Explaining John Watson's CV

[wellingtongoose]

(art credit: Shewolf294)

Trishkafibble has done a wonderful job of piecing together John Watson’s CV from the episode: The Blind Banker. Many fans have been very confused by this CV and some inaccurate conclusions have been drawn from the information, still others have decided that this CV is completely rubbish and should be ignored.

I explain:

• Why

Comments

[kizzia]

Fascinating as always, so thank you.

My real problem with the CV is John's age. I can't buy John being 30 in 2010 at the start of ASiP but that is more down to Martin's age, how Stamford looks and the way John is written. The character feels older than me by a good five years and I was 30 in 2010. But that is a completely personal thing, rather than a comment on the meta. That said - do you really feel he's 30 in ASiP? If you disregarding the dates on the CV (which I don't think whoever wrote it thought would ever be in clear, readable camera shot) I mean.

[wellingtongoose]

No, I definitely thought John would be 35 or older again mostly due to Martin Freeman's age, but being 30 really does explain why he was only the rank of Captain when he was discharged.

Doctors in the army have ranks in accordance with their pay grades. Captain is usually what junior doctors who join the military get as a starter package.

[kizzia]

That is very true, being 30 totally makes sense on that score.

Interestingly, in the Sherlock casebook (and on one of the articles you see on screen in S2) there is a newspaper article that gives his age as 37. I tend to go with that rather than the CV as his correct age, but then in my head cannon John has two careers - GP, then Army Officer so he'd need the extra years to make Captain.

On that note (sorry, I seem to be totally tangential tonight) would John have been able to keep up his medical registration whilst being an infantry officer - I mean I know he could keep paying his subs and stay on the register (as far as I can tell from what I've read anyway) but if he'd, say, worked at the Kandahar Hospital in his R&R whilst on deployment and done Doctors without borders in his holiday would he have been able to just pick up his GP career again like he did in TBB?

[wellingtongoose]

He doesn't need to actually do any medical practice to stay on the register. He merely has to keep paying the GMC. To be honest, I think he would have far too few holidays and be far too tired to do MSF. MSF is quite hard to join - you have to be trained in a specific specialities they want and be at least a consultant (senior doctor) for 4 years.

Working in a hospital requires a huge amount of paperwork/clearance really not possible during R&R it's not an informal thing you can just do.

[ree_rhea]

You realise that most of the time in fanfic they put John as having been at Bart's Hospital it's because of the books? Also ditto to why he joined the army so he could pay for medical school. People are melding canon and BBC without thinking about how things have changed.

[ariadnechan]

I noticed i didn't say anything about your amazing meta oops!

Thanks a lot!!

i also believe that the other 3 pages say a lot about John that we don't know because we only see one, and the two jobs are obviously the first ones, the others must be in the other pages.

the guy who did the resume didn't count well the years i believe, because in the interviews with Moff and Godtiss i remember they said they were younger, but not that younger, like Sherlock was 31 in ASiP, so John couldn't be 30, he was at least 35. so the CV is wrong about that, and i don't think John had study in Sanhurst first as a military and then in Uni, as a doctor that had no much sense for the years to fit.

In reality if he was 35 had left School in 1992 or 93 and enter Uni in 1993 or 1994 so he got out in 1999 and then he made the junior years and in some point he went to the Sanhurst by headcanon and then to Afghanistan.

and Martin had finish his A levels in 1988 or 1989.

[rifleman_s]

Thank you. Extremely interesting and informative, as always.

I was especially interested in the bit about joining the army - "...though the ranks do not mean they command soldiers, they are purely administrative."

It was a thing that always intrigued me in M*A*S*H* (don't know if you ever saw it), even though it was the US army - but I always wondered why the really good surgeons only held the rank of Captain while the near-incompetents were Majors. That clarifies a lot; thanks!

I think I agree with you about John probably being bored with simple GP work/training and wanting a lot more adrenaline in his system. Having seen that off, though, on his return he gets enough of that with Sherlock so the mundane is good scenario comes alive and, medical calling apart (though I'm not dismissing that at all), he really just needs to earn money!

Thanks again; these articles are always fascinating.

[bootoye]

Thanks. I had tried my best to read John's CV from tBB but it didn't really mean much for me so thanks for the explanation