Talk:Many Happy Returns (The Prisoner)

The milkman/pilot switch

This is never fully explained (how much his bosses in London are in on it etc) but does add to the overall intrigue - many viewers don't notice it but it rather crucial. Number 6 climbs in the rear seat of the jet and the pilot enters a hut to change and come out later. A `milkman' then parks his float outside and enters the hut too - as if just delivering milk to there. After a while "the pilot" in that type of outfit comes "back" out (with his tinted helmet visor down to hide his face), and he gets into the plane to fly it. Then, just before ejecting Number 6 from the plane he lifts his visor to speak, and it is the milkman! (Unknown to Number 6 he obviously switched places with the original pilot in the hut either by design or duress - whose plan was that?) His bosses in London left on the runway might not have known - or did they? (Their last words on seeing the plane take off are cryptic).

A fansite has noticed it;

"Other than Ms. Butterworth, it is left ambiguous as to who else may also be on the deception. When Number Six sets out to board the fighter jet, he precedes the pilot. Unaware because of his advance, the pilots are switched and the pilot is no longer the companion of the Colonel, but is the driver of the milk float. It is not shown exactly what happened to the pilot, and whether he was actually incapacitated by the milk float driver or that he was in on the switch. Additionally, the Colonel says, "You're a stubborn fellow, Number Six"; it is also left ambiguous whether he is genuinely joking or he is actually subtly hinting that he is also in on the deception."

source - https://prisoner.fandom.com/wiki/Many_Happy_Returns_(1967_episode) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.174.163.148 (talk) 18:33, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Fairly safe to say that the Colonel isn't 'in on it'. That would be merely repeating a device already used in 'The Chimes of Big Ben'. If the Colonel were in on it, the nefarious Village pilot wouldn't need to disguise himself as a milkman. He would simply be the pilot assigned for the flight. At the time, the audience would probably imagine the real pilot bound and gagged in the crew hut, like the crew of the US Lockheed Jetstar in Goldfinger. This sort of substitution was a spy-fi trope of the era. Think, too, of Cary Grant impersonating the red-cap railroad porter in North by Northwest, though of course he acquires the real porter's uniform by bribery rather than violence.

It was also a peculiar feature of episodic TV dramas in those days that there was frequent retconning within a series, so the personnel in the London office are not those seen in 'The Chimes of Big Ben'. Patrick Cargill, who appears as 'Thorpe', would later play Number Two in 'Hammer To Anvil'. This was simply because McGoohan wanted to use him again, but it created an ambiguity as to whether Thorpe and Number Two were the same person, an ambiguity McGoohan probably did not mind. However, The Prisoner is not entirely realistic and 'Many Happy Returns' is written in a way that makes it uncertain that the events depicted ever happened. As Carraze and Oswald point out (in The Prisoner, WH Allen, London, 1990, ISBN 1 85227 338 0, p.106):-

'The reality the Prisoner finds, after a hard landing on the sand, is that of the Village, which is just as deserted as on the long-ago day of his departure on the raft, and where time seems strangely to have stood still. The black cat, which watches him with its yellow eyes while he crosses the beach after casting off his parachute, is in exactly the same spot, on the same garden table, beside the same pieces of broken crockery.'

So no time has passed since the beginning. And as soon as the Prisoner re-enters his cottage, time is un-suspended. 'Instantly, inexplicably, everything starts working again all around him, as though a magic wand has been waved. A powerful jet of water runs in the shower, a light comes on, and the contents of the coffee pot start to boil.' The supposed Mrs Butterworth comes in, and of course she's Number Two, and, outside, the people of the Village all reappear, noisily and abruptly. It is as if none of the story so far actually happened. There is no realistic explanation for all this, it is simply a 'Sixties TV thing'. The episode remains satisfying, in a Lewis Carroll sort of way, but it does not make logical sense and is not meant to. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Confusing

I didn't understand this episode. How come the village was deserted?

It was all arranged to let The Prisoner escape from The Village and return home--albeit only temporarily--as a birthday gift! Note that the man who is piloting the plane when The Village is found and our hero is ejected back into captivity was the "milkman" (a "Village" substitute) rather than the British government employee he expected, and who therefore could have completely ignored the prepared flight plan, so who knows just where this island actually was? Ted Watson 20:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Not much of a birthday gift - I think they were trying to drive it home to Number Six that escape from the Village is impossible even under the most favourable conditions - no active opposition, help from sympathetic former colleagues back home, etc. Some fans have pointed out that this episode marks a turning point in the series, after which Six pretty much gives up trying to escape and changes his focus to survival and trouble-making. IIRC that's pretty accurate. I also think the indications are that the milkman-pilot flew where Number Six intended to go - Six was a trained navigator with maps and instruments at his disposal, and a nice big canopy through which he could observe the entire flight. -Father Inire (talk) 10:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Location of the Village

I removed a bit of text that said, roughly, that neither the location given for the Village in this episode nor the location given in "Chimes" is correct. However, the Village was probably located in both these places at different times in the series, just as it was later located up the road from London. At the very least, there certainly must have been a Village in the North Atlantic because Number Six navigated a jet all the way there. -Father Inire (talk) 10:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)