“The Girl Who Was Death” is episode fifteen of The Prisoner.
A picture book is opened, showing a cricket match at a village. Not the Village. Then the match is shown. The man doing the scores has a gun in his bag, as well as binoculars. He looks at a young woman, then the man batting. The ball is hit for six, but someone replaces it before it’s thrown back. The new ball explodes when the batsman hits it.
A news headline says that Colonel Hawke-English was murdered playing cricket. Number Six is reading the paper. He then speaks to a shoe shine man, who tells him that the colonel was looking into a mad scientist, Schnipps, who is building a super rocket to destroy London. He tells Six to go to a record shop and a particular booth. The woman from the cricket match watches Six leave.
In the record shop, Six is told to find and destroy Schnipps’s rocket, to take over where the colonel left off. Which is at the cricket match, where Six is now batting. The ball is replaced again, but Six catches it and throws it away. It explodes on impact. There’s a handkerchief where it explodes, saying to meet at his local pub.
At the pub, Six orders a drink. There’s writing on the bottom of the glass. It says he’s just been poisoned. Six then orders a wide range of spirits, with the intention of throwing up. He enters the toilets as the woman comes out. The towel he uses to dry himself says to try Benny’s Turkish Baths for an upset tummy. The woman is there, and she fastens Six’s cabinet shut and puts a bowl on his head. He breaks out. There’s a message inside the cabinet telling him to go to Barney’s Boxing Booth.
At the boxing match, the woman is there again. Six is chosen to fight and the other boxer passes him a message, to go to the Tunnel of Love. Six travels through in a boat. The woman is there, too, and she speaks from behind him on the boat. She claims she loves him, as he’s a worthy opponent. He’ll hear from her again. Six turns around to find a recording device left in the boat. He throws it into the water. It explodes.
Number Six then heads to the fairground. The woman keeps appearing on different rides. Each time Six gets on the ride and approaches her, she’s either already got off it, or the woman he approaches is someone else, but wearing the same clothes. Eventually, the woman drives off and Six follows her.
The woman says she will tell him her name. She is Death. And she’s going to kill him. But in an amusing way. Six has to contend with a number of impractical, yet potentially fatal, death traps. the woman is clearly having fun trying to kill him. She even seems to enjoy failing. It seems her father is Schnipps.
Even by The Prisoner‘s standards, this is an unusual episode.