Number 6 was a Plant: It's Your Funeral
The introduction to this series of posts considering the theory that Number 6 didn't really resign and is a 'plant' in the Village may be read here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/number-6-was-a-plant-introduction
I bet you all thought I couldn't manage to twist It's Your Funeral round to the plant idea didn't you? I wasn't that sure I could, actually but think I've found a way of doing it. To be honest it didn't really help that the plot of this one is a bit of a mess: I mean, Number 6 is manipulated so that he has to save Number 2 from an assassination plot which may or may not be fake, for the sake of everyone else? Come on, this is getting out of hand.
Apparently Derren Nesbitt said in an interview that when he was making this he had literally no idea of what was going on. Annette Andre commented that Patrick McGoohan was unbelievably difficult about everything (king) and from memory I think this might have been the one where he unceremoniously sacked the director in the middle of production.
Anyway it's not that apparent what's going on but I suspect that's the point.
I am interested that the title is 'it's your funeral,' which is proverbially said to someone considering some unwise course of action and indicating that they will have to live with the consequences. The point, of course, being that Number 6 is determined that it isn't going to be his funeral or anyone else's, and it seems like he's the only person who will.
I have tended in this series of posts to the view that Number 6 probably appeared to resign of his own initiative and so part of what he has discovered is the true nature of the business he has been involved in. If his being planted had been initiated by his superiors he would have some back-up, but instead has found that they're all in on it. He has planted himself in the Village he has heard about, possibly because of concerns he had heard about it, and has had all his illusions shattered one after the other. I have been tending to see the things he has learned as being revelations about the work place, which is of course of more moment than many jobs, in the case of the Villagers.
It is not contradicting his self-imposed plant status at all, therefore, to see that in this episode he has learned something else utterly shattering about his previous trade. This is that horrifying workplace realisation that you are the only sensible person there, and are therefore obliged to do something to stop some disaster happening. The show so often follows the intelligence community's script so closely, that the people who hold certain knowledge are too valuable to be let loose and must be contained. This episode turns it round so that the entire intelligence community are a set of cabbages, with petty politicking, anything for a quiet life, some staggering incompetence and irresponsibility, and so on.
Number 6 can only be a plant, because he's the only sensible one there at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.
Another interesting perspective on this episode can be found in the Free for All Podcast (https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/free-for-all/3737640) where Cai Ross and Chris Bainbridge have some very interesting things to say about the technology used and particularly comparing the activity prognosis to contemporary social media algorithms.
I am predicting from this point on that the episodes will become increasingly difficult to manipulate to fit the plant theory, purely because while I love the theory and think it's a convincing explanation of what is happening, I honestly don't think it was probably in the mind of anyone writing the show! I may therefore change to covering a couple of episodes in a blog post but will still continue to the bitter end.
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