Numbers And Housing!

    When you consider that each Prisoner in The Village probably enjoys an exact replica of his, hers, or their own apartment, cottage, or house {Or at least part of it} it might require some transitional time between the arrival of one prisoner and another, in regard to their using the same number. But of course there is no evidence to say the newly arrived Number 8 had to wait until that number became vacant. Nadia could just have been issued with any vacant number, it just happened to be the number 8, seeing as the former Number 8 had vacated the premises. The same goes for Number 6. Also I wrote that his, hers, theirs was a perfect replica of their own apartment, cottage, or house, but is that correct? Because it isn’t in the case of Number 6, the only room in his cottage which is a perfect replica of his house in London {as far as we know} is the study. You will recall during ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ how Number 2 said to Number 6, while watching Nadia Rakovski waking up via the wall screen “An exact replica of her own room of course,” you will observe the word “room.” So if there has to be a transitional time between the old Number 8 having vacated the premises, and the arrival of a new Number 8, that time is greatly reduced because only a room in a building has to be an exact replica of a room in Nadia’s house back home in Estonia. The rest of ‘8 Private’ could have been as the former Number 8 vacated it. The same goes for Number 6, Alison-Number 24 in ‘The Schizoid Man,’ not to mention both the Professor and madam Professor in ‘The General. Number 6 said of Madam Professor that she lives in a most elegant house, which is suggestive of him having made a search of the whole house, although it appears he’s judging the whole house on one room. And that’s it, except for ‘6 Private’ we the viewer only see that one or perhaps two rooms of any house in The Village, and not the entire house. It would be a logistical nightmare if those responsible for construction in The Village, had to build exact replicas of entire houses instead of just one room. Imagine Number 6 on the day of his arrival in The Village, that when he stepped outside there was a perfect replica of his whole house as it stands in Buckingham Place in London!
    Numbers in The Village have to be constant, and there can be no same two numbers, unless sub-divided. And the number of a person’s cell dwelling must be the same as a prisoner’s personal number, otherwise you could have Number 9 living at ‘67 Private,’ and that would confuse things!
    Yes, there would have to be a transitional period between a person who had used a number, and someone who was to be given that same number at some point. Number 113 for example, was an old woman who died a month ago. What happened to the previous Number 113, a newspaper reporter for The Tally Ho, is unknown. But it would be a sad lookout for The Village administration if no-one could be brought there until someone dies. And yet numbers are reused. What happened to the number 8 of ‘Checkmate’ to be given to a man in ‘Living In Harmony,’ And the doctor-Number 14 for the number to be reissued to the ex-Count in ‘Checkmate,’ who may not have been returned to the chessboard like Number 6, only for the Number 14 to be re-issued again to Number 2’s assistant in ‘Hammer Into Anvil.’ And there is a question in that, what happened to the doctor-Number 14, and when did the ex-Count arrive in The Village? And yet there are those in The Village who turn up in different episodes and wearing a different number! It might well be that too much is made out of the numbers. The majority of the episodes that go to make up ‘the Prisoner’ are independent stories, and so it could be that a number which appears in one episode is not relative to that same number used in other episodes, unless a character appears in more than one episode with the same number. As a matter of fact the only characters who appear in ‘the Prisoner’ more than once who always bear the same number, are Number 6 and the Supervisor-Number 26, along with two Number 2s.

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