By Jonathan Morris

Note: Although shown as episode eight, evidence suggests this is in fact episode two.

Some Prisoner episodes are born incomprehensible. Others have incomprehensibility thrust upon them. Dance Of The Dead is one of those.

At heart, there is a simple story being told here. It begins with Number 6 being drugged (again) and interrogated (again). What they have not factored in, however, is that Number 6 can resist all drugs and interrogations because he is SO DAMN HARD.

I'm not sure that making Number 6 invulnerable doesn't undermine the premise of the show. It makes the efforts of Number 2 to break him look rather feeble - by the end of the series you expect Number 6 to say, 'Bring on the drugs! Bring on the Special Machine! Bring on the replica Western town!'

Then again, if he wasn't invulnerable there wouldn't be a series. You couldn't do a story where Number 6 told them why he'd resigned and everyone slapped their foreheads and said, 'D'oh! Of course! Well, now we know that you can go home!'

I wonder why he did resign. My suspicion is that he won't tell anyone because it's really embarrassing. Like he's developed a medical condition that means he has constant silent flatulence (which would be a handicap in an espionage situation - it might give away your position). That would also explain the scowl. And the pacing back and forth, he's trying to disperse the guff. And that's why he never gets too intimate with the totty - he can't risk going to bed with them. He's a secret duvet wafter.

Returning to the episode. The reason why it is probably the second one, from Number 6's perspective, is because he says 'I'm new here' and 'has not seen a night in the village'. Which doesn't quite make sense, as the opening title sequence sees him running about on the beach at night. Not sure when that bit is supposed to take place.

The new Number 2 is played by Mary Morris (no relation, well, no relation to me, possibly she is related to other people but I wouldn't bank on it). She is the scariest of all the Number 2s. I remember once, when I was a kid, I was shown around the Taunton museum (a museum well worth visiting for those interested in Taunton). In the back rooms they keep all the stuff which is too weird for the people of Taunton.

Which includes shrunken, wizened, snow-white chimpanzee heads.

That's what Mary Morris looks like. She looks like death. She has these hypnotic eyes and an incredible stillness. And her voice� horrible. She must have been smoking roll-ups in the cot to sound like that. She's almost as creepy as Oliver Postgate.

She is so going to bottom of my Prisoner totty list.

Number 6 breaks the rules of the Village by listening to a transistor radio (he's trying to listen to the Pepsi Chart Show and find out who is Number 1). He is sentenced to execution. To add sadism to injury, The Village decide to hold a fancy dress party- and don't tell him. Now, if there's one thing worse than being sentenced to death, it's being the only one at a fancy dress party not in fancy dress.

Could've been worse, I suppose. They could have pulled the old trick of telling him they were holding a fancy dress party, and then switch to normal dress - and Number 6 would've been forced to spend the rest of the episode wandering around in a chicken suit.

Ooh, look, there's Aubrey Morris (no relation, to me at least, and probably not to Mary Morris either). He was in The Hitch Hikers Guide To Galaxy where he shared a scene with a character called Number 2. Top coincidence.

Anyway, so far, so comprehensible. What happens next is not. Number 6 is sentenced to death but he escapes from the ballroom and is chased around the building, Benny Hill-fashion. He then ends up in a room with a one-way mirror and a teleprinter chattering away. Number 6 rips the teleprinter out of the wall. It stops. Number 2 turns up. The teleprinter starts working again. Patrick McGoohan's scowl rushes towards you, clang! prison bars, penny farthing �

... hold on. What happened just there?

One minute Number 6 is due to be executed - and the next the episode finishes. There's no resolution, it just stops. Did they run out of time? Did the chemist lose the last roll of film? Was the last page of the script left in a taxi?

That's the thing about The Prisoner. It raises all sorts of questions.