Thought For The Day

     It's Number 6 who has died in an accident at sea. Well that's the story which will be put out, once that body in The Village mortuary has been amended to look like Number 6 and cast into the sea for someone to discover. That's the story that would happen in ‘Dance of the Dead’ according to Number 2. But just a minute, what if, as originally planned in the original screening order, that ‘Dance of the Dead’ featured before ‘Many Happy Returns’ instead of after? That amended body and the wallet found in its pocket, hence the reported death of the Prisoner at sea. How might it have worked out when Number 6 finally arrives back home, and turns up alive when he goes to see the Colonel? The news of his death would have apparently been highly exaggerated! Surely that would have made his ex-colleagues the Colonel, and especially Thorpe, take their ex-colleague's story more seriously right from the start. But then that might depend on whether or not the Colonel was in the pay of The Village. He may very well have known the Prisoner was on his way anyway, informed by Mrs Butterworth, if not the man sat behind the desk to whom Number 6 paid his first call. So his ex-colleague might not have been such a shock to the Colonel either way. And the reported death of their ex-colleague might not feature anyway, not that the viewer would see, because the prodigal son had arrived home alive and well.

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