It’s Your Funeral & A Change Of Mind

    Tonight 'True Entertainment' continue their screening of 'the Prisoner' with 'It's Your Funeral,' and 'A Change of Mind.' These two episodes appear to be opposite to each other. In one Number 6 comes to the aid of the community by preventing an assassination/execution of a Number 2 who is about to retire. In the other, Number 6 appears to have cut himself off from the rest of the community, by allowing the “lone wolf” side of his character to show through. But this is false, all Number 6 has done has built himself some exercise apparatus, a high bar and a punch bag. Is there no end to this man ingenuity and skill? All Number 6 is guilty of is at times preferring his own company and his own private gymnasium. Rather than use The Village gymnasium, which incidentally he built before the advent of ‘It’s Your Funeral’ and demonstrated during the daily prognosis report on Number 6. That same report suggests that Number 6 not only buys a copy of the daily broadsheet everyday, but also a bar of soap! In ‘A Change of Mind’ it’s the community which has allowed itself to turn on and isolate Number 6. There’s gratitude for you, considering the events of the previous episode. But then the citizens didn’t know what had taken place anyway! But at least he hadn’t been betrayed by a woman, that makes a pleasant change for him!
    At times both ‘It’s Your Funeral’ and ‘A Change of Mind’ make The Village look almost deserted. Even when the citizens are gathering for the Appreciation Day ceremony there doesn’t appear that many people about, not like on Election Day in ‘Free For All.’ The thing about these two episodes is they are what is termed as “fillers,” remembering that Patrick McGoohan originally envisaged only 7 episodes, and that Lew Grade wanted at least 26 episodes, but settling on 17. Yes these two episodes along with 4 others, ‘Hammer Into Anvil,’ Do Not forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ ‘Living In Harmony,’ and ‘The Girl Who Was Death’ are mere “fillers,” and are not so full of themselves as certain earlier episodes because they lack the funding which the four episodes filmed at Portmeirion enjoyed.
    ‘It’s Your Funeral’ has a Number 2 who appears to be confused, or at least that’s the way Darren Nesbitt played the role. And an over complicated plan that must involve Number 6, and in that there lies the flaw in the plan. Because no plan involving Number 6 has ever succeeded! While ‘A Change of Mind’ has the creepiest Number 2 played by John Sharp, who sees to it that Unmutuals undergo the process of Social Conversion, in other words a leucotomy! That is an operation which a former doctor suggested in ‘Checkmate,’ to subdue Number 6’s aggressive tendencies. But Number 86 dare not do that because they mustn’t damage the tissue, they wouldn’t want to lose Number 6………would they?!

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