Field Medic

[Bry_Sinclair]

After they got rid of Kes () why was Paris made the medical assistant? He had a semester studying biochemistry (or something like that), and that qualifies him as a medic? What about Samantha Wildman, who was a specialist in exobiology? Or Crewman Jurot (the medic in Elite Force and her back of her made an appearance in an episode)? Or one of the other life science specialists onboard? Surely they would be a better choice for the position.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think it would have been more practical to train a newbie from scratch than to rely on the unmotivated pilot who would more likely be needed to fly the ship during a crisis. Having Kes as the nurse was a somewhat short sighted endeavour to begin with - a 70-year mission and their only nurse has nine years, tops?

What gets me most of all is that in some episodes, the Doc and Kes/Paris are the entire medical staff, yet in occasionally there is a team of nameless blueshirts helping.

They are consistantly inconsistant, these Voyagers.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Wildman was a medic, and she shared shifts in sickbay with Paris, we just didn't usually see her there.

Why Paris?

Because Torres was too gruff,

Tuvok too cold,

Neelix too weird,

Kim couldn't handle the thought of seeing Torres or Janeway nude,

Janeway couldn't handle the thought of staying detached from Chakotay IF she was nude,

TPTB didn't want to pay for another person.

 

[The_Baroness]

In later seasons, - at least until it's lost during the 24th century bits of Living Witness, maybe they could have run the EMH and his backup simultaneously and had two actual doctors...?

Or...based on that episode when Belanna got a beastie stuck to her face we saw the Cardassian holodeck doc helping him, it seems that holo characters of real-life docs seems to have the full medical knowledge of the real person..

Why not set up a permanent holodeck sickbay, make the EMH the CMO and staff it with Holograms of McCoy, Crusher, Bashir etc.....

 

[F. King Daniel]

^I remember thinking that they should have just gone to the holodeck and summomed a holographic Kirk or Picard, then given them the doc's shoulder thingie, and command, last time I saw Janeway incapacitated in an episode.

 

[orthis]

I do agree with your point, but surley the marquee ship would of had a medic on board.

And I do agree, there are so many unamed blue shirts.

 

[Finn]

They could have had Starfleet send them a second Mark 2 EMH who looked like Pulaski to fuck with our minds when our beloved Doc is on an away mission.

 

[Shatnertage]

Wouldn't everyone have some kind of emergency medical training? I had to learn CPR when I worked in security at a university, and I'm guessing that out of 140 people you'd have at least a few with some kind of medic training--or at least a few that could be tasked to learn from the databases. It's not like they have to do open-heart surgery--just basic medical stuff.

But since they can't even master "ctrl-c," I'm not surprised. And it's more fun this way.

 

[Finn]

^with that training, would you be able to do heart surgery, inverted pulmonary bypass and neural shunts?

 

[Shatnertage]

I'd guess not...honestly I don't know exactly how far along in your medical training you need to be today before you can do that stuff. I'm guessing years.

But someone on Tuvok's vaunted security team definitely should have had some medical training--they are first-responders, after all.

 

[Misco]

What gets me most of all is that in some episodes, the Doc and Kes/Paris are the entire medical staff, yet in occasionally there is a team of nameless blueshirts helping.

Why they didn't just drop it into conversation one day that the Doctor was actively training a portion of the crew (read: nameless blueshirts) in advanced medicine/surgery, I'll never know. This would have explained a great many inconsistencies (if not all).

To be honest, remarks dropped into conversation could have resolved a number of the problems Voyager had...

 

[Lynx]

My impression is that when they dumped Kes , which obviously was a decision in the last minute, they simply had no ideas at all to solve the problems with her absence so they simply ignored them, just like "ah, the viewers won't notice".

So all of a sudden, The Doctor didn't need an assistance. The food problem dissapeared too since the Hydroponics bay wasn't mentioned or seen anymore and the clumsy re-writing of "Year Of Hell" had one of its most important characters wiped out, as if she had never been on the ship in the first place.

As for Paris becoming field medic, it was a decision which a real-life Janeway would never have made. Paris was their best pilot so imagine an emergency situation where Voyager is trying to get away from a hostile fleet and really need the best pilot they can have and then Paris is sent to sickbay to help the doctor while "a not as skilled as Paris" pilot has to take over.

Besides that, as we could see in sme early episodes, Paris and The Doctor did have some problems with working together so the decision to have Paris as field medic wasn't realistic, to say the least.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I've never really understood why Jennifer Lien left, was it her choice or was she forced? As Seven didn't replace her in sickbay and the two characters were polar opposites (Kes was kind, caring and compassionate whilst Seven was cold and off-putting, I always found).

Or is there a rule in the Trek creators bible that says no series will have more than three women?

As Lynx said, it's stupid to have your best pilot give up his post to go down to sickbay to do a job he was mediocre at.

Also, like you said about the hydroponics bay, which was in Cargo Bay 2, where did it go after the Borg invaded? Keeping things like the need for food and supplies a constant issue, would have made the series a little more believable (well as far as a ship capable of faster-than-light travel, lost 75 years from Earth, can be believable ).

 

[F. King Daniel]

I heard here that they were gonna kill off Harry during "Scorpion", but he appeared on some "hot celebrity list" or other and they changed their minds. Someone still had to go in order to make room for Branon Braga's then-girlfriend to join the cast (yes, that's how she got the job), so they got rid of Kes.

 

[Misco]

^ I believe Garrett Wang was named one of People magazine's 50 most beautiful people.

To be honest I've always found this a somewhat unbelievable reason for firing/not firing someone. I'm not saying it wasn't the reason just that it's an incomprehensible decision especially considering the nature of Kes's character, whose lifespan was obviously designed to fit somewhat with the presumed life of the show, and whose position in sickbay and Hydroponics was of more importance (and interest) to the crew and viewers than Harry Kim who didn't really do anything interesting character-wise except trail around after Tom. Not to mention that after "Warlord" Kes actually changed and grew as a person or could have done over time if not for the axing of her character. Harry did naff all, over seven years no less.

And I have no animosity towards Harry, in fact I actually quite like him, and Kes wasn't my favourite person on Voyager, not even in my top three but all the same I do think that deciding to axe Kes over Harry was a grave mistake on the part of the producers/writers/whoever.

 

[exodus]

I've never really understood why Jennifer Lien left, was it her choice or was she forced?

Both.
Her contract ran out & the producers decided not to renew it because they felt they had no direction to further take the character in. Lien agreed because she was interested in leaving acting to persue a career in another field of interest.
Someone had posted a link a few months back of a fairly recent interview with Lien and she speaks on all of this.


Here are some quotes from Jen Lien taken from that interview:

http://trekmovie.com/2010/08/10/jennifer-lien-reflects-on-her-time-with-star-trek-voyager/

As Lynx said, it's stupid to have your best pilot give up his post to go down to sickbay to do a job he was mediocre at.

Also, like you said about the hydroponics bay, which was in Cargo Bay 2, where did it go after the Borg invaded? Keeping things like the need for food and supplies a constant issue, would have made the series a little more believable (well as far as a ship capable of faster-than-light travel, lost 75 years from Earth, can be believable ).

There would be no conflict between Paris' job as field medic or pilot.
His first priority is that of a pilot.
If Voyager is up against a hostile species, he'd be required to be on the bridge just like it was in "Endgame".
He couldn't be in sickbay with his wife helping give birth to their first child, his priority is on the bridge.
As we've seen, the Doc needs little help in sickbay.
He only needed Kes when he didn't have a moblie emitter.
As we saw, Tom wasn't required to give more than a hypospray or apply a band-aid.
They have never once shown nor implied that Tom job's duties in sickbay were more important than his job on the bridge.

Neelix mentioned he's keeps the veggies in storage containers now(as shown in "Counterpoint")
Food shortages aren't an issue due to Neelix being sent to trade for supplies (such as food).
Leeola Root was a valued source nutrition which was abundant in the DQ.

 

[Avon]

^'no direction to further take the character in.'

surely you jest?

 

[exodus]

^'no direction to further take the character in.'

surely you jest?

It's a polite way to say they had no interest in writing for the character anymore.
They openly admitted to writing the character into what they felt was creatively a dead end.
I thought it was fairly obvious that after "Caretaker" they had no soild direction on what they wanted Kes to do or become.

 

[Avon]

that could be said for anyone that wasnt the doc or seven.

 

[Lynx]

I've never really understood why Jennifer Lien left, was it her choice or was she forced? As Seven didn't replace her in sickbay and the two characters were polar opposites (Kes was kind, caring and compassionate whilst Seven was cold and off-putting, I always found).

Or is there a rule in the Trek creators bible that says no series will have more than three women?

As Lynx said, it's stupid to have your best pilot give up his post to go down to sickbay to do a job he was mediocre at.

Also, like you said about the hydroponics bay, which was in Cargo Bay 2, where did it go after the Borg invaded? Keeping things like the need for food and supplies a constant issue, would have made the series a little more believable (well as far as a ship capable of faster-than-light travel, lost 75 years from Earth, can be believable ).

She was forced to leave. She had no intention at all to leave before she was told that "they wouldn't renew her contract" (which in reality is the same as a firing) somewhere between the filming of season 3 and 4.

There are some early interviews as well from seasons 1-3, most notably on the season 3 DVD and Jennifer Lien seems happy with her role and the character.

Obviously, when Seven arrived, the first choice was to dump Kim but when a silly inside poll among the staff of a magazine listed Garret Wang as one of "the 50 most handsome", those in charge changed their minds and dumped Kes instead.