You know,
Once Upon A Time must surely have been a real ordeal for Number Two, as well as for Number Six. Because Number Two had sat up all the previous night reciting nursery rhymes to the slumbering Number Six. Who can say how much sleep Number Two actually had that night, but certainly Number Six woke up the fresher man. And once locked away in that Embryo Room, who can say how much sleep anyone got? Certainly towards the end of their deliberations both men were on the edge of exhaustion.
However, Number Six was the victor, the better man. Yet it was a bitter-sweet victory because of the price that had to be paid, the apparent death of Number Two. {If
Once Upon A Time had not been called for the penultimate episode of
the Prisoner series, then Number Two would have remained dead!} Number Six is triumphant, but although to look at him, and judging by the way he smashes that glass on the floor, yet that triumph is not allowed to last. Because the Supervisor-No.28 appears as the steel door slides open, and escorts both Number Six and the Butler to an underground cavern, somewhere beneath the Village.
As
Fall Out slowly unfolds, it appears to me that it is nothing more than another manipulation of Number Six. Okay, there are the trials of Numbers forty-eight and Two, who are alllowed to address the court, yet to what purpose? A man who is about to hang is given the opportunity of a few last words! Whereas Number Six
isn't!
Number Six strolls into that cavern looking as fresh as a daisy, washed and clean shaven, nothing like the last time we saw him, exhausted, dishevelled, dirty, with a stubble on his chin. And that was but a few moments ago. Looks like he was not only given his own clothes back, but the opportunity to use a bathroom! Number Six should be out on his feet, which would have made the final manipulation of Number Six a piece-of-cake for the President. But then Number Six would not have been the hero would he? Heroes do not give up. Heroes carry the fight to the bitter end. Heroes don't sweat...........but they do! Heroes also have weaknesses like anyone else. Heroes are not supposed to bend. Heroes are not supposed to break. But if you do not bend, even just a little, you'll snap just like anyone else. What kind of hero is it who shows no weakness, no frailty, no signs of breaking? Which of course Number Six did at last begin to show in
once Upon A Time.
Our hero, or anti-hero depending on your point of view, carries on the fight with three other
freedom fighters to the point of destroying everything he created, in effect destroying that thing which holds them prisoner. Such is the desire to be free. Well that is how it appears, but of course nothing in the Village is destroyed. The Village is as whole as it always was. Only the armed security guards were killed in the fire-fight, and the only destruction was that of the rocket in which Number One would have died. Either by suffocation, or in the crash as the rocket impacted with the ground. Because that rocket would only have attained a low orbit, before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, and then the eventual impact with the ground, {I've seen the results of a Blue streak rocket impacting on the ground} so imagine how Number One would have felt, sealed in the nose cone of that rocket. Powerless to do anything about his fate to come. In a panic, in a sweat. Possibly screaming his head off..........................Some hero eh! Be seeing you.
