The Therapy Zone

Sir - You Play A Fine game

   No.14-the chess champion was not referring to how No.6 played the game on the chessboard, but in the way he plays the game in the village. No.2 plays games with people in order to help hi get what he wants, No.2 being the first advocate for that in the way he assigned No.9 both to Cobb, and then No.6. But No.6 is also a master of playing with people, he knows how to manipulate them, just as he does as he chooses his reliable men in the episode of ‘Checkmate.’

   However we all use people, we all play games with people and each other, on and off the chessboard. We all play games with people, consciously or otherwise - don't we?

Death At Sea!

    It's No.6 who has died in an accident at sea, well that's the story which will be put out, once that body which had been amended to look like No.6 has been found at sea. Well that's the story of ‘Dance of the Dead.’ But hang on a minute, what as originally planned in the original screening order, that ‘Dance of the Dead’ featured before ‘Many Happy Returns’ - how would that figure? I mean the reported death of the Prisoner in an accident at sea, but then turns up alive. Surely that would have made his ex-colleagues - the Colonel and Thorpe - take their ex-colleague seriously right from the start.

Split Personality!

   If we are to believe that No.6 and No.1 are the two different sides of the same persons personality, No.6's alter-ego being No.1, and vice versa. No.1 who No.6 launched in that rocket, to whatever hate might befall him, could No.6 actually survive without that darker side of his nature? What I mean is, look what happened to James T. Kirk that time when there was a cock-up with the Enterprise's transporter - in splitting the two sides of Kirk's nature. His "good self" who found it difficult to survive without his "darker side."

    Of course when No.6 actually gets to meet No.1 - his alter ego, this can only work in allegorical terms, because no-one can actually get to physically meet with his other self, his alter ego. So in actual terms, when No.6 went to meet No.1, he wasn't meeting himself, but someone else entirely - that could only be Curtis of ‘The Schizoid Man!’

Be seeing you