The 2008 season opens with the majority of the team held hostage in the Emergency Department at gunpoint, the hospital's pathology lab exploding and a drug robbery underway. This is the All Saints team at its best, with patients to keep alive while their own safety is at risk. The siege unlocks a memory Von Ryan has managed to keep buried for decades and must now deal with. Despite this, Von is supportive when Bart West falls deeply in love with a woman whom he diagnoses with cancer and then later dies. Mike Vlasek donates a kidney to his son and must deal with post-op pain when he can't have morphine. A volatile triangle is formed between Steve Taylor, Gabrielle Jaeger, and Jack Quade with the men coming to blows when personal agendas spill into the professional arena. And finally Dan Goldman and Erica Templeton provide us with the first All Saints wedding since 2003. By the end of Season 2008, when the fights have been fought and won, when newlyweds are beginning their lives together, when the ED family is settled and closer than ever, Admin has been given money to launch a full trauma unit that will introduce new characters to the mix.
Actor Mark Priestley, who played Dan Goldman on the show, took his own life on 27 August 2008. As a result, the show's final two episodes had to be re-filmed. It is presumed that the nature of these episodes, in which Mark's on-screen wife goes missing, led Mark to suicide. The Seven Network paid tribute with a video clip in the following episode, along with actor John Howard in a plea to all those suffering from depression to get help. As a result of Mark's death, the on-screen wife, played by Jolene Anderson was killed off the show as Jolene believed she could not go on playing the role. Mark's final episode was aired on 18 November.
Controversy
The Seven Network faced potential legal action after the airing of episode 432, "Never Tell" on 27 May 2008. The episode suggested that children with Down Syndrome are a result of incestuous relationships, provoking advocacy group Down Syndrome Australia to lodge a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Australian Communications and Media Authority, insisting that major advertisers in the show's timeslot boycott it and asking for a public apology from Seven. In the episode, a brother and sister are told that their unborn child is at risk of developing Down Syndrome as a result of their sexual relationship - according to Down Syndrome Australia, there is no evidence to support such a claim: Seven responded with an apology through a newspaper on 2 June. Down Syndrome Australia rejected the apology on 3 June, saying that the Seven Network's response was insufficient.:
