Thought For The Day

    If the Prisoner had died in an accident at sea aboard his raft, and seeing as how the next Number 2 saw the Prisoner as having a future with them {remembering that originally ‘Dance of the Dead’ was to have been the second episode} who would have paid for that loss of Number 6? Would that have been Mrs. Butterworth in her position of Number 2 at the end of the episode, or Number 2 who was in office at the commencement of ‘Many Happy Returns?’

    Although we do not see Mrs. Butterworth as Number 2 until the end when she presents Number 6 with a cake, there had to have been a Number 2 at the outset of ‘Many Happy Returns,’ and somehow it seems doubtful that it was Mrs Butterworth. Because if Mrs. Butterworth was in office as Number 2 at the beginning, then some time after Number 6 had put to sea aboard his sea-going raft, then she would have had to been taken to London, in order to be ensconced in No.1 Buckingham Place in time for the Prisoner’s arrival home. In turn that would have called for an interim Number 2 to be brought to The Village while Mrs Butterworth was away in London, and until her return to The Village.

    On the other hand, if there had been a Number 2, other than Mrs. Butterworth, in office at the commencement of ‘Many Happy Returns,’ this makes the episode an unusual one. Not for the fact that two Number 2’s were employed in the same plot, but that as a new Number 2, Mrs. Butterworth was aware of, and involved with the plot, long before her arrival in The Village!

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