Arrival

    My most absolute favourite episode, when a man hands in his letter of resignation effectively resigning his job. Why did he resign? Well that’s no business of ours or of anyone else’s as it goes, only of that of The Man With No Name! And why should he have to explain himself? It wouldn’t surprise me if his abduction by the two undertakers had no connection with his resignation! He had been under close surveillance long before his resignation, perhaps he had become suspect, perhaps they were expecting him to go over to the other side like Chambers suddenly late of the Foreign Office!
   I always love to watch ‘the Prisoner’ but especially ‘Arrival, watching the Prisoner wake up in what he imagines to be his own home in London. But we are where we imagine ourselves to be. I like to watch as he takes his first tentative steps in The Village. At first there seems to be no-one about, but then a figure looking down from the Bell Tower, and the first surreal moment, because there is no sign of the man in the Bell Tower. Perhaps he was never there! He explores The Village, he refuses breakfast at the cafe, doesn’t want any coffee. He wants to know where he is.....in The Village. At the phone box around the corner he attempts to make a telephone call to make a telephone call, to whom, the Colonel back in London? He tries to gain information from an electronic information board, a taxi pulls up, where to sir, the taxi driver speaks to him in French, because French is International, as she thought he might be a Pole or Czech. A map of The Village, either in black or white or colour avails him nothing, and then an invitation to the Green Dome and breakfast with Number 2...... What’s it all about? Well sit down and later in the year I will be in the position of being able to tell you things you didn’t know or realize about ‘the Prisoner,’ starting with ‘Arrival.’

Be seeing you