Let's talk episode order, a fun topic. Here's a summary of the reasoning behind mine.
Obviously, we start with Arrival.
2nd is Dance of the Dead. 6's newness to the Village is constantly mentioned in dialog. There is some dialog that makes no sense with this episode placed anywhere other than 2nd. And 6 still is naive enough to think he might get answers to his question if he just keeps asking loudly.
3rd is Checkmate. 6 still seems unfamiliar with the way things are done in the Village, and the community still seems unfamiliar with him — an often overlooked perspective that informs much of my ordering.
4th is The Chimes of Big Ben. Here, he seems more familiar with the Village than he does in the previous two episodes. Note that at no point in DOTD or Checkmate does 6 make any attempt to "fit in" and participate in public life (unless you count participating in the human chess game and holding up the whole game by refusing to do his part when he's supposed to). 6's offer to 2 that he'll "fit in" and participate in the art exhibition is significant because it's the first time he has made such an offer.
5th is Free for All. Many other episode arrangers place it earlier, but I find it to be a problematic episode in that early position. Why does the establishment want 6 to run, and why does the community get behind the newbie so quickly and enthusiastically? It works better here. After he demonstrates leadership qualities in Checkmate and gains popular name recognition (number recognition) from his triumph at the art exhibition in TCOBB, it's a little more understandable why both establishment and population might view him as "just the sort of candidate we need." Also, it seems that his experiences in Checkmate and TCOBB might motivate his political agenda "to discover who are the prisoners and who are the warders" in FFA. (This placement also preserves 6's offer to "fit in" and participate in public life in TCOBB as the first such offer in the series, making it more significant and credible.)
6th, TCOBB and FFA lead into The Schizoid Man. After his victories in art and politics, No. 6 is becoming an identity worth protecting, and having a neighbor greet him with "Good day, No. 12... That's what you were called the last time I saw you" is a little disconcerting. If you're going to try to get to him by taking away his "No. 6" identity, this seems like a reasonable time to try it. (See, however, my comments later about another possible placement for this episode.)
7th is Many Happy Returns. The role this episode plays in the episode order is that it convinces 6 of the futility of escape.
The next group of episodes is about how he faces the fact that he's going to be here for a while, and his evolving relationship with the Village community.
In A Change of Mind, he wants nothing to do with the community. He wants to stay alone in his cottage with the door closed, or alone in his personal gym in the forest. The community tries to make him one of them, and it goes badly. He is openly contemptuous of the community's brand of enforced conformity, and is obnoxious to everyone he is forced to deal with.
No. 2 takes advantage of the conflict to subject 6 to false social conversion, hoping to learn something. 6 never conforms to the community, but his act of rebellion against 2 results in the community conforming to him, marching to his orders. He's a respected member of the community despite his complete lack of interest in being one.
6 has stood up to No. 2 and gotten away with it, but is not connected to the Jammer community, so Monique thinks he's a good person to approach for help in It's Your Funeral. At first he refuses to get involved, and treats Monique with the same obnoxiousness he demonstrated throughout ACOM. However, after being persuaded that the threat is real and innocent people will suffer, he does get involved and prevents the disaster.
In Hammer Into Anvil, no persuasion is needed. When the shit hits the fan, 6 leaps into action, protecting the community from a sadistic and dangerous No. 2 and getting some small measure of justice for No. 73.
Now it's established that 6 cares about this community and is a hero to them. In The Girl Who Was Death, it seems natural that Village parents would be comfortable having him tuck their kids into bed at night, that he'd be comfortable doing it, and that the bedtime story he tells them would be about himself saving everyone from an evil No. 2-like character (and that No. 2 would listen in, hoping to learn something).
By The General, 6 is comfortably adapted life in the Village, though still a non-conformist and the last to sign up for the history class that everybody else is taking.
Other arrangers tend to place The General earlier, but I like the way it works here. In an early position, the effect of the Villagers spouting the same answers to history questions word-for-word is just, "This is a weird place." In this later position, we have established that 6 cares about this community, these are his people being brainwashed, and it's more understandable why he's more interested in protecting the community from the "abomination" than in exploiting the situation to try to escape.
At this point, "they" resort to increasingly desperate measures to try to break No. 6.
In A, B, and C, they use experimental mind-altering drugs to manipulate his dreams. It fails, and they do not get the information they're after.
In Living in Harmony, they use a similar technique, fail again, and lose the lives of two operatives.
In Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, they attempt their most ambitious brain manipulation yet, again fail to get what they're after, and lose the life of another operative. (It seems likely the Colonel's primary "qualification" for this assignment is his expendability, but it's still a casualty.)
In Once Upon a Time they attempt the ultimate in brain manipulation with Degree Absolute, fail again, and lose the life of another operative.
They have attempted all their most aggressive mind-manipulation techniques, and they have failed. Operatives are starting to drop like flies, with six deaths in the last five episodes (or seven in the last six, if you use the alternative positioning for TSM). By Fall Out, they're defeated, just desperate for an end to the series, and turn from messing with 6's mind to messing with the audience's.
Obviously, we start with Arrival.
2nd is Dance of the Dead. 6's newness to the Village is constantly mentioned in dialog. There is some dialog that makes no sense with this episode placed anywhere other than 2nd. And 6 still is naive enough to think he might get answers to his question if he just keeps asking loudly.
3rd is Checkmate. 6 still seems unfamiliar with the way things are done in the Village, and the community still seems unfamiliar with him — an often overlooked perspective that informs much of my ordering.
4th is The Chimes of Big Ben. Here, he seems more familiar with the Village than he does in the previous two episodes. Note that at no point in DOTD or Checkmate does 6 make any attempt to "fit in" and participate in public life (unless you count participating in the human chess game and holding up the whole game by refusing to do his part when he's supposed to). 6's offer to 2 that he'll "fit in" and participate in the art exhibition is significant because it's the first time he has made such an offer.
5th is Free for All. Many other episode arrangers place it earlier, but I find it to be a problematic episode in that early position. Why does the establishment want 6 to run, and why does the community get behind the newbie so quickly and enthusiastically? It works better here. After he demonstrates leadership qualities in Checkmate and gains popular name recognition (number recognition) from his triumph at the art exhibition in TCOBB, it's a little more understandable why both establishment and population might view him as "just the sort of candidate we need." Also, it seems that his experiences in Checkmate and TCOBB might motivate his political agenda "to discover who are the prisoners and who are the warders" in FFA. (This placement also preserves 6's offer to "fit in" and participate in public life in TCOBB as the first such offer in the series, making it more significant and credible.)
6th, TCOBB and FFA lead into The Schizoid Man. After his victories in art and politics, No. 6 is becoming an identity worth protecting, and having a neighbor greet him with "Good day, No. 12... That's what you were called the last time I saw you" is a little disconcerting. If you're going to try to get to him by taking away his "No. 6" identity, this seems like a reasonable time to try it. (See, however, my comments later about another possible placement for this episode.)
7th is Many Happy Returns. The role this episode plays in the episode order is that it convinces 6 of the futility of escape.
The next group of episodes is about how he faces the fact that he's going to be here for a while, and his evolving relationship with the Village community.
In A Change of Mind, he wants nothing to do with the community. He wants to stay alone in his cottage with the door closed, or alone in his personal gym in the forest. The community tries to make him one of them, and it goes badly. He is openly contemptuous of the community's brand of enforced conformity, and is obnoxious to everyone he is forced to deal with.
No. 2 takes advantage of the conflict to subject 6 to false social conversion, hoping to learn something. 6 never conforms to the community, but his act of rebellion against 2 results in the community conforming to him, marching to his orders. He's a respected member of the community despite his complete lack of interest in being one.
6 has stood up to No. 2 and gotten away with it, but is not connected to the Jammer community, so Monique thinks he's a good person to approach for help in It's Your Funeral. At first he refuses to get involved, and treats Monique with the same obnoxiousness he demonstrated throughout ACOM. However, after being persuaded that the threat is real and innocent people will suffer, he does get involved and prevents the disaster.
In Hammer Into Anvil, no persuasion is needed. When the shit hits the fan, 6 leaps into action, protecting the community from a sadistic and dangerous No. 2 and getting some small measure of justice for No. 73.
Now it's established that 6 cares about this community and is a hero to them. In The Girl Who Was Death, it seems natural that Village parents would be comfortable having him tuck their kids into bed at night, that he'd be comfortable doing it, and that the bedtime story he tells them would be about himself saving everyone from an evil No. 2-like character (and that No. 2 would listen in, hoping to learn something).
By The General, 6 is comfortably adapted life in the Village, though still a non-conformist and the last to sign up for the history class that everybody else is taking.
Other arrangers tend to place The General earlier, but I like the way it works here. In an early position, the effect of the Villagers spouting the same answers to history questions word-for-word is just, "This is a weird place." In this later position, we have established that 6 cares about this community, these are his people being brainwashed, and it's more understandable why he's more interested in protecting the community from the "abomination" than in exploiting the situation to try to escape.
In my head canon, the General is behind a lot more than Speed Learn.
It's the unnamed computer producing the activities prognoses in IYF.
It also came up with the plan for TSM, explaining a couple of pieces of dialog in that episode. "Bearing in mind it's origin, no, I didn't, and neither did you." (Why would mere humans second guess the General, who is so much smarter? If the General calculates a good probability of the plan succeeding, of course it should be attempted.) "The General isn't going to bite your head off." (It's just a computing machine. It's not going to get angry about its plan not working.)
So the establishment has been relying on the General for more than just Speed Learn, and its destruction and the death of its creator is a major setback for them.
It's the unnamed computer producing the activities prognoses in IYF.
It also came up with the plan for TSM, explaining a couple of pieces of dialog in that episode. "Bearing in mind it's origin, no, I didn't, and neither did you." (Why would mere humans second guess the General, who is so much smarter? If the General calculates a good probability of the plan succeeding, of course it should be attempted.) "The General isn't going to bite your head off." (It's just a computing machine. It's not going to get angry about its plan not working.)
So the establishment has been relying on the General for more than just Speed Learn, and its destruction and the death of its creator is a major setback for them.
In my head canon, the convoluted plan in IYF is even more convoluted than it appears.
Nesbitt 2 is a stooge. He thinks the plan is to get the watchmaker to assassinate Retiring 2 and use the assassination as an excuse for a security crackdown or collective punishment. The real plan, which exists at a level over 2's head, is to get 6 to stop the assassination, and it works!
It's part of a long-term strategy to win 6 over by building a positive relationship between him and the community, and cultivating feelings of protectiveness. The establishment believes that when he realizes they share his purpose — the good of the community — they will be able to win him over. So they set him up to be a hero in IYF, set him up to be a hero again by sending Patrick Cargill to the Village in HIA, and set him up to care for children in TGWWD. So far so good, but the plan backfires in The General and is abandoned in favor of methods designed to produce more immediate results.
Nesbitt 2 is a stooge. He thinks the plan is to get the watchmaker to assassinate Retiring 2 and use the assassination as an excuse for a security crackdown or collective punishment. The real plan, which exists at a level over 2's head, is to get 6 to stop the assassination, and it works!
It's part of a long-term strategy to win 6 over by building a positive relationship between him and the community, and cultivating feelings of protectiveness. The establishment believes that when he realizes they share his purpose — the good of the community — they will be able to win him over. So they set him up to be a hero in IYF, set him up to be a hero again by sending Patrick Cargill to the Village in HIA, and set him up to care for children in TGWWD. So far so good, but the plan backfires in The General and is abandoned in favor of methods designed to produce more immediate results.
TSM is widely seen as immediately preceding MHR. They are the only two episodes to give internal dates, with TSM happening in February and MHR in March. That's pretty compelling, but if you can overlook the calendar dates (or overlook the short time period given in DNFMOMD, allowing them to take place in March and February of different years), there are some arguments to be made for placing it after TGWWD.
I wrote above that TSM follows well after TCOBB-FFA, because those two episodes build up a strong identity for him within the community. That argument applies even more strongly after ACOM-IYF-HIA-TGWWD. In this view, IYF, HIA and TGWWD are all set-up for TSM; build up a strong identity for him within the Village, then see what happens when we take it away.
Also: in the early position, it is beyond obvious that Allison is going to betray 6, and it's hard to believe that 6 would trust her enough for her betrayal to impact him the way it does. Coming after IYF-HIA-TGWWD, it's a bit more believable that there's someone in the Village 6 thinks he can trust.
Another head canon: Speed Learn can not only "indelibly impress" memories, it can erase memories. TPTB use it to make time disappear for the whole Village in TSM without everybody having to be in on the conspiracy.
This positioning is also consistent with my head canon of the General being the brains behind everything from IYF until its own destruction.
What about the idea that 6 gives up on escape after MHR? Is that consistent with his apparent escape attempt in TSM in this position? My explanation: he's not trying to escape, he's trying to find who's pulling the strings. (Would Curtis be dropped off at the nearest airport and sent on his merry way, or returned to the base where he is stationed?)
I wrote above that TSM follows well after TCOBB-FFA, because those two episodes build up a strong identity for him within the community. That argument applies even more strongly after ACOM-IYF-HIA-TGWWD. In this view, IYF, HIA and TGWWD are all set-up for TSM; build up a strong identity for him within the Village, then see what happens when we take it away.
Also: in the early position, it is beyond obvious that Allison is going to betray 6, and it's hard to believe that 6 would trust her enough for her betrayal to impact him the way it does. Coming after IYF-HIA-TGWWD, it's a bit more believable that there's someone in the Village 6 thinks he can trust.
Another head canon: Speed Learn can not only "indelibly impress" memories, it can erase memories. TPTB use it to make time disappear for the whole Village in TSM without everybody having to be in on the conspiracy.
This positioning is also consistent with my head canon of the General being the brains behind everything from IYF until its own destruction.
What about the idea that 6 gives up on escape after MHR? Is that consistent with his apparent escape attempt in TSM in this position? My explanation: he's not trying to escape, he's trying to find who's pulling the strings. (Would Curtis be dropped off at the nearest airport and sent on his merry way, or returned to the base where he is stationed?)
At this point, "they" resort to increasingly desperate measures to try to break No. 6.
In A, B, and C, they use experimental mind-altering drugs to manipulate his dreams. It fails, and they do not get the information they're after.
In Living in Harmony, they use a similar technique, fail again, and lose the lives of two operatives.
In Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, they attempt their most ambitious brain manipulation yet, again fail to get what they're after, and lose the life of another operative. (It seems likely the Colonel's primary "qualification" for this assignment is his expendability, but it's still a casualty.)
In Once Upon a Time they attempt the ultimate in brain manipulation with Degree Absolute, fail again, and lose the life of another operative.
They have attempted all their most aggressive mind-manipulation techniques, and they have failed. Operatives are starting to drop like flies, with six deaths in the last five episodes (or seven in the last six, if you use the alternative positioning for TSM). By Fall Out, they're defeated, just desperate for an end to the series, and turn from messing with 6's mind to messing with the audience's.
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