Citizen No.2

    You are Number 2 the first, well obviously you are not the first Number 2, because The Village has been going for a very long time. It would seem before the war, since the war, even if it’s not easy to say which war! However you were the first Number 2 to deal with the Prisoner Number 6.

   It was a clever ploy of yours, leaving out the Prisoner’s time of birth. This to try and extract information from him. You thought that if he would answer one simple question he would tell you the reason behind his resignation. I’ve never understood why the Prisoner’s resignation was so important to you, unless it was simply because you didn’t know, and simply wanted to bring his personal file up to date. Was that it? That’s why you sent the maid Number 66 to ‘6 Private,’ to extract information from Number 6 by playing on his sympathies. It didn’t work. It always seemed an “off the cuff” attempt to use the maid in that way. The Supervisor felt sure she was going to pull it off, but then what did he know? The Prisoner knew, and was wise to her. Is that why you were replaced as Number 2, for that failure? Well you knew how important the situation involving Number 6 was. That he was no ordinary man, and that he had to be handled very differently, but perhaps it was felt that you were not up to the task? But I did think that Number 1 might have allowed you to bow out gracefully, after all the only thing your successor did was to demonstrate to Number 6 that escape from The Village was not possible. You would have been up to that task, surely? But then again it was another clever ploy to have you replaced, because that had the effect of knocking Number 6 off balance, in having to begin all over again with a new Number 2.

  But it has to be said that you were the calming gentleman, persuasive and laid back. Whereas your successor was not the gentleman, in fact he threatened Number 6 that if he didn’t give them what they wanted, they would take it! A bit like good cop bad cop wouldn’t you say?
    You eased the Prisoner into The Village, by giving him an aerial guided tour. You even suggested that he might be given a position of authority. Did you mean that? Were you in a position to even make that suggestion? You weren’t referring to a position on the Town Council were you, not amongst those brainwashed imbeciles!
     Presuming you left The Village, where did you go then? Perhaps back to the Colonel’s office in Whitehall, I bet Palmer missed you while you were away. Perhaps you should send him to The Village. That would knock some of that insolence out of him, what say you?

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Caught On Camera!

    The Prisoner asked the maid Number 66 how he could turn the music off. She told him that they couldn’t, it’s automatic. But after the Prisoner had trampled the black loudspeaker to pieces underfoot, the music still played, and there wasn’t another loudspeaker in the cottage! So how was it possible for the music to still be playing, unless there was a hidden loudspeaker in the cottage? But if that was the case, why the need for the black loudspeaker in the first place, just for show perhaps! However eventually the piece of music being played comes to a natural end, and no further music is played. Perhaps because the attention is then on the maid-Number 66 who tries to extract some kind of information from the Prisoner. And then soon after the maid leave ‘6 Private’ an electrician arrives, “Electrics sir, sorry for the intrusion,” to replace the busted loudspeaker. Have you observed how he activated it, he knocked on it! Perhaps not to activate the loudspeaker itself, but as a signal to notify someone via the hidden microphones, either at Electrics Control, or in the Control Room, that it was time to activate the loudspeaker, and thereby turning it on and starting the music once more.

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The Therapy Zone

   I knew of course that the Therapy Zone wasn’t an actual place in The Village, rather it was a set at MGM film studios. I’m not even sure if it was a Therapy Zone at all, but simply a cave made out to be the Therapy Zone, for Number 6’s benefit in ‘Free For All,’ simply designed to be used in order to administer the drug. Or had others have been taken to there in the same way Number 6 had been?
    The next time we see the interior of “Therapy Zone” is during ‘Dance of The Dead,’ where Number hides the dead body. As for the exterior, the mouth of the cave is down on the beach, whereas in ‘Free For All’ the entrance to the Therapy Zone is through some bushes just off the top of the sea wall. So presumably both caves cannot be meant to be the same. 

  Anyway upon my first visit to Portmeirion back in 1988, I took a walk along the sea wall and along the cliffs to find myself standing by the lighthouse on top of the cliffs. Only it’s not a lighthouse at all, just one of Clough’s follies. And yet, there was the same cove in which Number 6 found the body on the shore in ‘Dance of the Dead,’ and later in the same episode when he used the body to try and get a message to someone, anyone, in the outside World. By having tied the dead man’s body to a lifebuoy and setting it adrift in the water to be carried out to sea on the out-going tide. {With special thanks to Arno for the picture}
   And yet as I stood there, having followed in Number 6’s deck shoes so to speak, there it was, the entrance to a cave set in the cliff. Not a very large entrance I warrant you, more of a slit really. And through that slit there wasn’t much of a cave really, not all that wide, and it didn’t go all that far into the cliff for that matter. But it seemed to me that this small insignificant cave was perhaps the inspiration for the cave on the set at MGM film studios, seeing as it was supposed to have been in the same cave, and where Number 6 met Dutton. Perhaps had that cave been a bit larger, there wouldn’t have been the necessity for the cave on a set. As for the Therapy Zone, there was no sign of it, so I had to have a pint later in the Hercules Hall!

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Thought For The Day

   Social media. I wonder, if the Prisoner was to hand in his letter of resignation today, would he have the sudden impulse to post it on social media, thereby telling the World the reason why he resigned? That might not be a good thing, but on the other hand, it might have the effect of him not having been abducted to The Village. After all if Number 2 wanted to know why he resigned, all he would have to do was to look on facebook! But then the question is, would Number 6 use social media, if it had been available to him? Is it likely that ZM73 would have a use for social media? After all he’s a very private man who likes to keep himself to himself. I recall John Drake saying once, how he liked to mind his own business, and expected others to mind theirs!
   As regarding the Prisoner’s resignation, the question of why he resigned has been asked on and off, more or less through the entire series. But how likely was it that that resignation was accepted? After all, the Prisoner, or to give him his code name of ZM73, held a position of a secret nature, and carried out top secret and confidential work. It’s highly unlikely that a resignation from such a man as ZM73 would be accepted. But what to do with him? Why, put him in a place of security……..The Village!

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Village Life!

   No.6 “That couple sat next to you.”
   No.9 “What about them?”
   “They’re drinking tea!”
   “Well what about it?”
   “Where did they get two cups of tea from?”
   “Why, do you want a cup of tea?”
   “No.”
   “Well then?”
   “I was just wondered where they got two cup of tea from? No-one else about is drinking cups of tea!”
   “They probably got them from the café.”
   “Oh!”
   “I think they add something to the scene drinking their tea like that….don’t you?”
   “Suppose so. What’s the book you’re reading?”
   “Escape and Escapability by P. R. Isoner

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Village Festival – Photographic Competition

              “That Shouldn’t have happened!”

BcNu

A Favourite Scene In the Prisoner

   When Mister X arrives in a deserted village of Witchwood {Wychwood}, used by the Girl Who Was Death as a killing ground, he’s quickly put through the butchers and the bakers! First having been faced by gunfire from a Bren gun on a fixed mounting, which he disassembles. He takes the gun into the bakers, retaliating against the baker sat in a corner of the room {a flour sack and balloon dressed in a coat and white hat} after which he falls through a trapdoor to an almost certain death by electrified steel spikes, but doesn’t quite get the point! But that’s not all, the floor is heavily mined, with miniature mines, by which he is almost blown up when they explode. He would have been had it not been for the “hot-line,” a hot water pipe. And here he is, in the Candlestick makers. Only the candlestick maker never made candles like these! Well that would be right, candlestick makers do not make candles, only the candle holders. These candles are an invention of The Girl’s, they have a cyanide derivative mixed with the wax. As the wick burns and the wax melts it gives off cyanide gas, every candle in the room is breathing poison into the air. It’s a bit draughty in the Candlestick makers, so a steel shutter drops cutting off Mr. X’s retreat. Then further shutters drop down over the door and windows, effectively keeping out the draughts and the air as well. So Mr. X finds himself trapped in what has effectively become a gas chamber, from which there is no apparent escape!
   The man looks doomed, and would have been if not for some very quick thinking on his part, but which may on the face of it, look to be irrational behaviour, at least that’s how the Girl describes it. But there is method in Mr. X’s madness. Having discovered that the candles explode if snuffed out, a sudden and daring plan comes to his mind. He takes a number of different sized candelabra with their burning candles, and places then in front of the steel shuttered door. Then taking a pair of bellows from the fireplace, and positioning himself behind the shop counter, and pointing the bellows at the burning candles, with one puff of wind from the bellows, snuffs out all the candles setting off a large explosion which blows out the steel shutter, allowing Mr. X to escape. To escape out into the street and into heavy gunfire from a Maxim heavy machine gun!

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