Cabin Pressure is funny because a running theme of the show is Martin asking Douglas why everyone always thinks Douglas is the captain, and never once does Douglas offer the most obvious explanation: the twenty or so years of difference in age between them
so it reads like this:
man in his early thirties: why do they always think you’re the captain :(
man in his late fifties, working in an industry where age typically correlates with rank: bc i have self confidence :)
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With all the wellcrafted jokes in John Finnemore's writing, we don't talk enough about Roger Allam's gloriously hilarious delivery of "Hello, is that god?" after they're hailed with nobody supposedly knowing their number.
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please say more about douglas being abandoned at the altar!! 👀
oho okay. Thank you for asking!
This really starts with my headcanon for Douglas's daughter, which of course requires a headcanon for Douglas's daughter's mother, and all of this has to be as painful as it possibly can be. So I merrily build up this complicated story about how Isobel's mother was the one true love of his life and their marriage ended in tragic circumstances (his fault). I was thinking she was probably his second wife.
Then Douglas said that his second wife wasn't his favourite. So I had to make Isobel's mother his first wife. Which was fine until I remembered the bit about his first stag do. Soho. 1977. His brother, Geoffrey Bernard, Peter Cook, and a Kink. One of The Kinks.
And I thought about the timeline. If they married in 1977, and Douglas's daughter is of an appropriate age to strafe her birthday party with sweets in Johannesburg in 2009, they'd have had to have been together for like 25 years before they had her and this is just way too limiting for Air England debauchery, bisexual antics, etc. etc.
So how do we reconcile all this? He had a stag do in 1977. But he never got the wedding. Or... he got the wedding but not the bride. And maybe this coincides somewhat with him dropping out of medical school. And entering a drunken spiral that lasts for 2 years.
Hang on, I have a snippet of fic about this (which also features Douglas's dead brother, because I mean, his backstory really has to be as painful as I could possible make it):
“What’s this?” Martin picked up a photograph from the counter. “Is this you?”
Douglas tensed slightly. “I was tidying my study and… well, you said something about meeting Seb. That’s the best I can do.”
Martin was quiet for a moment. “I can’t tell you apart.”
“I’m a little taller.”
“On the left.” Martin smiled. “You haven’t figured out how to keep your hair out of your eyes yet.”
“I thought it made me look enigmatic.”
“No you didn’t.”
Douglas leant into Martin as he looked at the picture with him. “Everywhere I went I was always Seb’s little brother. Seb and Doug. Until I dropped out of university and went to flight school. I turned up and nobody knew my name. It was a terrible shock.”
“Wasn’t it nice to be out of his shadow? I hated being Simon’s little brother when I was at school.”
“I suppose it was, after a while. I’d never been anywhere before where people didn’t at least know my parents. It was very different.”
“Why did you drop out of university?”
“I didn’t fancy being a doctor. Too much responsibility. Long hours. I wasn’t really clever enough, or I wasn’t studious enough, I’m not sure which. I’m not very good with other people’s emotions. I didn’t want to turn into my father. And I hate that hospital smell.”
“Fair enough.”
“It was being jilted at the altar that did it for me though.”
Martin gaped. Douglas had said it like it was nothing. “What?”
“1977. I was barely twenty-one. Our parents wouldn’t have approved, so we thought, if we got married they’d have no choice but to accept it.”
“What happened?”
“She didn’t turn up.”
“She just didn’t turn up?”
“Oh, she left me a note. It was all very dramatic.”
“What did you do?”
“Got very drunk. For about a year and a half.”
“That’s it?”
“Eventually I pulled myself together and got into flight school.”
“And that’s it?”
“How much do you want? I qualified at 25, worked for Pan Am for a heady moment, went to Air England, met Julia, got married, had a baby, got fired and divorced, or was it divorced and then fired? Then I went to work for Carolyn and now here we are. Couple more wives in there but they’re best forgotten.” Douglas switched off the gas. “This is ready when you are.”
Anyway please ask more questions or poke holes in this or tell me why I'm wrong or tell me what you think Douglas's life was like instead.
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