Dr. Ridgwell is one of two Doctors with a unique texture (the other being Dr. Hughes). Unlike the stock Doctor skin that features a green Tyrolean hat and yellow wellies, his hat and boots are red. Practically, as with Hughes, this is to help the player identify the particular Doctor they are meant to be seeking out in a malpractice of them. Dr. Ridgwell is currently head of Wellington Health and since Dr. Hughes is the only named Doctor working at Haworth Labs, we can perhaps assume that Hughes is head of the Doctor contingent there.
My favorite thing about Dr. Ridgwell is this memo he wrote admonishing the staff and students for complaining about being made to study botany. Aside from the respect to disciplines peripheral to his own, it also indicates that this is a guy who is aware of the broader community and industry. Which, you know, actually a good thing for an organization like Wellington Health.
Also the criticism of Sally's ability to go into business for herself rather than work towards the greater good. Which is something I rarely see talked about actually. Like, in a post-war England - especially an isolationist one that lost said war and is suffering shortages of all kinds - Sally's abrupt departure from Haworth Labs would be considered selfish and unpatriotic. You do see others in the game approach the precipice of calling her out for this (Harry Cavendish's glib statement that "when love fades, you must move on"; Dottie Lloyd-Ramsey saying that she might have told Verloc that Blackberry wasn't based on Coconut) but their English propriety prevents them from outright saying that her selfishness has caused civic and personal suffering.
Although really, what Ridgwell is criticizing isn't that Sally has elected to profit off her skills rather than put her shoulder to the wheel, so much as that she's been allowed to. Back in his day, if you were that valuable to the town, they wouldn't let you play dickdick with them about it.
Anyway, Ridgwell's also aware of the shortages in his own organization and in the town's population. In this other note to the admissions director, he points out that the populace simply does not have many people in it who can qualify for training as Doctors. Aside from the bad Joy taking out possible applicants that he mentions, there's also the fact that Doctors have a height (i.e. strength) requirement on top of the intellectual demand of the job. Wellies are malnourished (which results in shorter, weaker people), but Doctors still have to be able to lift and restrain patients. Especially with so many of them being plague Wastrels these days. It's like that fungus gives them extra strength or something.
But let's be real, you probably asked about Ridgwell because you want the tea on his rivalry with Verloc.
I mean, Ridgwell obviously has opinions about the guy.
That said, the environmental storytelling of Wellington Health is complicated. The motilene-filled room with Ridgwell's draft letter and the chest? I remember the level designer blogging about designing the environmental storytelling in that area, but I have no clue what the story is supposed to be there. Like, Ridgwell doesn't seem like he's planning to bug out otherwise. That the admissions office has been converted into plague wastrel patient cells? I mean, I guess if you can't find students, you don't need the offices, but there's nothing saying they need the space otherwise. Both of those things are just sort of there, you know? They don't go anywhere with it.
I honestly think this part of the story and accordant level was one of the most contested and revised areas, particularly with regard to what was supposed to be happening here. Then, because of the confused environmental storytelling, there was also confused supposition in the fanbase as to what it all meant.
That is, because of this statue in here, people assumed it meant that Verloc used to be head of Wellington Health. after all, Ridgwell donated a fuck-off big statue for his own office, surely an egomaniac like Verloc would have too.
I do not think this is the case.
Usually when I have a question like this, I start digging around in Poedit to get hints as to what the intent might have been. If I can see what was or where they might have been headed, then I can usually assume whether a detail was revised or jettisoned. But there's nothing in there suggesting that Verloc was head of Wellington Health at any point. And I also think that he's too young to have become head of this organization while still having to work in subordinate roles at Haworth Labs. If he'd become head of Wellington Health, going to Haworth Labs would only make sense as a lateral move, especially for a guy with an ego like Verloc. One does not go back down the ladder. A guy who was head of Wellington Health does not write a letter like this.
Verloc has two statues in Wellington Health. One in the hallway, that he apparently donated himself.
And the toppled one in Ridgwell's office.
That the one in Ridgwell's office is knocked over and vandalized and not just removed entirely suggests that Ridgwell's ascension to that role is recent. And as I supposed in that other post about Verloc and Haworth, there are no statues of Haworth at Wellington Health despite inventing Joy, but there are these statues of Verloc. Suggesting that Haworth is not a Wellington Health alumnus, but since Verloc is, they can be proud of and take some credit for his becoming head of the other (competing) medical organization in the town.
What if the previous head of Wellington Health then considered Verloc's acquisition of Haworth Labs to be his own vicarious greatest accomplishment? I mean, this guy probably taught Verloc, maybe thought he was quite promising. Verloc does have that effect on people after all. Maybe this guy even thought he was raising up a protegé.
But Verloc's also fairly good at hiding his disdain for the people of Wellington Wells and he doesn't need a mentor at this point because he's young and invincible and his uncle is still alive. Also, he has no intention of serving the greater good. So regardless of whatever machinations this former director had for him, Verloc gets his degree and defects to Wellington Health's competitor. Which, that's fine, this former director thinks. Brings Haworth Labs into the Wellington Health fold to have it under the watch of an alumnus. Or so he might have hoped.
Ridgwell clearly never liked Verloc, stating particularly that his refusal to share his healthy test subjects with them is not unexpected. I don't think they were students together, but rather that Ridgwell may have been a professor at the time. Might maybe even advised the former director against investing so much energy into Verloc above other more reliably tempered students.
And he was right. Verloc refuses to collaborate or share resources, which hinders progress for both organizations and is very modern and unbecoming behavior typical of the youth these days. Would that they could just be conscripted still.
So shit plays out how it do, former director puts a statue of Verloc up in his office because he's just so damn proud, but isn't it actually sad because that's not even his accomplishment, it's that of a student who probably thinks about him only as a stepping stone to where he actually wanted to be, if at all. Indeed, we don't even know this guy's name because he's ultimately unimportant.
And when Ridgwell succeeds him, he knocks down that monument to misplaced pride and replaces it with one celebrating his own achievement.
What a familiar pose he chose!
And why not? If anyone is going to save Wellington Wells with the next big medical breakthrough, it'll probably be someone who can work well with others and is willing to entertain disciplines beyond his own field of study.
