Part of Series
‘I’m not a number. I’m a free man!’ January 16th, 1967... A secret agent resigns, then wakes up to find himself imprisoned in ‘The Village’ — a bizarre community with a cheery veneer, but an underbelly of mystery and threat. All occupants of The Village have numbers instead of names, with our secret agent forced to accept the mantel of Number Six. The authorities running this Village are intent on discovering why Number Six resigned—but it’s a secret he steadfastly refuses to divulge. As the drama unfolds, the authorities, in the guise of the sinister Number Two, try ever more ingenious and aggressive means to bend Number Six to their will. All the while, Number Six is intent on two aims: to escape and to find out ‘Who is Number One?’. Episode One: Departure and Arrival A failed meeting in Belgium catalyses Agent ZM-73 to resign from his top secret post, but when he wakes the following morning everything has changed—even his name. Trapped in a bizarre coastal village, and with his every move monitored by the mysterious Number Two, the man now known as Number Six struggles to make sense of it all. Episode Two: The Schizoid Man Six finds himself fascinated by a strange bond which has suddenly developed between himself and Number Nine. But the next morning, Six wakes to find himself changed. A moustache, different hair, and… a new name. Number Twelve. Episode Three: Your Beautiful Village Something is very wrong, as Six experiences the most disturbing sense deprivation. Almost complete darkness, filled with haunting sounds, fragments of conversations, and a desperate call from Nine start to test his reason. Episode Four: The Chimes of Big Ben A new prisoner arrives in The Village. The woman is strong-minded, independent, and refuses to accept her new number—Eight. She is not a number, she is Nadia. And Six is convinced that she is his ticket out of The Village. This set contains four episodes (two 78-minute, feature-length and two hour-long episodes), a Behind-the-Scenes audio documentary, and a lavish colour booklet.
Author
Nicholas Briggs is a British actor and writer, predominantly associated with the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who and its various spin-offs. Some of Briggs' earliest Doctor Who-related work was as host of The Myth Makers, a series of made-for-video documentaries produced in the 1980s and 1990s by Reeltime Pictures in which Briggs interviews many of the actors and writers involved in the series. When Reeltime expanded into producing original dramas, Briggs wrote some stories and acted in others, beginning with War Time, the first unofficial Doctor Who spin-off, and Myth Runner, a parody of Blade Runner showcasing bloopers from the Myth Makers series built around a loose storyline featuring Briggs as a down on his luck private detective in the near future. He wrote and appeared in several made-for-video dramas by BBV, including the third of the Stranger stories, In Memory Alone opposite former Doctor Who stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. He also wrote and appeared in a non-Stranger BBV production called The Airzone Solution (1993) and directed a documentary film, Stranger than Fiction (1994). Briggs has directed many of the Big Finish Productions audio plays, and has provided Dalek, Cybermen, and other alien voices in several of those as well. He has also written and directed the Dalek Empire and Cyberman audio plays for Big Finish. In 2006, Briggs took over from Gary Russell as executive producer of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio range. Briggs co-wrote a Doctor Who book called The Dalek Survival Guide. Since Doctor Who returned to television in 2005, Briggs has provided the voices for several monsters, most notably the Daleks and the Cybermen. Briggs also voiced the Nestene Consciousness in the 2005 episode "Rose", and recorded a voice for the Jagrafess in the 2005 episode "The Long Game"; however, this was not used in the final episode because it was too similar to the voice of the Nestene Consciousness. He also provided the voices for the Judoon in both the 2007 and 2008 series. On 9 July 2009, Briggs made his first appearance in the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood in the serial Children of Earth, playing Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Rick Yates.
