We thought we were
about to be told during ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ “I resigned because for a very long
time…… and then there came the chimes and the moment was gone! It wasn’t until ‘Once
Upon A Time’ that we get close to being told anything like why the Prisoner
resigned. “For peace of mind, because too many people know too much, I know too
much. I know too much about you!” And
that's as much as we get. Number 2 wanted the Prisoner to tell him again, but he’d
been told, and so had we, no matter how much we might have felt by the
inadequacy of the answer. However to some degree, this Number 2 was successful
in attaining some kind of explanation as to why the Prisoner resigned. In fact
he is the only Number 2 to extract any information from the Prisoner, save for
the time of his birth.
So why did Number 2
push the Prisoner further? Why persist when he’d been told? To push the Prisoner
to the edge, perhaps to drive him over the edge, because he must know just how
good a man the Prisoner is. And he is good, because eventually the Prisoner
turns the tables on Number 2, in fact he changes places with Number 2. Number 6
knew all about Degree Absolute and explains its operation to Number 2, a
recognised method used in psychoanalysis. The patient must come to trust his
doctor, sometimes, in extreme cases they change places, and that can be a
dangerous thing, if the doctor has his own problems. “Why don’t you resign?” is
the Prisoner’s suggestion. But when push comes to shove something has to give,
and in this case it was Number 2. If it wasn’t the drink then it must have been
the Prisoner who drove Number 2 to his death, perhaps a heart attack brought on
by the stress of the situation, and yet there are the words “Die Six, die, die,
dieeeeeeeeeeeeeee DIE.” It could be interpreted that the patient in having
changed places with his doctor, it was Number 6 who died in that cage, and that
Number 2 walked free from the Embryo Room.
Be seeing you
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