It’s Your Funeral

    This episode appears to be somewhat of a self-defeating exercise, especially when one considers Number 6’s past record concerning ‘The General.’ Number 2 allowed Number 6 to be involved with that educational experiment, and look what happened then. But now, an interim Number 2 is quite deliberately involving Number 6, so really he should have expected the inevitability of him stopping Plan Division Q. The trouble was they couldn’t involve anyone else in giving the idea of an assassination plot against Number 2, because no-one else would be as believable as Number 6. He not being a known Jammer, which gave them their best shot in making the plan succeed. And yet plan Division Q was compromised from the outset, from the first thought of involving Number 6. There is a flaw in most plans, and this time Number 6 was it!

   ‘It’s Your Funeral’ relies heavily on outdoor scenes shot on sets at the Elstree film studios at Borehamwood. Together with a mixture of stock film footage, as well as film footage reused from previous episodes. And yet having written that, the citizens carrying the placards of their respective Number 2’s, was filmed in Portmeirion, but not the actual Appreciation Day ceremony, which is such a pity. And in one case, a future episode!!!

    That daily Activity prognosis report, which begins at 6:30 am with Number 6 taking a daily stroll through The Village, and the activity prognosis stretches through to mid morning, he’s very active. But when Number 8 commences her activity prognosis report on Number 6 {which contains the exact same details} his daily stroll through The Village doesn’t start until 10:19am. That’s almost 4 hours later than the first prognosis report, shown in a montage of activities!! What’s more once Number 6 has begun his stroll through The Village at 10:19, by 10:20 he’s seen leaving the Café to go to the kiosk to buy a bar of soap and a copy of the newspaper. So it wasn’t that much of a stroll through The Village. Unless it was simply from his cottage to the café! It would seem that when Number 8 is giving her activity prognosis report to Number 2, and using the same surveillance film footage as used in the previous montage, that compared with the differing start times of Number 6’s activities, it would appear that she is reporting something which has already taken place!

   Number 6 having retrieved the detonator from the Watchmaker, makes his way down the Bell Tower, and is confronted by Number 100. A fight ensues between the two men, and Number 6 intends to make 100 confess. But instead as Number 100 breaks away, Number 6 knocks him out, leaving him sprawled out on the grassy bank. Yet the original script called for the intervention of The Village Guardian.

Number Two, who is seen on the balcony overhearing the entire conversation with Number Six via the two-way radio communication in the arm of his spectacles, summons The Village Guardian The appearance of the white sphere restores Number 100’s confidence, and he breaks free of Number Six. His confidence turns to fear when the Guardian pursues him instead, overtaking him and suffocating him into unconsciousness. This scene must have been filmed. Because when the young man in the Piazza, during ‘Arrival,’ when instead of being still, moves about, is attacked by the Guardian. As he is being suffocated the image changes from that of a man wearing sunglasses and a striped jersey, to a man wearing a pink blazer. That man is Number 100 {Mark Eden} seen through the membrane.

Be seeing you