Number 6 was a Plant: The Chimes of Big Ben
You can read the introduction to this series of posts examining the suggestion that Number 6 could be a plant, here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/number-6-was-a-plant-introduction Perhaps I should also have said in the introduction that I have arbitrarily decided to follow the ITC order of episodes for these posts. I still want to do some posts about the order of the episodes, and am reminded that Chimes of Big Ben this early in the run makes absolutely no sense from the viewer's point of view, because it means poor Number 6 has barely arrived and the Village authorities are talking about the remaining tactics that they haven't tried yet.
In my last post, about Arrival, I commented that if you want to see Number 6 as a plant, then his investigation is equally divided between finding out what is happening in the Village and testing its security to desctruction by trying to leave it. In Chimes of Big Ben he reaches the apogee of his attempts to leave by attempting to make it back to London. I am therefore in no doubt that his intention is clearly to test the Village's security, and he must therefore be motivated by rumoured excapes or cover-ups in the Village. He approaches trusted (?former) colleagues in London and tells them about the Village.
I would suggest, based on their reaction, that Number 6 has self-allocated this assignment. On the evidence of this episode he has not been 'planted' by British intelligence authorities, because they just repeat the same questions he has already been asked mutliple times in the Village. It is strangely comforting that it completely fits with Number 6's maverick personality that he would hear about corruption and escapes in the Village and assign himself to investigate it by appearing to resign and having it backfire on him.
He has made a real mistake, because his resignation has been convincing so everyone else in the episode, both in the Village and from Britain, is proceeding as if he has resigned and they just treat him as a prisoner of the Village. He has set up such a convincing cover story that he's then caught in Village security himself and can't escape! Perhaps he should have told someone before resigning...
This episode does reinforce that he is clearly someone very senior in intelligence, not least judging by the Whitehall types who know him. I would also suggest that in the scene where Number 2 invites him to watch Nadia wake up and he watches the various 'treatments' going on in the hospital, he is being treated much more as a senior, trusty, managerial visitor than a lowly new boy.
If you wanted to be particularly critical of the way Number 6 is going about his investigation, you could say that he's going about his test escape in a particularly cack-handed way because of his complete trust of Nadia, when he is resolutely suspicious of everyone else in the Village, including her at first. However it could be that Number 6's acts of finding out what is what at the Village naturally include trying out everything, including the Village authorities' smoke and mirrors.
I would therefore conclude from this episode that based on the events depicted it is still possible to view Number 6 as a plant, although probably a self-planted one, and his actions as attempts to investigate the Village and test its security to destruction.
A couple of other things have struck me about this episode on this viewing:
I really don't like the scene where Number 2 invites NUmber 6 watch Nadia waking up in her house. I frankly find it a bit pervy, them both watching her. The Village authorities would have some justification in their own eyes because she will just have been drugged and is waking up in a copy of her own home, both of which are bound to be traumatic. But inviting Number 6 to watch her is way out of line to my mind.
For some reason I notice that when I'm tryingto watch it thinking of one way of understanding it The Prisoner always makes me think of other ways as well, and obviously this time it's going to make me think that the Village is like a cult. In The Chimes of Big Ben this becomes especially clear in the art competition where literally every exhibit is all about the cult's charismatic leader, which is proper freaky.
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