Dance of the Dead

Number six(Patrick McGoohan) is walking along the beach when he happens to find a body which has a radio with it. After pushing the body out to sea, he resolves to use the radio in his attempts to escape by making contact with home, but an ex-colleague of his who turns up will prove to be no help at all, as "six" is uncovered and put on show trial by the new female number two(played by Mary Morris) during a carnival/masquerade ball, where his steely will is matched against the unmerciful powers-that-be determined to hold him prisoner until they break him, no matter the discomfort. Female dominated episode has a real nightmarish feel about it as number six, despite his strength and survival, is really up against a bleak future there...

One of my top episodes, this allegory, is also one of the most violent.

DANCE OF THE DEAD - nicknamed 'the women's episode,' for it's heavily weighted female cast, has Mary Morris, playing Number 2, in such a way, that, well., as #6 says; 'never trust a woman - even the four-legged kind' becomes much clearer.

I won't give a synopsis - I don't want to spoil the (ahem) 'fun' in store.

What I will say, is that, in #6's presence at the village is quite recent, he's shown that - no matter the gender, the #2 is NOT to be trifled with.

Ms. Morris's characterisation of #2 is as ice-cold, as one can be - and, other than Leo McKern's version - and, the milk-obsessed Colin Gordon's, is most memorable.

"I'm new here!" Number Six insists to the maid (Denise Buckley) who just brought him his breakfast in "Dance of the Dead," but should we believe him?

Ah, the eternal "Prisoner" debate: In what order do the 17 episodes belong? It wouldn't matter except that there is a definite beginning and ending to this most brilliant and intriguing of spy/spy-fi television series, and so the urge to determine a linear or chronological ordering becomes nigh irresistible.

"Dead" is one of the seven original episodes series creator, star, and executive producer Patrick McGoohan envisioned; he placed it third, and it was the fourth episode produced although it aired eighth, on November 17, 1967, during its original run on Britain's ITC. So there you go: Even episode order becomes a yet another topic for the debate that "The Prisoner" provokes regarding just about everything about it.

I place it second, and not just for the "I'm new here" declaration. There are ample indications that Number Six is newly arrived to the Village, the high-tech, deceptively bucolic prison where he had been brought following his angry resignation from an unspecified British intelligence agency and his subsequent kidnapping from his London townhouse.

Much of the dialog and also much of the camera work directed by Don Chaffey, such as the survey of Number Six's Village apartment when he wakes up, suggest that not only is Number Six becoming acquainted with the Village, so is the audience.

Village procedure must be demonstrated, including the constant surveillance both "elint," electronic intelligence-gathering in the form of cameras and microphones--such as Village leader Number Two (Mary Morris) talking with Number Six through his television set, which, when he tries to block it with a cushion, emits loud, irritating static--and "humint," human intelligence-gathering in the form of a Watcher or Observer (Norma West) who physically shadows him in addition to monitoring him from the Village control room. She also has an intriguing exchange with him at Carnival, the Village costume ball at the climax of "Dance of the Dead," that hints at the history of the village, further exposition to enlighten viewers if not Number Six.

As in the series opener "Arrival," Number Six meets someone from his recent past, Roland Walter Dutton (Alan White), whose intelligence relationship with Number Six is made much clearer than it had been with the earlier Cobb. When Number Six asks Dutton how long he has been in the Village, he estimates about two months before inquiring when Number Six arrived here. "Quite recently," comes the reply, and whether anything any intelligence operative says can be taken at face value is always an open question, but it does reinforce Number Six's newness in the face of already-abundant indications of that.

Dutton is instrumental in the opening interrogation of Number Six carried out by a zealous doctor (Duncan Macrae) convinced that his extreme techniques will, as they have with Dutton, extract the information the Village is seeking, namely, the series' MacGuffin: Why did Number Six resign? However, Number Two, stressing both Number Six's importance and potential future value to the Village, intervenes to terminate the interrogation.

Thus, Anthony Skene's tart, sometimes provocative, but ultimately uneven and disappointing script must devise another stratagem. Following a seemingly impromptu yet half-hearted escape attempt that leaves him collapsed on the beach, Number Six awakes to find that a dead man had washed up on the shore.

This Number Six uses in an attempt to contact the outside world about his plight, with both ends of the situation, the body's initial arrival and his repurposing of it, recalling the successful British Operation Mincemeat during World War Two, when a dead tramp was disguised as a military officer and set to wash ashore in Spain containing false information about the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, dramatized in the 1956 movie "The Man Who Never Was."

Number Six learns about the fate of his operation during Carnival, and as one astute reviewer has noted, pay attention during the morgue scene between Number Six and Number Two regarding his fate with respect to the outside world. Carnival turns out to be a pretense for Number Six's trial that becomes surreal, this after a couple of uncanny, if rather dubious, moments including a forcefield that prevents him from entering Town Hall in pursuit of his Observer, with a bystander noting that it's particular about whom it lets in, and Number Two's informing Number Six that the black cat that had become attached to him works for her.

Portentously if not pretentiously, the three judges (as during the French Revolution) are his passive-aggressive maid (Buckley), dressed as Queen Elizabeth I; his psychiatric interrogator (Macrae), dressed as Napoleon; and, dressed as Julius Caesar, the town crier (Aubrey Morris), who, amidst earlier fanfare, had decreed that "There will be music, dancing, happiness, all at the Carnival . . . By order."

By turns inventive and improbable, sly and heavy-handed, Skene's "Dance of the Dead," abetted by Chaffey's earnest staging, offers up a sinister funhouse vision of the Village topped by closing madness suggesting what Federico Fellini's staging of George Orwell's Two-Minutes' Hate from "Nineteen Eighty-Four" might look like: It looks lively, but ultimately it's dead on its feet.

POINT TO PONDER: Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept only facts and opinions you agree with. It is extremely difficult to avoid. Are reviews "helpful" only if they validate your confirmation bias? Are they "not helpful" if they contradict it? Thanks to the pervasiveness of confirmation bias, a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down is essentially useless as an indicator of whether a review is or isn't "helpful."

There continues to be dispute surrounding in which order the episodes of 'The Prisoner' were made; but although this particular instalment was transmitted late in the series' run there seems to be general agreement that 'The Dance of Death' was originally planned as the second.

On viewing 'The Dance of Death' one can now understand why the original transmission was postponed, due to such fanciful elements as a female No.2, a masked ball that pastiches 'The Masque of the Red Death and 'The Seventh Seal' - to which the title probably consciously refers' - with the guests including Little Bo Peep and Duncan Macrae dressed as Napoleon; to which No.6's attendance as the sole guest wearing black tie recalls Senator Jordan presence at a similar function in 'The Manchurian Candidate'.

"Dance of the Dead" isn't my favorite episode of THE PRISONER, but I think it's the best.

It's mysterious, creepy, paranoid, has a bravura ending and features the usual magnetic performance from Patrick McGoohan as the titular #6.

Though it aired about midway through the series run, "Dance of the Dead" is actually the second episode chronologically, and is best seen in that order. #6 states that he is "new" to The Village, and is still feeling out the ruthlessness of his captors. When an old peer in the spy game shows up in The Village, #6 seeks to partner with him & escape, but things do not go as planned.

The whole episode is terrific, helmed by UK studio pro Don Chaffey (who directed many episodes of DANGER MAN, the series predecessor), but the last five minutes are a "WOW." Highly recommended entry in a highly recommended series.

["Schizoid Man" is my favorite episode, FWIW]