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Blades in the Dark has something very valuable that many TTRPGs lack; the ability to hop, skip, and step over time parameters quite easily.
It's perfectly common for you to roll to Survey a dock for traffic over a a month or two. Similarly, you may need someone's name... and to get it, one of your crew might spend several weeks Consorting to find it.
Maybe in the downtime after a big score, your crew spends months consolidating their hold while the thugs you transgressed make progress in their revenge.
I call this the Narrative Scale.
Classically, you may take a single Prowl to not just climb one wall, but this wall, cross the court yard quietly, and slip a foot between the servants door and its frame, to keep it from locking, and quietly step inside. That may take any number of seconds or minutes.
Let's call this the Action scale.
That 'scale' tends to zoom out more than it zooms in, in my experience.
But in some instances, it is neither months nor minutes but seconds, and fractions of a second, that we want to dwell in.
Sitting at a felted table, your character clocks the quiet click of a pistol. Your compatriot tries to flick you a card from his hip and you have to catch it, without anyone noticing. You can hear your breath catching and what you do in the next half a second will determine whether you live or die.
I like to call this the Heartbeat scale.
It's the kind of timeframe where time slows down as adrenaline aggressively pours through your veins and arteries. It's the kind of timeframe where it feels like the volume of what's happening is turned down... until you can hear your own, throbbing heartbeat.
It's the very moment that matters most.
Afterwards, maybe when the jig was up, the Head smuggler let the mask drop that they knew who you are all along, where they were never really going to let you leave. It's in that moment that you kicked the table, snapped a wrist and ran.
It's back to the action scale as you slide down bannisters, and crash over carts and tables to get out as fast as you can.
And it's back to the Narrative scale when you are back in your hideout and know that they are looking for you and it won't be too long before they find you.
Scaling in and scaling out helps add a tempo and contextualise the narrative arc of a score and its surrounds in a way that can feel quite visceral and taut and bitter.
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On March 11th, 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted the first Star Trek pitch. On that same day, 57 years later, URLtrek will be open for nominations! You can look at the pinned post for more info. Live long and prosper :)
"My doctor has prohibited me from doing any more work"(Zorn Palette), 2020,
The text reads in part:
I really need to transition you to someone who is healthy and can address your needs on a more ongoing basis. Basically my dr has prohibited me from doing any more work like this until I’m done with my drug treatments. I’ve got at least another 7 months, and it is cumulative, so it just gets worse.
Alright, so some of this is just going to be me inferring things reaching and some is going to be headcanons. Basically, this is my take on a timeframe for the events of the show. Am I overthinking something that was never meant to be thought about, let alone overthought about? Yes, of course. But who's going to blummin' well stop me!? 😂
Firstly, The Young Ones originally ran from 9th November 1982 until 19th June 1984. This roughly encompasses two UK academic years, which isn't enough time for an undergraduate degree (most take three years, with Rick's sociology degree definitely and Neil's, uh, peace studies degree most likely taking this long). We know The Young Ones is set in the early 80s, as well as obviously being written then, because of the cultural and political references. Therefore, it makes sense for us to use the 1982-84 timeframe for the show's events. However, to cover the basic three year undergraduate uni experience, we have to tack another year on. I think it makes more sense for us to use 1981-84 rather than 1982-85, purely because the ending of TYO in 1984 is quite abrupt and definitive or is it? They're not dead, for various reasons I won't get into here.
Of course, there is wiggle room concerning where each of the boys are in their uni education during these three years, for a number of reasons. Whilst Rick and Neil are very probably on three year undergraduate courses, since The Young Ones is based in part on the experiences of its creators as undergraduate students, even if Vyvyan is an undergraduate too (which I would argue he almost certainly is), he is doing a medical degree which by it's very nature is a longer one. If I recall correctly, it's about seven years. So, if Rick, Neil and Vyvyan all start their courses in 1981, whilst Rick and Neil could expect to finish in 1984, Vyvyan would not. And this of course is only if we agree that the three of them are meant to be in the same year (I usually put them in the same year for simplicity and because I'm boring). If, on the other hand, we base their academic placings in part according to their actors' ages, this would put Neil as the most advanced student and Rick as the newest. As we're given no definitive evidence that any of the young ones knew each other prior to Scumbag (although, to be fair, we're not given any definitive evidence that they didn't), personally I think it makes more sense for them to end up living together if they're in the same year.
This doesn't mean they're the same age, as uni students in a single year can be a variety of ages - see, Rik and Ade being in the same year at uni despite Rik being a year younger than the "expected" intake for that year group. For simplicity though, if any of the young ones started at Scumbag in 1981 straight out of college/sixth form and at the age of 18, no gap years, no jumping forward, then that would put them as being born between September 1962 and August 1963.
Mike's a different story. Despite a joke in Nasty about him needing his birth certificate to prove his age when renting the video nasty for the night, I think it's fairly obvious he's meant to be a bit older than the others. In Summer Holiday it's basically confirmed that he isn't an undergraduate and is instead a perpetual student, simply blackmailing the Dean for further degree honours despite not doing any work for them. What subject does he actually study? Who knows. That's not important, what is important is that he lives off student grants and can use his studenthood as an excuse not to venture out into the world of work. Ah, the days before tuition fees...
So, how much older is he meant to be than the other three? This depends again on whether we view the others as the same age or not. As a point of interest, Nigel is actually closer in age to Chris than he is to Ade and Rik... though I think we can assume all of them - possibly even Chris - are meant to be playing characters a few years their junior. I usually make Mike at least five years older than the others, putting his date of birth between September 1957 and August 1958 at the latest (which coincidentally was Rik's academic year before he jumped ahead via sitting the 11+ early).
But to get back to the 1981-84 timeframe for the show, there is, in fact, another reason as to why the years 1981-84 work better. Mike says in Bambi that the last time the boys went to the launderette was 23rd October 1981. This means they were living together as students at this time and ergo we can infer they were at Scumbag for the academic year 1981/82.
By this launderette logic, we can also assume that Demolition occurs at some point between September 1981 (start of the academic year) and 23rd October 1981, thanks to a comment from Rick in the episode. Upon learning that their house is going to be demolished the following day, he cries out in indignation that he lives in the launderette. Now, whilst this is clearly an exaggeration, we could infer nonetheless that Rick feels he spends too much time (and money) in the launderette. As a uni student, not having mummy dearest there to wash his grotty gear and having to do it himself would have been a novel and pressing issue, meaning his exaggeration about how much time he has to spend in the launderette makes sense. The fact that he (and presumably all of them) are going to the launderette at all means that Demolition happens before 23rd October 1981.
Of course, you can also easily interpret Rick's launderette comment as complete and utter bollocks - though, to be fair, Mike doesn't challenge him on it and Rick isn't as spotty and greasy in Demolition. We know this is actually just because Demolition was the pilot and Rik would dirty Rick up further as the show went on, but as an in universe explanation as to why Rick appears slightly cleaner in Demolition, reasoning that he was still washing his clothes at this stage makes sense. This would also point to 1981 being their (or at least, Rick's) first year at uni, as they were apparently trying to make a good start with personal hygiene but inevitably let it fall away, something more likely in a first year.
As to when specifically over the course of the next three years each episode of TYO occurs, that's less easy to pinpoint and perhaps not even important. We can pretty much say that Oil is also set in the autumn of 1981, since it deals with them moving into their new house and this can't have happened too long after their old one was destroyed at the end of Demolition. Bomb is set on a Saturday, but more specifically than this we can't say. In Cash it is mentioned that it's September, so with the previous inference in mind, that would mean Cash happens in September 1982 or 1983. I'm by no means an expert on University Challenge, but I assume it would make more sense for undergraduates nearing the end of their degree (and postgraduates) to form teams, so perhaps it makes more sense for Bambi to occur at the end of the academic year of 1982/83 or the start of the academic year of 1983/84, making Cash set in September 1983. As I said, a lot of this is just inference and a lot of reaching!
It's only the last three episodes where I think the air dates matter in relation to when the episode is set. Rick infamously tells the Easter Bunny that it's June 12th in Time. Time first aired on 5th June 1984, with Sick airing on 12th June 1984. This is... a bit of a bloody big coincidence, hm? Doubly so when you have Google telling you that it was Time that aired on 12th and Sick on 5th. Maybe Time was meant to be episode five and Sick episode four, but for whatever reason their order was switched in post production? If during the writing and filming stages of series two, the creators were aware of which air date slots TYO would occupy (which I'm not so sure they would have been, but then the coincidence really is just too good), then it makes perfect sense that they'd have Rick tell the Easter Bunny that it was June 12th when it actually was June 12th. That would be a cool Easter egg pun intended for original viewers. Alas, with Time being episode four rather than five, this didn't happen.
Unless it did? Unless the original airing order really was different but has for some reason been changed on all DVDs and streaming services etc since? Seems even more unlikely, but you never know...
Anyway, the point is, Time happens on 12th June 1984. Well, 12th June 1984 and then some point in the middle ages, after they go through the time warp. Unfortunately, 12th June 1984 was actually a Tuesday, not a Sunday as it's stated it is in Time, and we know it definitely is a Sunday in Time (they haven't just gotten the day wrong after a night of partying) because of the religious music on the radio. I suppose we could argue that Rick got the date wrong and it's actually 10th June, but it seems a bit random that he'd get the date wrong for that gag and it would ruin the air date coincidence, meaning I'm pretty bloody sure it's really meant to be 12th June. Not everything is going to slot perfectly into place with this timeframe - as I said at the start, this was not something anyone was supposed to give this level of thought to.
And Summer Holiday? Well, it occurs during the summer, as the academic year is closing. This happens in May/June at uni but we know it must be June because it already was June a couple of episodes ago. Summer Holiday aired on 19th June 1984, which seems a fine enough date to use for the events of the episode. Since Summer Holiday's plotline actually covers two days, I personally prefer to headcanon day one as 18th June (Neil's birthday, although I have another headcanon about whether it actually is his birthday, which I've explained elsewhere and sometimes insert into fic) and day two as 19th June (bus crash day).
And so... that's my overly detailed timeframe waffling that no one asked for! 😅 We know the four of them completely fucked their exams in 1984, so if we believe they survived the events of Summer Holiday which they did it's most likely Mike will have continued on with his scam, Vyvyan would have continued with his medical degree (possibly having to retake some things), and Rick and Neil may have decided to retake their final year. After all, unemployment hit 3 million in 1983 so it's not like there were jobs abound waiting for them after uni... they might as well continue on with the madness... and then make a single with Cliff Richard. 👀
