By Jonathan Morris

Note: Although shown as episode three, evidence suggests this is, in fact, episode fifteen.

In my 'chronological' Prisoner-watch, this episode is near the end. Why so late? Well, the new Number 2 is told it's his 'last chance'. He's played for a second time by Colin Gordon - if he is indeed supposed to be the same Number 2. He's certainly more afraid of the Force That Lies Behind The Big Red Phone than he was in The General.

Plus, the method Number 2 uses to get Number 6 to divulge that ever-elusive Information is very much the last, desperate resort. All their previous methods - pretending that Number 6 has escaped, asking him nicely, tickling him, saying "whatever you do, don't tell us why you resigned" as a double- bluff - have failed and now they've been forced to probe into the insane recesses of his McGoohan brain.

One of the beguiling things about The Prisoner is that although its episodes can be watched in any order, there is no running order that reconciles a) Number 6's character development 6 b) the continuity links between the episodes c) the progression of Number 2's increasingly fruit-based schemes and d) what the untutored viewer needs to know.

I say "beguiling". I mean, of course, "irritating".

It's like Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh, when Tintin says, "I wish I was back in Marlinspike", which causes me to yelp with frustration, "You haven't been to Marlinspike yet, you bequiffed loon! You don't visit there until The Secret Of The Unicorn!"

Number 2's big plan is to use his Special Machine (this being the eighth or ninth Special Machine the series has seen by this point) to watch Number 6's dreams, and to introduce characters into the dreams who will do his bidding. Not that these dreams will be of auctions. Not that sort of bidding.

Number 6's dreams are odd. They're odd because they're not odd. He dreams of what would have happened if he had not ended up in The Village, which is to go to a party in a mansion house (the same set as used in Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling).

If it was a proper dream, you'd expect there to be dinosaurs and topless nuns flying about the place. Like Magical Mystery Tour, or that Buffy episode where Xander dreams about lesbians. It doesn't even have an inscrutable midget in it, which is peculiar because they already had an excellent inscrutable midget under contract.

What Number 2 hasn't reckoned with, however, is that Number 6 is SO DAMN HARD he will not say why he resigned, even in his dreams. In other reviews I'll go on about episodes taking different points of view - but this is the most Number 2-centric episode yet. Even in Number 6's dreams, we don't see things from his point of view. He's a character in his own dream, which I thought was impossible, I thought psychoanalysts had proved that all dreams take place in the first person.

This episode plays with the fourth wall. Just as we who watch say "I don't understand it, it doesn't make any sense" so we have Number 2 and Number 14 watching Number 6's dreams saying, "You know, I think we're watching these dreams in the wrong order, this dream should go before that one we just watched."

Anyway, whilst Number 6 is dreaming away, Number 14 (this week's kooky sixties chick) can speak into a microphone and someone will speak her words in the dream. It's clever, but you would need some sort of time delay to avoid feedback.

Upon waking, Number 6 elects to confront Number 2 in his green dome room. This was the highlight for me as Number 2's spherical chair rises out of the floor with Number 2 in his jim-jams. Presumably he sleeps under the floor in a spherical bed. Maybe in a long dormitory with all the other Number 2's. They probably flick each other with wet scarves in the showers. Rumpole McKern would be the head Number 2, because he's best, and they'd probably pick on the Derren Nesbitt Number 2 for wearing glasses.

On the Big Red Phone, Number 2 is warned that this is their last chance to discover the truth. Not sure how they know, since they've never used the Special Machine before, not even on dogs. Which is a shame, because I'd like to see dogs' dreams. Apparently even though dogs can only see in black and white, they dream in colour.

Number 6's third dream is an improvement. It feels like Head, the Monkees film, with skew-whiff camera angles and sinister, inappropriate laughter like the beginning of Sergeant Pepper. In his dream, Number 6 staggers around the party as though he's been on the Girl Who Was Deaths. Until he finds a mirror and - this was a cool bit - straightens up the camera and sobers up.

Next in his dream Number 6 decides to return to The Village, past the hall that housed the Build A Boat-Shaped Sculpture Competition and down to the secret laboratory.

Second cool bit - as Number 6 enters the secret laboratory in his dream, the real Number 2 and Number 14 in the real laboratory look around as though expecting him to enter.

It's established - at last - that when Number 6 resigned he wasn't intending to 'sell out'. I'm not sure I wanted to know that, though - discovering more about Number 6 diminishes him.

What is this week's message for the Alan Moore fan in the attic? It's this; How can you tell the difference between dreams and reality, aaaah?

Well, usually, if you're being chased around your old school by a velociraptor, your mother and the Hill's Angels dressed as nuns then that's probably a dream, and if you're reading Watchmen whilst queuing in the dole office then that's probably reality.