Chief electrical officer
H.P. Wilson was the chief electrical officer (C.E.O.), or chief electrician, at Henrik's in London. He was based in the department store's basement, and was involved with the employees' collective lottery money. On 5 March 2005, Rose Tyler visited his office to give him the lottery money, but learned from the Ninth Doctor that Wilson had been killed by the Autons. (TV: Rose)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
In Russell T Davies' Rose novelisation, published in 2018, he changed Wilson's character to Bernie Wilson, who was instead the head caretaker. When someone at the BBC pointed out to him that Wilson had originally been the chief electrician, he realised that he'd changed Wilson's character to make for a "better story", in the years since the original episode.
Interestingly, "chief electrical officer" is a title which came and went before the novelisation rolled around (before the original, to an extent). Writer Nicholas Carr explained (in The Big Switch)[1]:
As electricity became a utility, a shared resource essential to business operations but inconsequential to competitive differentiation, it no longer required a separate staff to watch over it. It became a routine and largely invisible element of operations, marketing, product development, purchasing, and other traditional functions. Chief electricity officers disappeared, their work complete.
