Quote For The Day

   “There’s still hope.”

    “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