The Girl Who Was Death (1968 episode)

"The Girl Who Was Death" is a comic episode of the English television series The Prisoner (1967 series) which originally aired in the UK on ITV 18 January 1968. According to several sources, including The Prisoner by Robert Fairclough, this episode was adapted from an unused, two-part script originally commissioned for Danger Man.

Plot summary
A cricket match ends in a player (Colonel Hawke) being assassinated with a bomb disguised as a cricket ball. Number Six is on an operational assignment, but it is unclear whether this is "real time", pre-The Village, or possibly another induced hallucination. Secret messages are passed to him at a shoeshine box. In a record shop, he receives an assignment to find a Professor Schnipps who has been working on a rocket that will destroy all of London. It turns out that Colonel Hawke was investigating the matter, which is why he was assassinated. He picks up where Colonel Hawke left off in another match, but manages to avoid the same fate. He finds a note to meet a mysterious person at the local pub; while there, he drinks from a glass that says You have just been poisoned. He then starts to drink numerous drinks to try and vomit out the poison. When he goes to the restroom, he gets another message to meet at the Turkish bath. While he is relaxing, a mysterious figure places a plastic dome over his head and locks his stall. Avoiding death, he now gets another message to go to the carnival, to the local fight. Number Six dresses up in a Sherlock Holmes costume with deerstalker hat and cape, with moustache and mutton chop sideburns. At the fight, he is picked for the next match and told by his opponent to go to the tunnel of love. He then hears the voice of a woman, which is a recording in his boat that is rigged with explosives. He tracks down, and is tracked by, a seductive woman called Sonia, alias "Death". She leaves the amusement park with Number Six in pursuit.

They come to an abandoned village, where Sonia has set traps. He successfully evades all of them, goes into a shed to avoid being shot, and rides a bulldozer. Sonia destroys it with a rocket launcher and departs.

Eventually, after faking his death, Number Six tracks Sonia to a lighthouse where Schnipps (dressed as Napoleon) and his associates are based. His lieutenants are dressed in Grande Armée uniforms and represent an apparently anti-London alliance composed of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and Northern (particularly Yorkshire) marshals. Number Six sabotages their firearms and hand grenades, rigging them to backfire or malfunction. Captured, Number Six is tied up and left inside the lighthouse, which is revealed to be the rocket. As it is about to launch, he escapes and the rocket blows up without launching, killing his adversaries.

In the end, it turns out that the adventure was nothing more than a bedtime story which Number Six was telling to three children, two boys and a girl, in the Village nursery. Number Two (who looks like Schnipps) and his assistant (who looks like Sonia) were hoping that he would drop his guard and allow some clue as to why he resigned. But Number Six, after putting the children to bed, turns to the hidden camera and cheekily wishes: "Good night, children... everywhere."

Trivia

 * The episode is a parody of James Bond and the other spy films and series made in the 1960's. There is also some satire of the police films and series made in the 1960's.
 * The death trap stores and names in the fictional village are based on the poem "Rub-a-dub-dub". The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.

Cast

 * Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner

Guest Stars

 * Kenneth Griffith as Schnipps
 * Justine Lord as Sonia

with

 * Christopher Benjamin as Potter
 * Michael Brennan as Killer Karminski
 * Harold Berens as Boxing M.C.
 * Sheena Marsh as Barmaid

and

 * Max Faulkner as Scots Napoleon
 * John Rees as Welsh Napoleon
 * Joe Gladwin as Yorkshire Napoleon
 * John Drake as Bowler
 * Gaynor Stewart as Little Girl
 * Graham Steward as First Little Boy
 * Stephen Howe as Second Little Boy

Uncredited

 * Alexis Kanner as Photographer
 * Peter Madden as Undertaker (opening)
 * Frank Maher as Number Two
 * George Markstein as Man Behind Desk (Title Sequence)
 * Frank Maher as stunt double (Patrick McGoohan)

Crew

 * Written by Terence Feely
 * From an idea by David Tomblin
 * Produced and Directed by David Tomblin
 * Production Manager: Ronald Liles
 * Director of Photography: Brendan J. Stafford B.S.C.
 * Art Director: Jack Shampan
 * Camera Operator: Len Harris
 * Editor: Eric Boyd-Perkins
 * Theme by Ron Grainer
 * Musical Director: Albert Elms
 * Assistant Directors: Gino Marotta
 * Sound Editor: Wilf Thompson
 * Sound Recordist: Cyril Swern
 * Music Editor: Eric Mival
 * Casting Director: Rose Tobias-Shaw
 * Set Dresser: John Lageu
 * Continuity: Phyllis Townshend
 * Make-Up: Frank Turner
 * Hairdressing: Olive Mills
 * Wardrobe: Dora Lloyd

Uncredited

 * property master: Mickey O'Toole
 * props: Charlie Parfitt
 * fight choreographer: Frank Maher

Locations
The cricket match shown at the start of the episode was filmed at four different locations with the main sequences shot at Eltisley in Cambridgeshire, and stock footage at Meopham Green, Meopham, Kent on the A227 Gravesend to Tonbridge Road.

Production Notes
When Sonia traps Number Six in a hot box in the Turkish baths, she does so by sliding a broom shaft through the handles of the doors. This technique was used on James Bond in Thunderball two years before.

The episode features an actor named John Drake in a small role as a bowler in the two cricket matches featured in its early scenes;"John Drake" was the name of Patrick McGoohan's previous TV alter ego in the series Danger Man, which reworked material from scripts not used in the previous series.