It starts with the new Number 2 visiting Number 6 while dressed as Jacob Marley, wearing a long chain wrapped around him. Number 6 enters into the spirit of the thing by asking, in the manner of Scrooge,
"You are fettered. Tell me why?"
"That would be telling," comes the predictable response.
Number 2 then warns him that this night he will be visited by three spirits. Number 6 scoffs at this, but soon finds himself drugged asleep (as usual) and when he wakes up he is confronted by...
"Who, and what are you?" demands Number 6.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"A?"
"I said, 'I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.'"
"I already thought this plot was structurally similar to A. B. and C. but this just confirms it. What do you want?"
"Why did you resign?"
"Spirit!" says Number 6 in his most defiant voice, "remove me from this place!"
By thus short-cutting the scene, the vision fades before Number 6's eyes, and is replaced with...
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me!"
"You look more like the Ghost of Space 1999. I suppose you're going to ask me why I resigned as well?"
"Well, since you mention it, my boy, why did you resign?"
"There are some upon this Earth of yours," returned Number 6, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of pushing, filing, stamping, indexing, briefing, debriefing, and numbering, in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
After a pause (i.e. an ad break), the spirit continued his plan, though without much optimism, and brought forward the two smaller spirits he had accompanying him.
"Aren't you going to ask me about..?"
"The boy is Ignorance, the girl is Want. As in: you are Ignorant of the reasons why I resigned, and you Want to know what they are."
After that, Number 6 silently stared down the spirit until he shuffled away, and the vision moved on to...
"Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?"
The third spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us?" Number 6 pursued.
"Isn't that a tad spoiler-y?"
The vision is interrupted by the Colonel, who says
"Quite agree. Quite agree. Silly. Silly... silly."
"No," says Number 6, "I said 'spoiler-y.' Besides, Monty Python isn't going to start for another two years, so the general public's not going to understand this, are they?"
"If you're worried about what the viewers at home are going to think, my lad, have I got 'shadows of the things that will be' for you..."
Enter Cobb very suddenly.
"I thought I was supposed to play the Ghost of Christmas Past?"
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