They Tried To Kill Six Off…Twice!

    This is one of those, what I am pleased to call, imponderables, when it comes to ‘Do Not forsake Me Oh My Darling.’ Why is it that Sir Charles Portland and his daughter Janet were unaware that ZM73 was supposed to have died in an accident at sea a number of months ago. Remember how Janet became excited when she saw his car parked out his house.
    “His car” nodding in the direction of the pavement “is he back?” And she goes running upstairs looking for her fiancé.

    No mention of ZM73 being dead is made at all in the episode, but then perhaps scriptwriter Vincent Tilsley wasn’t made aware of this fact, and yet Patrick McGoohan and David Tomblin should have remembered. Scriptwriter Anthony Skene knew, he tried to have No.6 killed off twice, the first attempt was in the final scene at the end of ‘Many Happy Returns’ when the original script called for the front page of The Tally Ho the headline to read “Plane Lost Over Sea No Hope of Survivors,” so to the rest of the World No.6 would be dead, however as we know this was not used in the actual episode. But Anthony Skene was not a man to be put off from a good idea, and when he wrote the script for ‘Dance of The Dead’ he had a body lying in the morgue, a corpse which was to have been amended slightly, along with the amended wallet in his pocket. Then taken out and dumped in the sea for anyone who might find it. Presumably the body was never found, if it was actually amended and put in the sea in the first place that is!

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