Prismatic Reflection

  The Prisoner is a surreal television series and I’m sure the reader could name many surreal scenes within the series. One particular favourite of mine takes place soon after Curtis’ arrival in the Village, yes that’s the one, later played out again by Number 2, but with a rather confused and conditioned Number 6! After all there must have been an interview between No.2 and Curtis, and what we see take place between No.2 and the conditioned No.6 as Curtis might have been a close representation of what had taken place previously.
    Of course Curtis was a doppelganger for No.6, and it could be said that No.6 had a second doppelganger in the form of No.1. As it is whenever No.6 confronts his doppelgangers they both cannot get away from him fast enough. Curtis was driven into a confrontation with the Village Guardian when trying to get away from No.6. No.1’s fate was to be sealed in the nose cone of the rocket after running away from his doppelganger No.6. And the same could be said of 113b and 113c {although it could have been 113a} as No.113b goes running up the road. Mind you he did give a cheery wave as he went. And we do not see the electrician and the Gardner together in ’Arrival,’ so there is always the surreal possibility that the electrician and the gardener are one and the same person. But with No.‘s 113b and 113a or c, I have always felt them as being twins, otherwise why give them the relationship of the two numbers consecutive numbers? Although both 113b and 113c do not wear numbered badges, we know that the photographic colleague of No.113 is 113b, because 113b introduces his colleague as No.113b, and numbered such as to their working relationship. And so it must logically follow that the operator of the Tally Ho dispenser is No.113c, because of the relationship of consecutive numbers. This in the same way with the watchmaker-No.51, and his daughter-No.50, which logically means that Monique’s mother must have been either No.49, or 52.
  So we have twins or doppelgangers in the Village, that must make Curtis a doppelganger for No.1 as well as No.6. It is said we all have a doppelganger somewhere in the world. But if both No.1 and Curtis are doppelgangers for each other, so too are they for No.6. How unfortunate can one man be to have two people looking exactly like him in the world!

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