A cricket match is taking place, but it is not clear whether this is before or after Number Six was kidnapped, or indeed if it’s really happening at all. A cricket-player named Colonel Hawke-Englishe is killed by a bomb in a cricket ball. When Number Six takes his place, he survives by catching the ball and throwing it away instead of hitting it with the bat. He is given a message at a shoeshine stand to go to a music shop. His assignment is to find a Professor Schnipps (Kenneth Griffith) who has developed a rocket that will destroy London, which mission had been that of the late Colonel Hawke-Englishe. Another note tells him to meet someone at the local pub. There is writing at the bottom of his glass which is revealed as he drinks it. The writing says, “You have just been poisoned.” He downs a series of drinks to induce vomiting.
In the restroom, there is another message to meet someone at the Turkish Bath. While he is relaxing in a steam-bath, the door is locked shut with a broom-handle. This is precisely what happened to James Bond in Thunderball (1968). He escapes dressed as Sherlock Holmes with a deerstalker cap, mutton-chop whiskers and a moustache. By now, we are beginning to understand that the entire caper is imaginary, although the costume was really to disguise McGoohan’s double, Frank Maher, so McGoohan could be away filming Ice Station Zebra.
The next message tells him to go to the Tunnel of Love at the carnival, where he is stalked by a woman named Sonia (Justine Lord), who calls herself Death. He avoids being blown up by a bomb and survives a roller-coaster ride and various booby-traps in abandoned buildings—the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Finally, she shoots at him with a machine-gun and a rocket-launcher as she is dressed as a WWI German soldier, and she thinks she has killed him. She takes off in a helicopter, but he hides in its undercarriage to follow her. Her father, Professor Schnipps, is at a lighthouse which is really a rocket ready to blow up London. He believes he is Napoleon and is dressed that way, and his minions are dressed as Napoleonic era soldiers.
Number Six sabotages all their weapons to self-destruct and eventually the rocket blows up, killing father and daughter as Six escapes in a motorboat. Turns out it is all a silly bedtime story he is reading to some children in the Village, monitored by Number Two (Schnipps) and his assistant (Sonia). They are disappointed that he did not reveal any secrets in the story and, after the children are put to bed, Number Six turns to their camera and says Good Night, Children.
The episode was written by Terence Feely and directed by David Tomblin. The script was originally written for McGoohan’s previous series Danger Man, but never used. One of the actors in the cricket scene was actually named John Drake, like Danger Man. Two other actors in the episode had been in the previous series. Number Six uses a gun in this episode, which only happened in three of the seventeen episodes. Apparently, it was during filming of this one that McGoohan was informed that the series was cancelled and he had to come up with a final episode in short order. I can’t help thinking that they should have done only six episodes like McGoohan wanted, because this one really sucks.