In The Village!

      Have you noticed how things appear and disappear in the village for no good reason? There was that chap leaning out of that window of the Bell Tower in ‘Arrival,’ the Prisoner looks up and goes after the man, but like the man upon the stair when the Prisoner arrived he wasn’t there, oh how I wish he would go way! So here did he go? What was the reason for his having run away? Why did he hide from the Prisoner, because he must have run away, and he must have found somewhere to hide.
   And what about the Cat and Mouse nightclub, that was there for one scene only. It wasn’t there when No.2 and No.6 went to assess the madding crowd, and it wasn’t there when the two medics take No.6 lying on a stretcher, back to his cottage. So was the Cat and Mouse nightclubs existence simply to get No.6 to want an alcoholic drink? It must have been, because then No.58 takes No.6 to the Therapy Zone, where a man is brewing his brew, and No.6 wants a double, and no water! But even the Therapy Zone doesn’t last all that long. Because although the location of the cave has moved by the time of ‘Dance of the Dead’ the cave’s interior is the same as the Therapy Zone, which makes it look as though the chemist has been moved out!
    In ‘Dance of the Dead’ in the evening scene on the beach No.2 refers to No.6 as Mister Tuxedo, why? To my eyes No.6 isn’t wearing a tuxedo, he’s wearing his own two-piece lounge suit, where the white shirt and bow tie came from, I don’t know. Unless when No.6 was brought to the village they brought those two suitcases he had packed at the time of his of his abduction, with him. I have had arguments with people who say he is wearing a tuxedo. Don’t they know what one looks like? And when No.6’s costume arrived it turned out to be his own suit, the one he wears on the day of his arrival in the village, the one the doctor said had been burned, but then we saw that infantile man in the hospital wearing it! In my book I give the Prisoner a thorough “dusting down,” with my personal explanations for many things in ‘the Prisoner.’ However it is plain that there are many things in the series which cannot, and in all probability will never be explained. And why should they be? If they were, we’d have nothing to discuss.
    What do you think of our friend No.6? I call him “desktop Paddy!” I got the

picture, printed it off on stiff 300gsm card and here he stands on my desk, “desktop Paddy.” But what about his chum, Rover MKII, its like the Butler, we know virtually nothing about him. In that scene in ‘Fall Out’ to my eye Rover seems to be on a desolate alien planet. Is that what Rover MKII is, an alien, having arrived on Earth and made a prisoner in the village? Can it laugh, can it cry, can it think? Does it have even a remnant of a brain? It certainly has the attributes of a balloon, in the fact that when attacked, like a balloon, it offers no resistance. I wonder what was poking up in the sand when the Prisoner was hurled out of the Mini-Moke when it hit whatever it was in the sand? Of course there had to be something to cause the collision, because they had to get the Prisoner out of the vehicle and vulnerable on the sand. Otherwise Rover wouldn’t have been able to subdue him. In the same way No.6 had to abandon the jet boat in ‘Free For All’ in order for Rover to half drown and half suffocate its victim as he flounders in the sea. Basically it’s the same scene as the one in ‘Arrival,’ but in the sea instead of on land. 

    One of my favourite scenes takes place in ‘Hammer Into Anvil.’ No.2 is in his office listening to a birthday greeting to No.6, and feeling there was something not quite right about it, he checks up on No.113 in a file. No.113 happens to have been an old woman in a wheel chair who died a month ago. But what of his assistant No.14? Look at him, catching 40 winks! Suddenly he hears the steel doors of No.2’s office open, he quickly jumps up and stands to attention, thereby giving No.2 the impression that he’s been standing like that in the foyer all the time. Mind you it’s no wonder No.14 fell asleep, because he hadn’t assisted No.2 in any way, since that evening they followed No.6 down to the Stone Boat and found that envelope containing nothing more than blank sheets of paper! And although two interrogations had taken place involving the Head of Psychiatrics, and the conductor of the Brass Band, No.14 is not involved. Yes he accompanies No.2 to the Control Room, the only action he takes is to lead the poor Supervisor away, possibly for treatment.  

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