Checkmate!

    The White Queen-Number 8 is the real victim here. The way she is manipulated through hypnotism into believing that she is in love with Number 6, and he with her. But she and her feelings of love for Number 6 are only frustrated by his cold unfeeling, uncaring attitude towards her. Number 8 is betrayed by both sides, as a tool against Number 6, and by Number 6 who doesn’t take her up on her offer to help with his escape plan because he doesn’t trust her. And yet through Number 8, if inadvertently, Number 6 acquires the last transistor required to complete the radio transmitter, found in the locket Number 8 has about her neck. 6’s callousness towards Number 8 is clear, as he has no intention of returning the locket, but he must realise that she is being used against him, that Number 8 is another victim of the doctor he met at the hospital. And yet he still does not take her into his confidence. However the original script has Number 6 taking Number 8 with him on the pair of rubber lilos, eventually taken aboard the vessel with Number 6. As it is, much of Number 8’s story remains untold. You will recall Number 9 in ‘Arrival,’ and how she was also an unwilling tool of Number 2’s, once assigned to Cobb, and then to Number 6. There appears to be something of an affinity between Number 9 and Number 8. The only question is, how many times have these women been used against prisoner’s like Number 6?

    Talking of tools within Number 2’s locker, might not Number 14, the ex-Count and chess champion, not also be in the pay of Number 2? After all, through him Number 6 realises how possible it is to distinguish between the prisoners and the warders, and then plays little part actively in the actual escape. Mind you he said it himself, that he’s too old for escape. So it could be that in his own way Number 6 had seen Number 14 had already played his part, and so thought him worthy of escape. Besides all 6 required after that was for the Rook to play his part and construct the radio transmitter.

    There are a number of “guest stars” Ronald Radd, Patricia Jessel, Peter Wyngarde, Rosalie Crutchley, and George Colouris, all of whom are very accomplished actors and actresses in their own right. However it could be said that Patricia Jessel’s role of the doctor-Number 22 could have been played equally well by actor Duncan MacRae.  His role of the doctor-Number 40 of the previous episode ‘Dance of the Dead’ is complimentary to that of Jessel’s doctor, and vice versa. Both are keen on human experimentation, and only too eager to find Number 6’s breaking point! As it is, it makes one wonder if the doctor-Number 40 had been replaced by the doctor-Number 22 because of his over exuberance towards Dutton. And yet Number 2 did say to the doctor that Dutton would give him the chance to experiment, after all he was expendable!
   The fact that the viewer is able to draw similarities between MacRea’s character of the doctor Number 40 and that of Jessel’s doctor-Number 22, is because the two episodes are placed one after the other in the series. Had they been placed further apart, the similarities would still have been there, yet perhaps not quite so pronounced!

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Village Life!

   “My breakfast hasn’t arrived yet. It’s bound to be cold again!”

   “Oh it’s you! What do you want?”
    “You’re grumpy this morning. Haven’t you had breakfast?”
    “No! The maid hasn’t brought it yet! And when she does I bet its cold again.”
    “Perhaps she doesn’t realise how impatient you are!”

    “Can’t you hurry her up a bit?”

    “Its not her fault, it’s the transport!”

    Perhaps this what the Prisoner was looking out of his French window for, rather than to see what the weather was like, to see if the maid Number 54 was on her way with his breakfast. This is not the first time that Number 6’s personal maid had brought him his breakfast. There was also Number 58 in ‘Free For All.’ If only ‘Dance of the Dead' had preceded ‘The Chimes of Big Ben’ because its no wonder Number 6 went on to make his own breakfast, instead of waiting for his maid to bring it!

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Thought For The Day

       With ‘the Prisoner’ is it possible to square the circle? Certainly the series in its ending, is it’s beginning. A vicious circle as far as the Prisoner himself is concerned. ‘The Prisoner’ is not constructed as a tightly consistent serial, but from a number of independent episodes, which apart from ‘A B and C’ and ‘The General,’ ‘The Chimes of Big Ben,’ ‘Once Upon A Time,’ and ‘Fall Out’ can be generally said to have no relationship with each other. Indeed, as far as ‘Many Happy Returns’ is concerned, this episode actually resets the Prisoner back to square one, the episode being as circular as the whole series itself.
 
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Exhibition of Arts and Crafts

                 “The Quiet Before The Storm!”

                 “Music makes for a quiet mind.”

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Room 101

    Room 101 is a BBC comedy television series in which celebrities are invited to discuss their pet hates and persuade the host to consign them to a fate worse than death in Room 101. It is named after the torture room in the novel Nineteen Eighty-four, which is itself named after a meeting room in Broadcasting House, where Orwell would sit through tedious meetings
   So, is there anything the reader would put into Room 101 from 'the Prisoner?' For myself it would have to be that cream blazer worn by Number 6 during the episode of 'The Schizoid Man.' 

   They should have kept with the idea that both Number 6's should be wearing the same dark blazer. Then we would have had something like this in the episode.

   And if Number 6, the one wearing the cream blazer, had also been wearing the same dark blazer, then the Polaroid picture which he took from his breast pocket would have made sense. But because of the cream blazer its simply an anomaly that really doesn't work because they changed the blazer! Oh yes it does help Number 6 regain his former self, because of the bruised fingernail in the Polaroid, but we the viewer have to ignore the fact of the cream blazer. Patrick McGoohan may have had the blazer changed to a cream one, in order to make it easier for the television viewer tell the difference between the two Number 6's. But he didn't completely think it through!

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Caught On Camera!

   Is this, The Village's Aversion Therapy Room, a version of Room 101 in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four? A torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst nightmare, fear or phobia, with the object of breaking down their resistance. The last time Number 6 looked through the observation window in the door to the Aversion Therapy Room, it looked like this.

    Which demonstrates that The Village never stands still, it changes and develops.

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Teabreak Teaser

OUAT, What is the missing link Number 2 seeks?

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