| abstract | - Casualty is the second match of the Beginners' Series. This one isn't much different from the previous match Adios Amigos, as it's quite easy to acquire a gold trophy, although you now have to score 15 kills instead of 10, with 30 extra seconds given.
- A British hospital drama, set in Holby General Hospital, which has been going for over twenty years, debuting in 1986. Consists of weekly episodes, about 50-minutes to an hour long, aired at usually about 8-9/9-10pm on Saturdays. Consists of a mixture of medical drama and soap opera. This show provides examples of:
* Accidental Murder: Lara hits a policeman over the head with a brick because he tried to rape her.
* Action Girl: Lara, who had worked in a war zone before arriving at Holby. Kudos to the writers for a getting a Tomb Raider joke in while the time was right.
* Adminisphere: Nathan is an Adminisphere unto himself, so much so that he makes all the other members of management look wonderful by comparison.
* Aesop Amnesia: No one seems to realise that getting too emotionally involved with patients or even just your co-workers never ends well. Much exploited for the Rule of Drama but may be partially justified since there is an element of Truth in Television and usually (but not always) happens to younger characters who haven't been around long enough to know better. Lampshaded by the episode You Can't Take Them All Home with You". Although it doesn't help that characters such as Duffy or Maggie who get called out for being co-dependent on their work life and the emotional problems of others are portrayed as being better adjusted than most of their colleagues despite all of their personal mishaps.
* All Lesbians Want Kids: Nearly subverted by a couple where one of them is eager to adopt a difficult young boy while the other isn't quite as keen but comes around to being a parent in the end.
* Slightly subverted in that Dixie does not fit this trope.
* Alpha Bitch: May Phelps, played by Laura Aikman, to a degree. Perhaps more than Madeline Zima's character on Heroes.
* Anyone Can Die: Doesn't happen that often compared to shows like 24 (once a series/year, on average) but it has happened to lots of likeable characters and audience favourites and, as yet, they've all stayed dead.
* Ascended Extra: Kath - given that she's nearly always in scenes where Yuki and Lenny appear. Provides Shipping material for fans...
* Claire, Ken, Tasha - all extras (playing various hospital staff), who get to speak very rarely, but get mentioned by name.
* The first two mainly appear in scenes where Ruth and Jay are present.
* Attempted Rape: Lara.
* The Baby Trap: Harry accuses Ellen of this, to the point of inducing his own Shotgun Engagement. Turns out it was tumor.
* Betty and Veronica: Harry and Selena seemed to have quite a few of these orbiting around them. First there was Beth as Harry's Betty to Selena's Veronica - although Lara could have also been considered another Betty if you add her to the equation - until Beth was killed and Selena left. She then returned having Harry play Betty to her Jerkass Veronica husband, Will. This then changed to Ellen being a younger Veronica to Selena being the older, more cynical Betty, until Ellen's death. Finally, Selena gets another Jerkass Veronica in the shape of Nathan, with Harry as Betty once more up until her becoming the victim of acute lead poisoning. Would be Love Dodecahedron if it weren't for the fact that these triangles went one at a time.
* Bit Character: Claire, Karen, Tasha, Ken - all extras (playing various hospital staff), who get to speak very rarely, but get mentioned by name.
* And Kath / Cath as well, see the Ms. Fanservice section below.
* The first two mainly appear in scenes where Ruth and Jay are present.
* BLAM Episode: Almost once a series this happens.
* Bleached Underpants: Taken literally in some cases.
* Bouquet Toss: A bride chucks hers at her erstwhile husband and Lara manages to catch it, after which Anna starts squeeing that she'll be next. She is. Well, sort of.
* Bowdlerisation: Watch tends to cut out the stuff that's too hot for daytime tv with the reruns. Resulted in a bit of a problem for To Love You So - but the missing bits from that episode can be seen here, here and here.
* Broken Aesop: Ryan taking off with all of Duffy's money in Hitting Home shows that a relationships can be financially abusive in addition to or opposed to physically. Her later taking him back breaks this episode's moral that still loving an abusive partner or even just trying to hold on too hard to any happy memories will never undo the abuse. It also brings up the rather Family-Unfriendly Aesop that you can buy a person's forgiveness and can also expect them to go to the other side of the world.
* Bus Crash: Baz.
* Butt Monkey: Kath (the highly-popular blonde nurse, Staff Nurse Waters and Wayne (all of who never speak.)
* Captain Ersatz / Expy: Has inspired shows like Scrubs , Private Practice to create expies of their characters! Well, Kath, Staff Nurse Waters and Wayne anyway...
* That said, if Dylan Keogh in Series 25 had a cane, he'd be the bloated clone of a certain ornery eccentric American doctor. (He even has the stubble down! The hell?)
* Cast Herd: Averted rather well for a show that takes place in pretty hierarchical setting.
* Chekhov's Gun: Played with. Each episode will feature several obvious ones, but some or all are liable to be red herrings.
* Childhood Marriage Promise: Duffy said that she would marry Charlie if he hadn't found the perfect woman by the time he was sixty.
* Christianity Is Catholic: Subverted:
* Christmas Cake: Quite a few hot older women in this show. Kath/Cath (who looks about 30ish), Ramona Waters, and Jill (who is at least 40ish). A Subverted Trope, in that the fans lust after these background characters.
* Commuting on a Bus / Put on a Bus : Incidental characters (and Ensemble Darkhorse ones too!) Kath, Rhona, Kojo and Jill - all played by extras, depending on what the writer's opinion is like. The trope isn't fully played straight though.
* Code Silver: Selena's death as this leads to her Taking the Bullet.
* Dangerous Workplace
* Deadpan Snarker: Jack, on ocassion. Like when hiding from Rachel.
* Death of the Hypotenuse: Subverted Selena outlives two different hypotenuses only to die, leaving Harry and Nathan with no one.
* Defrosting Ice Queen: Nadia.
* Delivery Guy: Charlie helps Duffy deliver her third baby at home. Partially subverted by Charlie being a nurse and the implication that Duffy planned it so that she could avoid going to hospital.
* Did Not Do the Research: Although called Holby City and the town is called Holby, -by does not' appear in any place-names around Bristol. -by is from Old Norse by village, and is only found in Northern England and Scotland, so by default it should really be Holton, with the last element being Old English tun village. Holby (or Holton as it should be) would mean either "village by the wood" from Old English holt "wood" or "village by the hollows", from Old English holh "hollow" and the endings mentioned above.
* Disaster Dominoes: Every second or third episode is based around this idea. In the first episode of 2012 for example, a dog escapes from a back garden, this leads to a major traffic accident taking out 5 or 6 cars, which leads to one man being delayed in stopping a suicide attempt, in trying to save the suicide victim and dealing with the traffic caused by an accident, a gas main is acidently destroyed causing an explosion which rips apart a housing estate. This in turn causes some nearby chemical drums to burst, creating a huge cloud of Hydrogen chloride, which ends up getting into the drain system causing part of the town to be evacuated. We end up seeing several hundred people affected by various burns and in the following episode it states there were at least 9 deaths. Oh and all this happens on the same morning that the A&E department first reopens after a major fire so all the equipmenet is new and most of it untested. And this is just one episode.
* Dramatic Hour Long: About fifty minutes, but sometimes goes up to an hour and rarely any longer. One of the few exceptions to this was the series 24 episode "A Day in a Life", which was nearly two hours long, uninterrupted - although it was originally two seperate episodes that had to be cobbled into one owing to scheduling problems.
* Dr. Jerk: Patrick, but is balanced out by being slightly Troubled but Cute and the way he behaves towards Holly and, later, Lara.
* Dropped a Bridget On Him: The episode No Place Like Home, which featured Sarah Beck Maher as a hermaphrodite/transsexual character.
* Dysfunction Junction: In a big way, once you tally up the backstories. If you didn't have a Dark and Troubled Past before you came here, you will when you leave. Brilliantly Lampshaded by a, sadly, removed Youtube Poop crossover with Lee Evans, featuring a group shot of the Series 20/21 cast with the voiceover saying, "You think you've got problems?"
* Everybody Lives: At one particularly huge RTA, Anna sits down with the incident commander and the two of them realise that, apart from one driver who was DOA, everybody made it to the hospital. This is then kicked to the kerb when Patrick goes into arrest before the credits roll..
* Expy: An expy of Miley Cyrus repeatedly appears as a background character. But she was Commuting on a Bus from Holby City
* Also, the (now-infrequent, but not rarely seen) Lady Gaga expy, who never speaks. She dresses conventionally though.
* Fanservice: Multiple times, namely Alice, bit-characters Claire and Tasha, Zoe, Polly and (to a lesser extent) May Phelps (although it's the actress Laura Aikman, who's considered fanservice, not her character.
* And for the women, Adam and Yuki, plus Charlie Fairhead to a lesser extent.
* Plus more recently, Kath, as mentioned below, who for some reason has attracted a fairly popular following.
* Amy Wren, who appeared as Kelly Oswald in the episode The Enemy Within.
* More recently, Staff Nurse Waters, a blonde nurse who has a cult following!
* First Guy Wins: Harry and Selena.
* Flashback Echo: Lara has a very disturbing one during her trial while the police surgeon recounts her injuries to the jury.
* Foreshadowing: Incredibly heavy handed. But they also have a habit of foreshadowing events that don't happen, like you'll see two youths walking precariously along a very high wall, by the end of the episode no-one's fallen off a wall. So it's bit more of a random dartboard working out what the big medical emergency's going to be. But if someone gets into a car it's definitely worth betting that they're going to crash.
* If they use a motor vehicle that isn't a car the chances of a road accident are pretty much 1:1.
* One episode of series 21 featured a shark just off the coast, with people in the water. This troper felt almost betrayed when no one became shark food.
* Getting Crap Past the Radar: Blood and guts notwithstanding, the show has danced around the Watershed through the years, so it has a few of these:
* Ghost Extras: Played straight, but also subverted much of the time too.
* However, some now become Ascended Extra characters. Or fans want them to be, anyway.
* Dying Declaration of Love: Dixie to Cyd in Lie to Me. Plays the Now or Never Kiss straight. Subverts Anguished Declaration of Love because she does it so cheerfully that you know underneath she realises it looks like game over.
* Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Selena, but not before being thought to have averted it. Inverted with Ruth, who ends up only half aborting it and haemorrhaging at a surgeons' dinner.
* Hair of Gold: Inverted. The blonde medical characters are not ditzy, nor dumb, but intelligent women. Not so much for the non-medical characters though, where it is semi-played straight...
* Hello Doctor: Lara. Lampshaded by the following exchange:
* Heterosexual Life Partners: Josh and Charlie. Graduated to Ho Yay when Josh got Put on a Bus.
* Hospital Gurney Scene: Every episode but considering the setting, it would be kinda hard to avoid.
* Hospital Hottie: The characters are considered sexy by the fans, but the sexiness is unintentional on the part of the production team. In fact, they don't emphasise it and they dress fairly ordinary, the women sometimes even have no make-up on (unless they're injured, in which case, it's obvious - make-up for special effects.). Jeff, for some reason is Mr. Fanservice. Same for its Companion Show Holby City. Nurse Jackie takes this Up to Eleven though.
* The Intern: Lenny.
* Though Yuki is a classic example of the trope, especially with his discovery of a severed head early on.
* I Am Not Spock: This applies to Michael French (aka Nick Jordan), Derek Thompson (aka Charlie Fairhead, who is probably the iconic character of the show), // Will Sharpe (Yuki), Sunetra Sarker (Zoe) and the anonymous blonde actress who plays Kath (identity of actress is unknown for now).
*
* Amy Wren, who appeared as Kelly Oswald in the episode The Enemy Within.
* Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Nathan, later on.
* Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only Series 1-3 have been released on DVD to celebrate the show's twentieth anniversary with no plans for any more despite petitions.
* Lady in Red: Lara. See it here.
* Lampshade Hanging
* Lantern Jaw of Justice: Sort of. Charlie imagined growing up to be a doctor with a Granite Jaw of Medicine.
* Les Yay: Selena and Maggie.
* Law of Inverse Paternity: Selena finding out that Nathan is the father of her baby and not Harry.
* Last Girl Wins: By virtue of being a Long Runner this applies for the majority of ships.
* Last-Name Basis / No Name Given: Staff Nurse Waters (a blonde nurse with streaks of purple). First name is never revealed.
* Living Prop: Claire, Tasha, Karen, Ken - all extras (playing various hospital staff). The first two mainly appear in scenes where Ruth and Jay are present. The first two mainly appear in scenes where Ruth and Jay are present.
* Loads and Loads of Characters: Writers are quick to point that staff turnover in ED is actually a lot higher in reality.
* Long Runner: The longest-running emergency medical drama ever. Take That, ER.
* Loveable Rogue: Jack.
* Lower Deck Episode: Expected, in a Long Runner of this nature.
* A Man Is Not a Virgin: Averted with Guppy for a while.
* Maternally Challenged: Selena.
* Medical Drama
* Ms. Fanservice: Kath, the blonde nurse who appears in a few scenes. Here's a photo of her, for those wanting to see
* Ramona Waters. No, don't confuse her with Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead).
* No Communities Were Harmed: though the production has gone through phases of trying to pass it off as a generic Everytown, there's no getting away from it: Holby is Bristol. It's even got the Clifton Suspension Bridge!
* No Periods, Period: Subverted - no one gets periods, just post-partum haemorrhages that they think are periods.
* Non-Fatal Explosions: Lampshaded and then averted in a mid-90s season finale; a man comes into the hospital with a bomb strapped to his back, and in a conversation with one of the nurses, mentions that a bomb in a cartoon would leave you "with a charred face and holes in your pants" whereas a real-life bomb is a bit more damaging. It turns out that this bomb is a lot more damaging, as the bomb's detonation at the end of the story almost totally destroys the (thankfully evacuated) hospital, giving the producers an excuse to redesign the sets for the following season.
* Old Shame: Matt Bardock (aka Jeff Collier the paramedic)'s appearance as a youth responsible for arson back in 1993. That's in the fan's opinion anyway.
* The Other Darrin: Seemed to be a thing with children of staff. Happened to Tally once, although in hindsight this was probably for the better. Louis is by far the worst offender, having been played by about four different actors.
* Patient of the Week: The only time the show averted this trope, it won a BAFTA
* Playing with a Trope: Done to Austin Powers proportions, but maybe not for parody/LampshadeHanging purposes though.
* Pregnant Hostage: Inverted and subverted with a pregnant hostage-taker and another character making herself a pregnant hostage.
* Rape as Drama: Done a few times (as arcs compared to a Patient of the Week plot), but they manage to beat Sturgeon's Law. Happened to Duffy, but in the first series so would now be considered Rape as Backstory. Also to GAWJUS Nurse Tina, proving that even good looking nice girls get raped (actually, to be fair, a rather well done plot line, very well played by Clare Goose)
* Romantic False Lead: Will Manning.
* Runaway Bride: Lara.
* Saving the Orphanage: The department comes under threat of being axed in order to streamline resources more than a few times, and a lobby group was set up during the latest crises. Much helped by Zany Scheme involving a fountain.
* Shaggy Dog Story: Adam and Jessica's relationship. Jessica embarks on an affair with Adam (it takes several months for him to even learn that she's married whilst trying to begin a relationship), whilst her own husband, unknown to her, is also having an affair, which is eventually publicly revealed. Jessica breaks off her affair after her son is almost killed in a car crash, and stays with her husband, Sean, for the sake of the marriage. She then discovers that she's pregnant, and doesn't know who the father is, but decides to assume it's Sean's for the sake of the marriage. Sean finds out about the affair, assumes that it's Adam's baby, and abducts their (Jessica and Sean's) two children, taking them to Saudi Arabia. He also sells their house and clears out their bank accounts, effectively leaving Jessica destitute, having to move into a flat on an extremely violent estate. Ultimately, after the baby nearly dies at 7 days old and she admits to Adam it could be his, she kidnaps the children back and discovers that the baby, Harry, is Adam's. She gets engaged to Adam after over 18 months of will-they-won't-they. However, the relationship comes under pressure almost immediately: on his first day as head of the department, Adam witnesses a junior doctor die right in front of him, when she's crushed by a falling lift in a burning department store he sent her into. Just when it seems like he's managed to find a balance between his work and his family, Sean returns, and the whole relationship is briefly destabilised again as he tries (but fails) to break them up. Finally, their wedding day arrives, but before the marriage is made official, they are called back to the hospital to help with a minibus crash. Whilst the whole family is driving back to the wedding venue to complete the ceremony, Adam has to swerve to avoid a car, brakes too hard, and flies onto a frozen lake. Adam, Jessica and Harry are all submerged (the other two children get out fine), and back at the hospital, he has a meltdown in resus as he tries to operate on Jessica and Harry despite being in no fit state to do so. He then has to plea the only man capable of carrying out Jessica's life-saving surgery to do so, despite said man (Nick Jordan) no longer being in a fit state to work. The operation is carried out successfully, and just when it seems like things are finally going right, baby Harry dies before Jessica has come round from the operation. This storyline has thus far taken two years to get to this point, and if anything it's become worse and worse for the couple with very few patches of happiness.
* Shallow Love Interest: The aforementioned Jessica Harrison, who was introduced solely to be Adam's love interest and spent over two years in the show serving no other purpose than to be his love interest.
* Shout-Out: A rather nice one to Spartacus in one episode, except the dispute is over who dropped a sharp.
* Also to Pulp Fiction, where Comfort and Nikki are seen sitting in the ambulance eating "Big Sahuna Burgers".
* Shower of Angst: Averted - when a female patient expresses a desire to take one of these it sets the staff's outcry senses atingling.
* Shown Their Work: They have medical consultants on the team, to ensure authenticity. That's if you read the end credits. Subverted above in the section where they didn't research their geography properly.
* Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Selena.
* Sixth Ranger: Kath, if the fans get their way. This is the nurse who is the Ensemble Darkhorse, for those not in the know.
* Also rotates between Wayne, Kojo, Alan the paramedic, Ramona/Staff Nurse Waters (who are one and the same) and an unnamed blonde nurse.
* Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: Gets a lot of flack from people in the NHS for glamorising A&E and medicine in general, although it isn't actually that shiny, even going so far as to very occasionally sacrifice drama for a sideplot to show that there are still a lot of mundane tribulations involved in the job. It's pretty close to the gritty end with out being outright grey - uses a lot of blocks of watery greens, blues and formica-type colours and almost never any warm ones, although it is getting grittier in some places and shinier in others as time goes by.
* Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: Generally serious as a rule, usually taking a big but brief swing towards the other end every so often in the interests of contrast, which usually works well.
* Slap Slap Kiss: Lara and Patrick, but with towel-snapping. The rest of the time it's The Masochism Tango all the way.
* Smoking Is Cool: Hell, Lara could make council tax look cool.
* Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Louis Fairhead.
* Soundtrack Dissonance: Have a Nice Day by the Stereophonics plays at the start of episode where Lara goes back to work after being released from prison.
* Spaghetti Kiss: Lara and Patrick, but with the last prawn.
* Spear Carrier: Claire, Karen, Ken, Tasha - all extras (playing various hospital staff). The first two mainly appear in scenes where Ruth and Jay are present.
* Also, Kath as well. Who hasn't been getting any roles lately, much to fans' chagrin.
* Spin-Off: Holby City [set on the wards of the same hospital], Holby Blue [police drama in the same city] and Casualty 1906 [Historical Docu Drama].
* Someone To Remember Her By: Angel.
* Star-Making Role: For Amy Wren, who appeared as Kelly Oswald in the episode The Enemy Within.
* The Voiceless: Kath, Kojo, Ken, Claire, Tasha.
* Those Two Guys: Jeff and Dixie, the ambulance paramedics.
* Big Mac and Noel.
* Throw It In: The extras' dialogue is ad-libbed, apparently.
* Thunderbirds: Comfort became a paramedic because, as a kid, she wanted to be a member of International Rescue, since they were heroes because they saved people rather than killed them.
* Too Dumb to Live: Many characters are introduced in the Cold Open with a confident statement along the lines of "Of course I know how to operate a chainsaw!"
* True Companions: One with a pretty high mortality rate, but it still qualifies.
* Wacky Marriage Proposal: Subverted by Patrick's numerous idiosyncratic attempts to propose to Lara failing, only to succeed when he does it the normal way.
* Western Terrorists (An episode which would have centred around a Muslim suicide bomber was rewritten with animal rights extremists as the perpetrators)
* Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Ever noticed how Holby looks a lot like Bristol?
* Holby is supposedly a town actually on the fringes of the City of Bristol.
* Well, it would appear to be an Expy of Bristol, or at least, the South Midlands. Road signs for destinations there are prominent in some scenes, and the road sign notices would indicate it.
* The BBC will be moving production to Cardiff in 2011.
* Is there anything they aren't filming there?
* Will They or Won't They?: Holly and Patrick. They won't, thanks to bungled contracts.
* Writers Cannot Do Math: When Duffy mentions that her kids are settled in boarding school in Singapore, Paul, her youngest, is between five and six - even if the school billeted him with a host family, it's still highly unusual for a child as young as that to go to boarding school full time (most take them from nine and up). Also, Peter would be 18, which would mean he'd probably would have finished school and could have stayed at home if he wanted. This show does not provide an example of:
* British Brevity: The shortest ever season of Casualty was season 3, with only 10 episodes (the first two had 15 each). Since then, the episode count per season has been rising more often than not, and now tops out at season 24 containing 49 weekly episodes. Some want it to go all-year 'round, but this hasn't happened...yet.
- The producer was Geraint Morris. The programme is based around the fictional Holby City Hospital and focuses on the staff and patients of the hospital's Accident and Emergency Department. The show has very few ties to its sister programme Holby City which began as a spin off from Casualty in 1999 and is set in the same hospital, but upstairs. The show's plots and characters occasionally crossover between the two programmes, but this is rare, and each show can be followed without having to watch the other. Casualty is shown weekly, with the exception of a break in the summer when the series ends. This break is usually anything between 3 to 6 weeks.
- A casualty is a person who suffered an accident, injury, or other trauma. It often referred to fatalities, but non-fatal injuries were also considered casualties. Military use indicated those combatants rendered combat-ineffective, whether by death, injury, or capture. Civilian casualties was a military term that described civilian or non-combatant persons killed or injured by military action. During wars, such as the Dominion War, the numbers of casualties would increase significantly, especially among military personnel. Lists of casualties:
* Alternate reality casualties, casualties from the alternate reality
* Bajoran Militia casualties, casualties from the Bajoran Militia since its formation in 2369
* Civilian casualties, casualties among civilians, and irregular military forces such as the Bajoran Resistance, non-Starfleet members of the Maquis, and the Cardassian Rebellion
* MACO casualties, casualties from United Earth's Military Assault Command Operations units
* Mirror universe casualties, casualties from the mirror universe
* Starfleet casualties
* Starfleet casualties (22nd century), casualties from the United Earth/Coalition of Planets/Federation Starfleet between the years 2101 and 2200
* Starfleet casualties (23rd century), casualties from the Federation Starfleet between the years 2201 and 2300
* Starfleet casualties (24th century), casualties from the Federation Starfleet between the years 2301 and 2400
* Vulcan casualties, casualties from Vulcan's non-Starfleet military and intelligence branches This article or section needs attention This page or section has been identified as needing attention. Please visit the article's talk page to see what needs fixing and feel free to [ edit] this page to assist with this task.
- Casualty is the long running hospital drama set in the emergency department of Holby City Hospital. It is one of the longest running British television shows, having been on air for over 30 years. Casulaty's sister show, Holby City, has been on air since 1999 and has aired almost 800 episodes across 17 series, whereas Casualty had only aired 400 by the end of its 17th series. This is due to the fact that earlier series of Casualty contained far fewer episodes when every since the 4th in Holby City has contained 52. Casualty's exterior shots were mainly filmed outside the Ashely Down Centre in Bristol from 1986 until 2002 when they moved to the Centre of Bristol for just over 9 years. Then in 2011 Casualty celebrated its 25th birthday following that for the Bristol finale they filmed the ED catching fire and exploding. After 25 years in Bristol, Casualty moved to its new home at the Roath Lock Studios in Cardiff where it is currently filmed today.
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