“No my friend, not for me. Soon
Roland Walter Dutton will cease to exist.”
{Number 6 and Dutton – Dance of the Dead}
It would seem that
Dutton knew his fate. He had told the doctor-Number 40 all he knew, he couldn’t
tell him any more, because he didn’t know any more, not having access to the
“vital stuff.” However the doctor saw this as Dutton being reluctant to go any
further, and so carried on with his experiments on Dutton to make him talk. One
cannot even guess at what those experiments were, yet Dutton knew that because
the doctor continued with his experiments, he would lose his mind. In other
words cease to exist!
Dutton was the
second person Number 6 met in The Village he once knew, the first being Cobb. He
couldn’t save Dutton, and he couldn’t save Cobb either, which makes them pretty
much alike. There was a third character, although Number 6 never met him in The Village, Chambers, late of
the Foreign Office. Although instead of Cobb, it might easily have been
Chambers lying in that bed on the hospital ward. Or Chambers in the place of
Dutton!
On the second
evening of ‘Dance of the Dead,’ Number 2 found Number 6 on the beach looking
for a sign from his world. And yet he gave Dutton hope of his world, when he
asked how is London? “About the
same” Number 6 told him. Dutton had been in The Village perhaps a couple of
months, it was difficult for him to say. As for Number 6, his arrival had been
quite recently, and that would be right given that according to the library
order of ‘the Prisoner, ‘Dance of the Dead’ is the second episode.
Dutton appears suspicious
of Number 6 at first, “You! You of all people. I’d never have believed it.” Or
is it surprise? That the man known as Number 6 is the last person Dutton would
have thought to meet in The Village. Suspicious, because perhaps Dutton thought
that his old colleague might have been brought to The Village in order to get
Dutton to tell him the rest of the information the doctor thought he was
holding back. Just as the same doctor had tried to use Dutton to extract
information from Number 6! If surprised, well he couldn’t believe it, that his
old colleague, a man of his calibre should
find himself abducted to The Village as a prisoner. If him, then what hope for anyone!
Be seeing you
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