The Therapy Zone

   A Right Pantomime Is Dance Of The Dead

    I think that's an apt description of ‘Dance of the Dead’ considering the time of year, after all it is the pantomime season. Peter Pan, played by a woman, that's the pantomime, with little Bo-peep and all the citizens in fancy dress costume, and there's a Principle Boy dancing in the background at the ball in the evening!

   No.6's trial is a right pantomime, we know that nothing really harmful is going to happen to No.6, despite being chased through the corridors of the Town Hall by citizens baying and screaming for his blood. Because No.2 said earlier that No.6 has a future with them, and that there are other ways. What Pantomimes like this one?

Humour Is The Very Essence Of A Democratic Society

    Well, according to No.2 of ‘Free For All’ it is, so it must be true.... mustn’t it? Well any way there's plenty of humour to be found in the Prisoner, especially during the episode of ‘The Girl Who Was Death.’ In the way Professor Schinpps turns back when evacuating the lighthouse/rocket "I forgot to turn the gas off!" And the mountaineering rope which would hold an Elephant, "I must remember that the next time I go climbing with one!" And the French Marshals, "they're a riot," well you can't get the staff you know!

    And No.2 of ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ he can always find something to laugh about. "You'll do some woodwork for me - is that you're deal No.6?" "Its the best you'll get!" "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha." And then " I feel like a new man - ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha." and not only that, this ex-No.2 was perpetually laughing whilst sealed in that "Orbit Tube" after his trial during ‘Fall Out.’

    "I'd like to be the first man on the moon" No.6 quips in ‘The Chimes of Big Ben.’ And the way No.6 suggests that No.2 gets his man to look in the wardrobe during ‘The General.’ "Most amusing!" No.2 tells him when nothing is found.

   So its not all doom and gloom in the village you know, there's a laugh or two to be found if that's what you want, and even if you don't! After all there is humour to be found in most things and situations you know.

A Character Witness

   At his trial during the ‘Dance of the Dead,’ the Prisoner asks for a character witness to be brought before the court. A character witness in the shape of Roland Walter Dutton. The trouble was though, the doctor-No.40 had gone too far in his experiments to get Dutton to reveal more information. Of course Dutton had already told all he knew, and there was no further information he could give. and so we witness the result of the good doctor-No.40's experiments.

     I wonder why the Prisoner didn't ask for his old colleague Chambers to be a character witness instead of Roland Walter Dutton? After all, sometime before his own abduction to the village, the prisoner had tried to get Chambers, late of the foreign office to change his mind before the "big boys" found out. And so talkative! But it seems that Chambers is nowhere to be found, and that Dutton was easy to hand, and the only available person to say the things which needed to be said, at the time of the trial of the Prisoner.

School Days - The Days That Are Gone!

    Is this how it was for the boy McGoohan? A pupil sent to the Headmasters study in the morning break? Yes "break" and not "Drake" as many fans  have been known to have misheard in the past!

    After all McGoohan would have worn a piped blazer as Captain of the boxing team. And that's a very distinctive Boater he is wearing, but of course much too big for McGoohan when he would have been a school pupil. Oh yes, and at McGoohan's school, each pupil was given a number, and more often than not, each pupil, including the pupil McGoohan would have been known more by his number, than his name. Which is gospel, as told to me by two old boys of McGoohans school Ratcliffe College, in Leicestershire, England.

I'll be seeing you, but perhaps not during the morning break.