The Therapy Zone

THEPRIS6NER

    Death, it would seem, is still an escape. Especially a Village death! So my hypothesis was the correct one, clever little me.

     With the final episode of ‘Checkmate’ I had some idea of what to expect, and rightly so as it turns out, the questions were answered, even where "Rover" originated from, the mind of Six who dare not face his own fears.

   This final episode was entitled ‘Checkmate,’ but I thought that ‘Dance of the Dead’ might have been a more fitting title, as much of the episode, what little there was of it, dealt with death of one kind or another. Six was dying, Two's wife M2 was suffocated to death, not by "Rover" but by her son 11-12 and a cushion. 11-12 then went and hanged himself in the "Go Inside" Club, and finally Two blew himself up with a hand grenade. But there is a difference with death in The Village. Six didn't die, we saw that at the end. Two's wife M2 died in The Village, yet not in the other place in New York, and that was the same fate of Two, who walked off together into the sunset so to speak, both Curtis and his wife Helen finally having escaped The Village. Where as, Six has become the new Two, and 313 chose to accept her fate by taking the pills. They sat in the desert together with the new Two making plans for an even better Village, and 313 with a tear in her eye. What of 11-12? Well his death by suicide was the only actual death in The Village. And if it had not been for Six accepting the role of the new Two, and 313 deciding to join him because she loves him, The Village, and all the residents would simply have disappeared into one giant hole, oblivion in fact.

   And the origin of The Village, well it's all in the mind, Helen's mind. An experiment into the layers of the subconscious where The Village was created. It's purpose to take broken people there, broken for whatever reason. Mend them, mentally, and then let them back into the "other" place. In the end Two got what he wanted, or rather Curtis got what he wanted. He got Michael back into the company of Summakor, and as Two got Six to finally accept. And all those flashbacks were not flashbacks at all! It was people like Michael, Two, and 147, those people who were brought to The Village, living lives in two places at the same time.

    I shall have to watch this final episode again to gauge the full effect of it, and see if there was anything I missed. We were certainly short changed by the length of this episode, which in the end was the exact opposite to that of the original series Fall Out. McGoohan wouldn't have liked it, as Checkmate gave all the answers we the viewer were looking and perhaps hoping for. But short changed? Yes, because the final episode ‘Checkmate’ began as 10:20 pm, and concluded around 11:10pm, not an hour, not even fifty minutes!

No.7's It Doesn't Really Mean Anything

    Take the innocent looking Astro or Lava lamp, seen by some to be symbolic, suggestive even. "Suggestive," wrote one fan, "of the village guardian, Seen to be malevolent, as though it would do you harm if it were ever to escape it close confinement." Get out of it, and get real for goodness sake. Its a simple Astro or Lava lamp - depending on what you want to call it, its contents oil and wax, which is more soothing and tranquil than it is malevolent!"

No.7

   Hotel Portmeirion must have been a wonderful, quirky place to visit and even to stay as a guest. The date of this postcard is unknown, but probably dates from the 1950's, but certainly at a time before the open Lido was built - the concrete swimming pool. I wonder if anyone actually used that swimming pool? I don’t see the young women by the swimming pool in the water!

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