The Therapy Zone

Page 6

   There I was having just graduated from school, and the headmaster asked me if I had anything to say. Well of course I hadn't, apart from "Thank you for everything." Then he asked me why did I resign, resign from what? I mean I was about to leave school and hadn't done anything, I'd lived no life at all..... But he went further demanding to know why I'd resigned, grabbing me by the lapels of my blazer and shouting. We ended up struggling on the floor.... I think. Then suddenly it all went black!

Living In Harmony is possibly the very first Virtual Reality Role Playing Game developed by No.8.

   After all the only Real person in the American frontier town of Harmony is No.6. Not even Cathy, the Kid, or the Judge were actually in Harmony as they were tucked up in the comparative safety of the Green Dome.

  From there in the Green Dome No.2-the Judge, No.8-the Kid, and No.22-Cathy speak to No.6 though microphones, although the Kid doesn't actually speak. And No.6 has been filled with hallucinatory drugs, so all the Towns people who the stranger-No.6 encounters only exists in his mind. And that could be said of the village itself, but we won't go down that trail for the moment.

   So when the stranger takes on the Kid in a gun fight, but as it turns out all he's facing in that fun fight is nothing more than a cardboard cut out!

    As is the Judge, and all those expensive horses. But one thing, there's no cardboard cut out of Cathy...... why?

    A dangerous experiment or a simple bit of fun? Either way it was deadly enough for No.22 who was strangled by the bare hands of No.8, who turned out to be as psychotic as the character of the Kid he played, they being one and the same it would seem.

   You see they all became involved, and did what they would in a real situation, looks like No.8 had problems before all this started. Such was his fixation with Cathy which he transponded to No.22. But even No.22 found herself getting involved and falling in love with the stranger. Her dying words...... "I wish it had been real."

   On a final note, something which I find funny, is the mental picture of No.6 and all the judges men riding imaginary horses, you know, as you did, or do as a child!

Number 1

  We might have guessed really, after all we had been told right from the very beginning who Number 1 is. There we were, going around asking "Who is number 1?, and putting forward suggestions of our own, the Supervisor in the control room. Even that of No.2 himself or herself, even the Butler. And yet in hindsight, we had been given the answer, we just simply hadn't been able to recognise it, the first, second, or even third time of viewing.

   Today there can be no doubt who No.1 is. No.1 is anyone who wants to be No.1!

Dance Of The Dead

   Is the darkest of the 17 episodes of the Prisoner, as No.6 finds the body of a dead man on the beach that morning. Then keeps the cadaver so he can attach it to a lifebelt and cast it adrift with the amended wallet in his pocket, a message for however may find it! Then in the way No.6 lead the citizens in a dance along the corridors of the Town Hall. The way that everyone at the dance was to originally to have died, except for No.6. Which of course never took place in the actual episode.

   The doctor-No.40 seen having one of his failed medical experiments buried, again a scene which we do not see in the actual episode. That originally No.2's costume character was intended to have been that of Jack the Ripper. And No.2's own use of that cadaver which was retrieved from the sea, to be amended and made use of so that it is No.6 who has died in an accident at sea.

  And don't forget that No.6 was sentenced to death by the three judges at his trial for the possession of a radio. The sentenced in the name of the people, the people carry out the sentence in the name of justice!

    ‘Dance of the Dead,’ an apt title for such a dark episode.

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