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> The Wrong Prescription
by Clare and Adam
In recent weeks, viewers in the UK finally saw the comeuppance of Erinsborough's very own Dr Evil.
(Bye, Dr Nick!) After being hunted down by the unlikely crime-fighting trio of Georgia, Karl and Brennan, Nick quickly unravelled and before you knew it was confessing his whole evil plan to sister Terese like a murderer in an
Agatha Christie novel. Not only that but he went through a complete character transformation, all of a sudden developing a bizarre stammer (seriously, where did that come from?) and turning on his entire family. Of course,
this provides a nice neat ending to the whole affair so we don't later wonder why none of the Willis clan bothers to attend his trial... Instead, Nick Petrides now becomes the newest face in that club of disgraced family members
who are never seen or heard from again. (Although it was nice to hear in a recent episode that Paul does still remember his other son, Robert. Presumably he's still languishing in an institution somewhere having impersonated his
brother, blown up a plane and attempted patricide.)
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Of course, Nick Petrides isn't the first Erinsborough doctor to get up to no good. Dastardly Darcy was so sneaky it was difficult to believe he could come from the same family tree as Erinsborough's saintly matriarch, Susan Kennedy. Although greedy
and self-interested, Darcy had an infuriating habit of redeeming himself by saving the life of a neighbour just as everyone was about to disown him. During his time on the street he tried to sell the GP practice out from under Karl's nose, staged
a break-in so he could steal the family jewellery, and even conned poor Harold into investing in a pornographic movie. (Alas, The Doctor is Waiting was never released.) His behaviour at work wasn't much better with the medical board seeing fit to
ban him from being alone with female patients. And of course who can forget his greatest moment when he blackmailed Izzy after a rifle through her medical records revealed that Karl wasn't the father of her first baby? Even a spell in a coma couldn't
hold him back. And it wasn't just her money he was after...
Rhys Lawson also resorted to blackmail such was his ambition to become a surgeon. This time it was Karl, who accidentally prescribed someone the wrong dose and let his manipulative colleague take the blame. Of course, all this effort proved to
be for nothing after Rhys seriously injured his hand pulling Andrew Robinson out of a car wreck. He desperately tried to hide the extent of his injury but with that shaky hand you had to pity the patient who came under his knife.
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But perhaps the most sinister of all was con artist Charlotte Stone. With no medical qualifications whatsoever,
"Dr" Stone managed to fool the residents of Erinsborough for an inconceivably long time simply by employing medical student Boyd as her unwitting accomplice. As evil mastermind plans go this one wasn't very sophisticated. Taking someone's credit card
details while giving them a massage, for example, is not the most inspired piece of espionage. But it was her willingness to let a vulnerable, grieving Sky Mangel go down for murder that really puts Charlotte a cut above the rest. Desperate to make
contact with the too-soon-departed Stingray, Sky had turned to Terrence the "spiritualist" without realising that he was Charlotte's partner in crime. After learning she'd been conned, Sky gave Terrence a mighty whack with a conveniently positioned
sugar dispenser before fleeing the scene. When Terrence woke up Charlotte decided to finish off the job and let Sky believe she was the killer. But there was no need for us to fear, because once again the residents of Ramsay Street pulled together to
correct this grave injustice. Who needs a police force when you can rely on friends like these to record a confession, hack a computer or recover their memory at just the right moment?
So pity poor Dr Petrides. He would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling neighbours!
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