The Therapy Zone

A Favourite Character

    No.26, the Labour Exchange Manager, who seems to me to be a little out of step with his contemporaries. He seems more suited to a bygone age. I mean in the way details of No.6's file he keeps hand written in a ledger instead of a plastic clear pocket file in the way No.2 does. However 26 is a master of interrogation techniques, primarily in the use of the "Truth Test," and knows just how far to go without damaging the tissue! More than that, he knows exactly what No.6 is up to, and what he hopes to achieve should No.6 be elected as the new No.2.

    No.26 was promoted to the position of the Labour Exchange Manager after his predecessor No.20, was promoted to No.2's assistant for ‘The Chimes of Big Ben.’ Also the Labour exchange Manager is the only Village Administrator to wear grey tails, with a grey Top Hat.

Is The Village Guardian The Key?

   After all, out of all the 17 episodes of the Prisoner, the village guardian appears in six episodes which all end in failure for No.6. Whilst the  remaining 11, except for Many Happy Returns, the Village Guardian does make a brief appearance in A Change of Mind, but that is only on film in the Aversion Therapy room, end in triumph.

Arrival

    In the conversation between the new No.2 and the Prisoner he says "We do here what has to be done. It's the law of survival. It's either them or us." Imprison people, steal their minds, destroy them! "Depends on whose side you're on, doesn't it?" To which the Prisoner replies "I'm on our side." What the side of the village? If his own people put him here, there cannot be any question of which side runs the village. And if the village is set up to gather information, as suggested in Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, it's not just the reason behind the Prisoner's resignation that they want - but all the information inside his head! The Prisoner has been put in the village for the protection of National security, and to be thoroughly debriefed at their leisure! And it might have worked, had they offered him something in return. Oh but of course they did, or at least No.2 did. It was during the aerial tour of the village when No.2 suggested to the Prisoner "You might even be given a position of authority." Well they did actually offer that position of authority, in Fall Out, they offered No.6, or Sir as he became to be addressed as, the offer of ultimate power!

    The Prisoner is in a very dark place, of which there is no cure. What put him there, was whatever it was caused him to resign his job!

Be seeing you