The Therapy Zone

Many Happy Returns

   It has been supposed that this episode concerns itself with demonstrating that no matter where Number Six goes, he can never evade to long reach of the Village. Meaning that there is nowhere he can go, where he cannot be found, retrieved from, and returned to the Village.

   Well that's as maybe. Yet I know feel there is much more to this episode of the Prisoner's incarceration than that. ‘Many Happy Returns’ gives a false freedom to the Prisoner. His is the torture of escape only to be recaptured and returned to the confines of the village, to continue his incarceration, after being given a glimpse of his world, to move in it as he had once done. But to find someone living in his home, owning the car he built with his own hands. Then to have that world suddenly snatched away from him again.

    For his captors, there is the pleasure of control, the manipulation of the Prisoner, in watching him build his sea-going raft, to gather his provisions, and finally to escape the village must surely have been most amusing, knowing that he could be returned to the village at their will. And don't forget the smashing of the cup and saucer on the table. That was a torture in itself, in making the Prisoner suddenly think that he had gone to so much trouble, effort, and hard work, but now the game was up. But at the same time giving the Prisoner renewed hope, in that the game was far from up, and that he had a chance of escape.

   The pleasure for the captors of the Prisoner was in the control there exerted over him, but also in the hunt, and recapture of the Prisoner, and thereby returning him to the village, so that they could continue with their manipulation of the Prisoner, in other and more fascinating ways.

    This I learned from the Marquis De Sade

Many Happy Returns

  At first I was really surprised to see that in Many Happy Returns the Prisoner went back to his old colleagues. I'd have thought he'd learned his lesson with the Colonel and Fotheringay during The Chimes of Big Ben. But I suppose that the Prisoner had no-one else who could help him in gaining the answers he requires.

   Mind you, seeing as how The Chimes of Big Ben and Many Happy Returns were written by different script writers, there could be no continuity between the epsiodes. As it is in Many Happy Returns, it gives the impression that the Prisoner has forgotten his pervious experience with the Colonel and Fotheringay. Had both episodes been written by the same script writer, then there would be the chance of continuity between the episodes, as the Prisoner would have remembered his previous experience, and that in turn would have had an effect upon his running back to he old colleagues. At least he'd have been more wary of them, don't you think?

The Mechanics Of It All

   On the day of his arrival in the village the Prisoner, at becoming annoyed with the constant drone of piped music into his cottage, trampled a black loudspeaker underfoot. Yet with the loudspeaker smashed to pieces, the music continued to play.

The Prisoner "How do you stop this thing?"

No.66 {the Prisoner's personal maid} "We can't. It’s automatic."

   Then towards the end of the Dance of the Dead No.6 rips the out the wiring of a tele-printer, which causes the machine to stop printing whatever instructions were coming through for No.2.

   The only trouble is, that No.6 can never win, and the proof of that is in the restarting of the teletype, the wiring and paper of which lie upon the floor, ripped out by No.6!

    Well in all probability the tele-printer had a back-up system, and there was more than one loudspeaker in the Prisoner's cottage...... simple, fool proof. "Perhaps too simple, too fool proof" as No.6 once said.

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