Doctor in Charge

- Season 2

(1973)

Eaves-dropping on a conversation between Sir Geoffrey and Sir John Pollock, the head of Highcross, Duncan learns that St. Swithins is to be demolished to make way for a hotel and the staff moved into Highcross. Feelings run high as a result, leading to protests to suggest that the staff are all cavalier and incompetent. However, what really swings things is when the rugby team are made aware of the bad news.

Duncan tries to cheer up depressed Dr. Don Harper, whose wife has just left him, but in vain. Duncan himself is pleased because, though there is currently a dearth of pretty nurses to date, the lovely Nurse Dobbs has agreed to go out with him. However she is actually Harper's wife using her maiden name and, seeing her with Duncan, gives her husband the incentive to win her back.

Due to Dick Stuart-Clark's incompetence a patient almost loses a healthy leg and he gets a good telling off from Sir Geoffrey. When he asks his colleagues how he is regarded they are very honest, telling him he is a rubbish doctor and a notorious skirt chaser. He considers resigning but Sir Geoffrey wants to give him another chance, persuading Duncan and Paul to give him a confidence-boosting pep talk, though, due to a misunderstanding in terms, this almost goes wrong and when Dick eventually gets his own confidence back Sir Geoffrey is puzzled as to what actually ...

The blundering Reggie Grace is feeling ill again so Waring decides to use a new computer to find out what his prognosis is and it turns out that he has typhoid. The hospital is sealed off and features on the evening news as a state of emergency is called. Ultimately a second opinion shows that Reggie has gastroentiritis and not typhoid after all. The machine was faulty - especially when it shows up that Lawrence Bingham is pregnant.

Sir Geoffrey wants bright ideas for the hospital's annual garden party. Duncan suggests a beauty contest but has trouble finding contestants and is upset when Annabel, whom he is dating, puts herself forward, as does Mary Bingham. Lawrence suggests donkey rides but the donkeys arrive early and have to he kept hidden. Paul will do conjuring tricks as The Great Collieto but he turns out to be a disaster as does Dick's puppet show when, after an encounter with Punch, Sir Geoffrey discovers it is a ploy to sell booze and children have to be sent away from it. Amidst all ...

Bingham refuses to recommend Paul to Loftus for a senior house post. However when Lionel Bingham, Lawrence's identical but less buttoned-up twin appears, he impersonates his brother and gets Paul the job. Whilst Lawrence launches a bitter diatribe against how Lionel always bested him at everything, a third brother Leonard, turns up.

Sir Geoffrey is off to a conference in Rome and asks Duncan to accompany him, giving him the text of the speech he will deliver. Paul, annoyed that Duncan threw him out of an operation for clowning around, steals the paper and hides it in an adult magazine, where it is found by Dick, who tries to exploit the situation to replace Duncan in Rome. The paper is replaced anonymously but gets thrown out with the rubbish. Duncan has offered a reward for its return and the reward goes to the cleaning lady. On the tarmac at the airport Sir Geoffrey checks the contents of his ...

Painters arrive to decorate the ward and, as they are in white coats, Duncan mistakes them for new students. The painters do their work but go home at five, leaving a bare patch, which Duncan paints in. Next day the irate painters down tools in protest at his non-union interference. The doctors put the furniture back in place, causing the porters to also down tools. Soon all the hospital's manual workers are on strike so Sir Geoffrey suspends Duncan to appease them. This causes the doctors to go on strike.

Duncan joins doctor Diana - whom he has helped by lancing a patient's boil very roughly - in protesting against the hospital swimming pool being demolished to make way for a new wing. Sir Geoffrey promises to keep the pool but goes back on his word and Duncan, Diana and other protesters lie down in front of the bulldozer coming to get rid of the pool. The driver is none other than the man with the boil and the bulldozer ends up demolishing Sir Geoffrey's car.

The Binghams' marriage is in crisis. Lawrence wants a son and heir but Mary wants to carry on with her medical career. Efforts on Lawrence's part to get Duncan to talk Mary round fail miserably and soon Dick and Paul have been roped into the argument. Since Mary's pet name for her husband is Badger, Duncan wheels a crib into the ward containing a badger to drop a hint in her direction but she explains that she is already pregnant.

Sir Geoffrey and his wife are visiting her mother and he asks Duncan to look after his cat, Thomas, which wees everywhere and is not good-natured. Thomas gets put with the lab animals and Duncan assumes he has been taken away for experimentation. He buys a replacement cat but Sir Geoffrey claims this is not his Thomas. Thomas is saved, making Sir Geoffrey think again about animal tests, but, oddly, gives birth to kittens. Lady Loftus explains that the first Thomas died and she replaced him behind her husband's back, unaware that this cat was a different sex.

Duncan and Dick carry on playing cards during a fire drill, aware there is no fire but Sir Geoffrey is annoyed with their apathy and appoints them fire wardens. Urged by Sir Geoffrey to make the next fire drill as realistic as possible, Bingham causes a real fire but the brigade don't respond as they are used to hoaxes. Duncan and Dick panic and steal a fire engine only to discover that Sir Geoffrey has extinguished the flames himself. When the firemen eventually turn up they are not pleased with the doctors.

In debt and spurned by Annabel, Duncan decides to join the Navy but, when Annabel agrees to marry him, needs a way of getting out, so feigns madness. The psychiatrist testing him is also mad but the Surgeon Commander agrees to release Duncan if he keeps quiet about it. Duncan is released only to find that Annabel has now joined up.

The Municipal and District Hospital Patients' Protection League has received six hundred and seventy complaints about Duncan Waring, and he only has thirty patients on his ward. When the board of governors has a new member, the terrifying Mrs. Broadway, maybe it's time to bring in the charm offensive, since Dick is doing a roaring trade as a medi-florist and purveyor to patients of chocolates which are just past the sell-by date. By the end of the day, however, it's Duncan who wants to complain.

Items are going missing from around the hospital, arousing suspicions that they are being stolen and sold to hotels - until an electro-cardiograph machine goes walkabout. A recently flush Duncan becomes the prime suspect and an eager Bingham pulls all the stops out to catch the thief, but cries wolf so often that nobody believes him when he actually rumbles the culprit.

Duncan re-encounters Irishman Danny Hooley, a former colleague from his medical student days, who claims to have been working in Africa. Duncan gets him a job at St Swithins as a locum, but Bingham discovers he has been struck off for having affairs with patients and Sir Geoffrey sacks him. Duncan tries to hide him in his room but it's clear Danny's days as a doctor are over.