The show also dropped on-screen titles for the first time in the show's history, the last of which being the episode 'Quinnan: Part 6'. That six-part plot led to the departure of long serving character, PC Dave Quinnan, as actor Andrew Paul exited the series after 12 years. Unlike Paul, who left voluntarily, many of the early departures were enforced as Marquess dismissed a total of eight characters to make way for a major revamp of the cast as part of the move to a soap-opera style series. The longest serving dismissals were that of Andrew Monroe & Derek Conway, with both Colin Tarrant & Ben Roberts sacked after 12 & 14 years on the show, respectively. Their departure came as part of the events around the second station fire, producers following the same format as the 1990 fire by staging a fire to account for a set redevelopment. The events of the fire, which killed six cast members, were preceded by the murder of Conway in a petrol bomb attack. This led to the second major cast change on the series in as many years, following the Don Beech fiasco that saw CID disbanded in 2000. While the decision to remove a large number of long-term characters was controversial amongst die-hard fans, the dramatic scenes from the fire and its related episodes saw a rise in viewership after it dropped prior to Marquess' introduction. The series also made history by airing its first on-screen gay kiss, and while it led to some 170 complaints, they were all dismissed by the Independent Television Committee, who deemed the scene was not "sexually explicit".
