Nothing Ends But It Changes

Nothing ever ends. Having years ago read David McDaniel's The Dagger Affair, in which he introduces the Technological Hierarchy, and having just read McDaniel's The Final Affair, in which UNCLE at last destroys the seventy five year old Hierarchy, I should now read the intermediate volume, The Rainbow Affair, in which McDaniel introduces the idea of the three Ultimate Computers. For those of us who watched The Man From UNCLE TV series and wondered about Thrush, McDaniels provides very satisfying answers about the history and structure of the organization.

Thrush and Patrick McGoohan's Village are two successors of Ian Fleming's SPECTRE. In fact, Thrush is a synthesis:

SMERSH was a state organization for world domination;
SPECTRE was a private organization for private profit;
Thrush was a private organization for world domination;
the Village was - what?

Bond defeated, and Krushchev disbanded, SMERSH;
Bond destroyed SPECTRE twice, then killed Blofeld;
UNCLE destroyed Thrush;
the Prisoner destroyed the Village...

The Village imitated the SPECTRE practice of numbering its members and concealing the identity of "Number One." Which state or other organization ran the Village? The question becomes irrelevant as the Village becomes an allegory for society.