chess matches with the Admiral in ‘Arrival,’ to mate in seven moves against the General during ‘The Chimes of Big Ben,’ and an eleven move checkmate win for No.6 in Its Your Funeral, to the human chess match during the episode of ‘Checkmate.’

    A chess champion-No.14, rumour has it that he's an ex-count, whose ancestors played chess using their retainers, who were beheaded as they were wiped off the board! But don't worry that sort of thing isn't likely to happen in the village. But have you bothered to follow the moves of that chess match in which No.6 was invited to play the white Queens pawn, upon your own chessboard?

WHITE                                      BLACK

P-K4                                          P-K4

KT-QB3                                    KT-KTB3

KT-KT5                                    B-KT4

KT-KB3                                    B-B4

KT-KT5                                    KT-KTB3

P-Q4                                         B-Q3

Q-K3                                        B-B4

KT-Q3                                      B-Q3

KT-B4                                      B-K4

R-K3                                        O-O

CHECK!

White Queen's Rook substituted and taken to hospital.

                                                B-B5

B-B4                                       B-KT4

Q-K3 Checkmate.

    As you will observe there are certain moves which make no sense, indeed as you watch the human chess match after the champions move Q-K3, you will note how few chess pieces are actually on the board. In the next long shot you will observe that not only have pieces been replaced upon the board, but that the white Queen is standing back on her own square soon after P-Q4 has been played, its all in the editing you see. However the Butler, who is standing on top of the Bandstand, has been following all the precise moves made in the human chessboard, upon a chessboard of his own. What's more the pieces on the Butler's chessboard are exact to that of the human chessboard. Not so remarkable you might think, to replicate the moves of one chess match upon a board of your own, when the moves are made in front of you. Perhaps more remarkable might be the fact that Angelo Muscat, who played the role of the Butler, was able to do the very same thing during the actual filming of the human chess match. which may have made sense at one point, before the film hit the editing room. Because I'm sure the editing together of all the filming of the human chess match was responsible for messing it all up the way it is.

    Mind you its the small screen effect isn't .I mean the fact that the Butler's pieces on his chessboard, as he followed the match, was so precise to the human pieces on the chessboard below on the lawn. Watched on the small screen such detail goes by without seeing. Yet on the big screen in a cinema such detail would not go unmissed!

    The human chess matches are the only way to satisfy one's desire for power in the village. And perhaps the human chess match is a representation of how peoples lives are controlled in the village, as like the pieces on the chessboard, unable to make a move without first being told. Look what happened to the No.53 when on the board as the Rook, he makes a move without orders. This is not allowed "Cult of the individual. He'll be well looked after, they'll get the best specialists to treat him." Yes, treated like that of Pavlov's dogs, or was it rats, no dogs.

Be seeing you