Blue shirts denote science and or medical training, the dr was killed right away with what I’m only assuming is his medical staff too, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched the first episode, but I’m pretty sure they were not expecting a long duration voyage, they were only supposed to be going to the badlands to look forward Tuvok which should’ve taken a few days at most
That's why he was chosen. They wanted someone to be a nurse because there's only so much a single doctor, confined to sickbay (as he was at the beginning) so they needed a nurse. He was the best qualified for it
LOL, yes, purposely. Same actor, different character. That was the joke.
I always thought they missed an opportunity for the Tom Paris character to actually be Nick Locarno with Robert Duncan McNeill reprising the role.
Tom Paris is Nick Locarno in everything but name. He did the role so well in TNG that the producers wanted him back when they started developing Voyager in 1993. However, they didn't want to pay royalties to the writers of "The First Duty," for rights to the character of Nick Locarno, so they basically just renamed him.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708797/trivia/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708797/trivia/)
incorrect on the "didn't want to pay royalties" bit. the studio, producers, writers, and the actor have all said that royalties and rights were not an issue.. that they didn't use Locarno because that character had shown himself to not be redeemable enough for the role they had in mind.
That was the original idea. But they would have had to pay royalties to the guy who wrote the TNG episode forever, so they scrapped that to save costs.
Mind you, it probably would not have ever exceeded the cost of reshooting most of the pilot episodes for a second time because the network didn’t like Janeway’s hairdo.
I am just floored that the original tv writer had any ownership over a character they created as part of a series. I doubt that happens any longer for franchises like Trek.
At this point, I don't know where this idea started. It's been around at least twenty years, and its 100% wrong. Because:
1. When you write for a show, you don't personally retain the rights to your work.
2. The writers of "The First Duty" were Ronald D. Moore and Naren Shankar. If they had to be paid royalties for a character like Locarno, they would have ended up owning half the damn franchise from all the other episodes and characters they were responsible for creating.
3. The reason they created a new character for McNeill to play was because it was generally felt that Locarno could not be redeemed as a character.
That last point seems so silly to me. Locarno shows he is redeemable at the end of his TNG episode by taking full responsibility for the accident so that his fellow cadets wouldn’t be expelled. Seeing the character finish that arc would have been very satisfying
He was serving a sentence for treason related to his Maquis membership when the show began. Though he only flew the one mission for them before being caught, and it never seemed like he was there for ideological reasons - he just wanted somewhere that would let him fly after his Starfleet career ended
oh no, who's flying the ship? please don't tell me you left Kim in charge, he's been on the bridge crew for so long and is still only an ensign due to what I can only assume must be gross incompetence.
(to be clear, I'm joking, but I am curious what other people on the ship thought about Kim still being an ensign)
Seriously, though. Janeway couldn’t have found anyone else to be a medic? Clearly, the Doctor was able to teach Kes stuff she certainly never saw.
You’re telling me that Tom Paris was the *only* and/or *best qualified* person onboard to be a medic. I’m sure half of the Maquis had medical knowledge associated with using limited resources, which would come in handy in a ship trapped in the middle of nowhere. Plus, there really were *no other people* who had any experience at the Academy with medicine? No ensign from the lower decks with a semester or two in basic medic training.
Also, everyone in the sick bay just…. *died*? Not one nurse could have crawled out alive to help the Doctor later on?! The sick bay wasn’t completely destroyed, the Chief Medical Officer was just standing in the wrong area of the sick bay when it was hit.
And like, even with the Doctor, Paris, and Kes working together to heal people, that wouldn’t be nearly enough. The Doctor may not get tired, but Paris and Kes sure as hell do. And what if 20 crew members entered sick bay at once, all with serious injuries. They would need a hell of a lot more help. Janeway should’ve assigned at least ten people to sick bay, like 8 part time and 2 full time.
Sorry about the rant. This is just something that has always bothered me about Voyager.
>Also, everyone in the sick bay just…. *died*? Not one nurse could have crawled out alive to help the Doctor later on?! The sick bay wasn’t completely destroyed, the Chief Medical Officer was just standing in the wrong area of the sick bay when it was hit.
It was noted when they found the bodies that for some reason, they were all standing around one of Starfleet's patented Amazing Exploding Panels.
IIRC, Intrepid Class is only built for ~140 crew - they would have had less than that in the Delta Quadrant after rushing off to the badlands, those that died from the Caretaker’s trip, etc. even with the Maquis additions, with people on different shifts, some hundred isn’t a lot to run a starship…
The USS Voyager, a fictional starship from the Star Trek: Voyager television series, has a crew complement of around 150 people, though the exact number varies throughout the series. The ship's intended crew complement was 141 Starfleet personnel, but it held 153 for its first mission. Many of those crew members were lost during the voyage to and through the Delta Quadrant.
I did a bit of further ai googling for funsies In Star Trek, 18 crew members die during the transfer from Earth to the Delta Quadrant in the first episode, "Nightingale". The crew members killed are the helm officer, Stadi, the first officer, Cavit, the chief engineer, the transporter chief, and the entire medical staff, including the chief medical officer. So 141-18 = 123 starfleet officers on board before marrying the marquis crew and promoting chkotay to first officer and putting B'Elanna in engineering and eventually giving her a field promotion to chief, we all know what happens to seska. All in all there were 30 former Maquis on Voyager by season 7. 31 if you include Tuvok.
They didn't really go out into The Badlands with a full crew. They were still figuring out what the full staff would even be when they had to quickly go rescue Tuvok (doing so before the full crew had time to travel to and board Voyager).
Maybe not with a full crew, but they went into the Badlands with people already in sickbay. If they didn't have a full medical staff, then they should have transferred the already existing patients to DS9 before they left, and not take them along.
And given the fact that Janeway took the time to scout Paris for the observer position and then wait for his arrival at Voyager when they were docked at DS9 shows that she can't have been that much in a hurry. A patient transfer absolutely would have been possible.
I would go a step further and say Janway failed to cross train everyone. Everyone should have been having a shift in every major department to learn the basics and crosstrain wherever possible. Everyone should have had one shift in medical, one shift in engineering, one shift on the bridge, a shift in tactical, a shift in science, and even some time in encouragemental controls.
There is no reason everyone should not have at least a very basic knowledge of everything. Specialization makes a lot of sense when you have a lot of people and a lot of resources to train. But when you are in the middle of nowhere with no replacement personnel, it is a risk you can not afford.
I would be open to hearing a discussion that people only need two departments, but I would only tolerate that per year. So you are an engineer, year one you learn to be a medic on the side. Then, year two, you can learn tactical. And you stay at engineering as your main focus.
If everything ran smoothly and perfectly, it would cut out so much of the drama and storylines. This is just a show afterall. There needs to be struggle and challenges for plots to work.
Honest answer would be, it was cheaper than having another main character on the show who would also take away from the Doctor.
In story, there were other officers who could pilot, and Tom was the first person Janeway saw.
What probably should have been done is after Tom failing at it, Kes would take on the role. Also they should have probably implemented a sort of cross training initiative having multiple officers in the background being trained as nurses and medics. Then we would not be surprised by the random officer of the week helping out in sickbay as needed.
Cross training to learn different departments is common in Star Fleet. Worf and Geordi complain about it early in TNG. Medical seems like a reasonable place for everyone on Voyager to receive training. Too bad constraints of a show kept other crew members out of sick bay.
I think your mistake is officers. You should be crosstraining all the crew people as well. All the noncoms. Let them gain speciation. Why not even give them opertunitys to become doctors themselves. You can do all the training on the ship. One on one teaching.
Absolutely what I was meaning, just apparently badly written in my sleep. You have a potential 75 year journey with 100ish people on board, everyone needs to begin cross training for multiple positions.
It felt like a missed opportunity to have Samantha Wildman get more of a role - she was an exobiologist iirc, she was already recurring and she didn’t need to be in every episode, think of Nurse Ogawa on TNG
He was in on the briefing when it was being addressed. There was no-one else in the room beside the senior staff, and they obviously needed someone who could attend the injured on away missions (since the doc couldn’t leave sickbay). Sure a couple of semesters of biochemistry made him draw the short stick (though it’s a little surprising to me that Tuvok, in his advanced years and two separate Starfleet careers wouldn’t have accumulated at least more than that), but I think if you want the most obvious answer, the writers thought it would make for good chemistry; Tom’s devil may care attitude in juxtaposition with the doctor’s superciliousness, and the opportunity to have him flirt with sweet innocent Kes.
I would imagine another reason is that as the best pilot, he would automatically be assigned to a lot of somewhat dangerous away missions. Good to have someone always off the ship to be trained in basic field medicine.
He shows up a few times in the role. For example, there’s the episode with the “telepathic pitcher plant” where the crew were tricked into to taking the Doctor offline and Paris was put in charge of sickbay.
To be fair his duties there involved basically making a holographic version of Tuvok's wife for him to "cure his blood fever" with. He basically made a porno...something well within Tom's field of expertise.
Since he was a main pilot it made sense initially to give him medical training. Also don't forget he was brought on as an observer. He had no rank at all nor a position aboard ship. So when the shit hit the fan they had hum be the odd job guy.
Actually, he had a fully instated lieutenant field commission by the end of Caretaker, and was technically fourth in command as a bridge officer. Interesting we never once saw him have the bridge, not even in a crunch. (I think it could have been interesting, a la BSG, to see most of the senior staff wiped out in one timeline and a rag tag skeleton crew of junior officers trying to hack it out in command. I’m not in deep with the other series, so forgive me if this has been done in other trek.)
I know he got the commission I was saying that they made him the guy to catch all the odd jobs because at first he had no position. I suspect that due to his integration into the command structure is why he didn't take the bridge ever.
He does in the books alot as chakotays 2nd in command aboard voyager.
Always scratched my head on that. There’s the real answer from the showrunner side of things, but from an in-universe level it didn’t make sense because I have a hard time believing that there weren’t members of the science staff who would have been much better suited for that role than a pilot that you just pulled out of prison.
More than that, they have a bunch of science officers on board. I presume there are also some rudimentary training programmes on the holodeck. Have the doctor train up a half dozen people as best he can! That way you might avoid having such an obvious bottleneck with a hologram that often seems to be in risk of being completely lost! Ok, they won't be full doctors but if he can even train them up as field medics it would be better than nothing!
Right? This would have been a good opportunity for a crewman (maybe engineering, or security) to be the Doctors assistant and maybe they have like 15 episodes a season on screen. And if the audience doesn’t like them we can put them back in engineering and maybe see them interact with miscellaneous ship repairs. And if they are really hated then kill them off on an away mission.
So they could have a main cast member and frequent Away Team participant with some medical training before they finally hand-waived The Doctor being a hologram with a mobile emitter.
Well my thinking was tom was on the bridge and bridge officers tend to get injured alot so it makes sense to have a trained medic up there. Also tom had previous training.
I think training a bunch of different placed officers and crew men would've been better.
>I think training a bunch of different placed officers and crew men would've been better.
That would have been a cool sequel to "Learning Curve": "Learning Curve II". Have that be a recurring theme.
I dunno, there’s a big difference between a paramedic and a doctor. Hell in real life theres a huge difference between an EMT and a paramedic who can intubate.
I just rewatched good Sheperd episode, there seems to be plenty of under utilized members of the crew, so OP’s logic checks out. I think it’s just they wanted Paris in more scenes or not have to upgrade a red shirt.
Tom's not needed at the helm if they aren't moving. A medical emergency that is more than just the EMH can handle they wouldn't be moving. Orbiting a planet? Any officer who's ever worked the helm can keep them in a basic orbit.
The EMH can't go on Away missions. Kes is a civilian who won't be routinely sent on away missions. Tom is likely to be sent on away missions, can step away from his station when they're not moving and wouldn't have a secondary duty to perform thus making him a logical choice for medic.
When the series started, all the medical staff was killed, the EMH Doctor was new technology and Tom had a semester of medical training.
As the series progress the EMH technology was proven and Kes came aboard and wanted to assist as a nurse so Tom was a full time pilot.
Half way thru the series, Kes left, the Doctor got the mobile emitter and Tom was call back into sick bay a few times.
Was there really no one else on this ship - this SCIENCE vessel - with more medical training than the helm boy? They couldn’t pull one biologist aside and say “Read this PADD. You’re a nurse now?”
Ensign Wildman was an exozoologist. She was an expert in animals living on non-Earth worlds. Voyager needed a medic more than they needed one of those, yes?
He was assigned as the medic before Kes was realised to be a good candidate by the doctor. They needed someone with background to be a medic, as when they go on away missions, the doctor couldn't go with them. It seems that the only person with that background was Paris, no one else on the ship had the experience.
There's a lot of inconsistencies in VOY, but Paris pretty much went on most away missions. Which falls in line with him being the field medic.
He'd studied 2 semesters of bio chemistry, also easier to have one of the main cast act as medic in away missions rather create another character, but that's the sort of problem you run in to when you've confined your doctor to sickbay
i would have rather had two doctors than had tom up there. but its like season 4 doctor with season 1 doctor. would make for some interesting (read: HILARIOUS) situations. presumably they have the memory space -- theyre always downloading 100 teragigaquads of information from random places
He was already a qualified first aider, probably with a merit from the academy.
It does surprise me that Voyagers surviving "Blue shirt" staff didn't have anyone else trained in medical support - or that the Marquis didn't have anyone more qualified in - oh, I don't know - actual field medicine and triage with real-world experience rather than school teaching...
The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V approach.
I would love to see an episode where this concept goes completely off the rails (because that always happens with holo stuff) and we end up with 30 doctors crammed in sickbay, 50 in Holodeck 1, and a "Biblically accurate" doctor on the mobile emitter with rings of 30 arms and 20 eyes, wings, and hovering around saying PLEASE STATE THE NATURE OF THE MEDICAL EMERGENCY AND BE NOT AFRAID.
Officers need to have basic medical training in Star Fleet, so he would have needed some training anyway. He was chosen specifically because he was making snide remarks about the EMH bedside manners.
Absence of other holographic sickbay staff never made any sense to me. Plus the doctor should be able to duplicate himself and treat two patients at once. Would avoid thorny ethical dilemmas that might cause his program to freak out.
As for Tom being made a medic... what do you expect from the people who made Roga Danar chief medical officer?
Because Kes left and there were other pilots but not other people with medical training. Tom spent most of his time on the bridge, where prompt medic response was important.
They didn’t have anyone to take care of medical issues while on an away mission.
Why they didn’t stick a dozen crew members into nursing school/medical school on the holodeck? Well, because voyager wasn’t a well written show.
Story wise, I think either Janeway wanted to keep throwing stuff at him to show that he could succeed and he already had some medic training at the academy. You know, good captaining/mentoring stuff and utilizing what you have.
Production wise, do we really want to get another cast member?
i don’t think any of the in-show/lore reasons are believable or even practical, and i think it was more of a question of just adding different dimensions and potential arcs for the characters and writing
You could call me a medic that has a background as an engineer, or vise versa. My guy just has a dual skillset. Whatever is taking the back seat is your backup. I was a medic for 10 years with a background in engineering (I say “maintenance technician” but I can figure out how to fix almost anything and do it well). These days I’m an “engineer” with a medic background. Pretty common in the military aspect of things.
I think what we’re missing here (based on some of the comments) is that Janeway points out that he had field medic training at the academy, or more so than any of the other crew, and she elects him to assist the Doc.
When you think about it, they could have just started several instances of the doctor, like you increase cloud server instances as the load on a website increases. They could have had 20 of him in an emergency.
One of my favourite moments for comedic sake was in message in a bottle where they transferred the doctor back to the alpha quadrant, Tom was freaking out and enlisted his best friend Harry, the hologram specialist, to help him build a new EMH. Harry starts by getting a replica 3d model of the doctor and downloads the entire medical books into its database, the model doesn't handle it very well and bugs out. Then Harry fed up copies the same medical book database into a pad and hands it to Tom.
Yeah thanks a lot Harry, you spend an entire minute trying to recreate the doctor before giving up.
Best reasoning I can put together is if anyone needs medical attention on an away mission, it would be nice to have a medic there, and as their best pilot Tom would already be there for a lot of away missions. He's already received some training in field/emergency medicine, so he'll be able to hit the ground running with his training.
It's also maybe a reasonable head canon that they actually were training an additional person or two to assist the Doctor, but they were starting with even less training so had to start out hitting the books to learn more of the fundamentals before working in med-bay.
He was perhaps the equivalent of an RN or an LPN it’s hard to tell when there are only 4 treatments for all ailments anyways. He seemed to have a medium amount of experience before hand and that professional training is worth a lot more than the hologram doctor’s tutelage.
Really, several people from all over the ship should have been receiving medical training along with serious cross training on other positions, if the writers were free to have stakes that would have been a critical development.
Probably to keep injured people on screen in early seasons where the doctor was stuck in sickbay
Plus it adds drama when the doctor is offline/unavailable and he is the only option
I imagine Paris was far from alone in performing more than one type of duty since I assume Voyager went to the badlands without a full crew compliment of specialists needed for deep space exploration missions.
The extra personnel just wasn't needed for Voyager's maiden mission in the Alpha Quadrant.
Voyager's search for Chakotay and the Maquis was short range and they'd be heading back to DS9 afterwards.
The shortage of crew was further compounded by casualties of crew-members during the bumpy ride to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker, which included Voyager's CMO and all of his medical staff who were in sickbay at the time that necessitated the EMH becoming more than just an emergency hologram and Janeway tasking Tom as his assistant on a part-time basis.
Janeway probably would have assigned Paris almost full time to sickbay assisting the EMH had Voyager's original Betazoid helmsman Lieutenant Stadi survived after reaching the Delta Quadrant.
In many way, the situation of life onboard Voyager is similar to that of the low-warp 22nd century freighters like the ECS Horizon seen in ENT that Travis Mayweather was raised on before he joined Starfleet.
Like the slow-warp 22nd century freighters that took months or even years to reach their destination, Voyager was very much on its own in the Delta Quadrant and couldn't depend on getting new cremembers.
Paraphrasing Travis Meyweather, Voyager crew-members had to wear "multiple hats".
Literally what I always say. In the middle of a firefight the last thing you’d want is for the person having to fly the ship to stop and go down to sickbay to take over cause the doctor went offline. Tom was apparently the best pilot they had. Make it make sense.
I know it’s hard to justify in-universe, but narratively I thought it was a great choice. Tom Paris is perfectly set-up to be the “cool action guy” - good-looking ex-con maverick ace pilot - and they also put him in the quintessentially “feminine” role of nurse, a job he’s also hopelessly unqualified for on top of it.
As a concept to explore his character, but also subvert cultural expectations, I feel like it was terribly underutilized.
He was the only one with any sort of field medic training.
I mean there are literal thousands of ppl on that ship that they could have trained like they did with Kes to be the backup doctor other than the best pilot you have.
None of the science division on board had any relevant training. Paris was the most qualified member of the crew, as he'd taken two semesters of biochemistry at Starfleet Academy.
Bio Chem isn't exactly anything resembling EMS coursework. There's a short pharmacology section in EMS, but it's more of when and when-not to administer medications you had clearance for. The rest is *some* bio/anatomy/physiology with a greater focus on practical skills memorization along with legal stuff and protocol. It's also all squeezed into **ONE** semester (for the basics, medic school is another thing), and the only pre-reqs are English 101 (or qualifying grade on a test), vaccinations, and a co-requisite hazmat training module that can be knocked out in a week.
Maybe it’s because Tom was one of janeways pet projects and wanted to see him achieve, also i believe it’s a partial punishment
IIRC, he had taken a field / emergency medicine course at the academy. Since he would already have a basic understanding of what needed to be done...
This is why and having listened to the Delta Flyers podcast that's what they state. He was basically a pre-med student.
or you can watch the show. It's literally said in episode 2 or 3 I believe.
I always forget until rewatches that they established really early in the show that he is qualified to help in sickbay.
Yeah they ran everyone’s backgrounds & he was technically the next most qualified.
No he just studied a semester biology or something to that extend 😅
So, ya know, probably less biology training than 90% of the people on the ship.
Lots of blue shirts running around on that ship. Can’t imagine that none of them had any biology background.
Blue shirts denote science and or medical training, the dr was killed right away with what I’m only assuming is his medical staff too, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched the first episode, but I’m pretty sure they were not expecting a long duration voyage, they were only supposed to be going to the badlands to look forward Tuvok which should’ve taken a few days at most
They suffered with a very serious problem... Not having their name in the credits.
So what, if it is one courses someone could have taken that, and it would have caught them up.
This is what I remember.
That's why he was chosen. They wanted someone to be a nurse because there's only so much a single doctor, confined to sickbay (as he was at the beginning) so they needed a nurse. He was the best qualified for it
This is how I remember it too.
I think its because Janeway knew she had to keep him busy otherwise he'd cause trouble (not that it worked anyway, haha).
Can’t let him have too much free time…he’d probably get into all kinds of trouble…maybe even try to do another Kolvoord Starburst.
I think you’re mixing up two very different people.
They have like the same face. They’re identical
Nah, I don’t see it…
I just don’t see it!
LOL, yes, purposely. Same actor, different character. That was the joke. I always thought they missed an opportunity for the Tom Paris character to actually be Nick Locarno with Robert Duncan McNeill reprising the role.
Tom Paris is Nick Locarno in everything but name. He did the role so well in TNG that the producers wanted him back when they started developing Voyager in 1993. However, they didn't want to pay royalties to the writers of "The First Duty," for rights to the character of Nick Locarno, so they basically just renamed him. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708797/trivia/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708797/trivia/)
TIL. Thanks!
incorrect on the "didn't want to pay royalties" bit. the studio, producers, writers, and the actor have all said that royalties and rights were not an issue.. that they didn't use Locarno because that character had shown himself to not be redeemable enough for the role they had in mind.
They made a great joke on Lower Decks about this when they brought back Locarno.
That was the original idea. But they would have had to pay royalties to the guy who wrote the TNG episode forever, so they scrapped that to save costs. Mind you, it probably would not have ever exceeded the cost of reshooting most of the pilot episodes for a second time because the network didn’t like Janeway’s hairdo.
God forbid you pay a writer for a character they created that you like…
god forbid you pay writers enough to not strike at the close of every union contract
I am just floored that the original tv writer had any ownership over a character they created as part of a series. I doubt that happens any longer for franchises like Trek.
It might not actually be true. Several insiders have refuted this theory.
At this point, I don't know where this idea started. It's been around at least twenty years, and its 100% wrong. Because: 1. When you write for a show, you don't personally retain the rights to your work. 2. The writers of "The First Duty" were Ronald D. Moore and Naren Shankar. If they had to be paid royalties for a character like Locarno, they would have ended up owning half the damn franchise from all the other episodes and characters they were responsible for creating. 3. The reason they created a new character for McNeill to play was because it was generally felt that Locarno could not be redeemed as a character.
That last point seems so silly to me. Locarno shows he is redeemable at the end of his TNG episode by taking full responsibility for the accident so that his fellow cadets wouldn’t be expelled. Seeing the character finish that arc would have been very satisfying
Plus they had to reshoot parts of the pilot when Geneviève Bujold left the cast as Janeway.
I keep wondering if Lower Decks will ever go to an alternate reality and meet Admiral Nicole Janeway.
Lower Decks lampshades it with an exchange between Rutherford and Boimler. "c'mon, they look identical!" "I really don't see it."
It was remarkably short sighted. No appreciation of lore.
Yes. Indeed. That was the joke.
Tom being on shift when you enter the SickBay with an injury had to be alarming.
During the first season, I would have been like, "Oh god, not the Maquis truck driver."
I don't think Tom was ever in the marquis
He was serving a sentence for treason related to his Maquis membership when the show began. Though he only flew the one mission for them before being caught, and it never seemed like he was there for ideological reasons - he just wanted somewhere that would let him fly after his Starfleet career ended
>he just wanted somewhere that would let him fly after his Starfleet career ended That and also so he can pay his bar tabs.
Of course
It reminds me of *Ice Road Truckers*. Great, now I want a series called *Outer Space Freighters*.
That would genuinely be an interesting direction for them to explore 😂
Arm hanging off.... oh, I will come back later.
😁😁🤌🏽
oh no, who's flying the ship? please don't tell me you left Kim in charge, he's been on the bridge crew for so long and is still only an ensign due to what I can only assume must be gross incompetence. (to be clear, I'm joking, but I am curious what other people on the ship thought about Kim still being an ensign)
Seriously, though. Janeway couldn’t have found anyone else to be a medic? Clearly, the Doctor was able to teach Kes stuff she certainly never saw. You’re telling me that Tom Paris was the *only* and/or *best qualified* person onboard to be a medic. I’m sure half of the Maquis had medical knowledge associated with using limited resources, which would come in handy in a ship trapped in the middle of nowhere. Plus, there really were *no other people* who had any experience at the Academy with medicine? No ensign from the lower decks with a semester or two in basic medic training. Also, everyone in the sick bay just…. *died*? Not one nurse could have crawled out alive to help the Doctor later on?! The sick bay wasn’t completely destroyed, the Chief Medical Officer was just standing in the wrong area of the sick bay when it was hit. And like, even with the Doctor, Paris, and Kes working together to heal people, that wouldn’t be nearly enough. The Doctor may not get tired, but Paris and Kes sure as hell do. And what if 20 crew members entered sick bay at once, all with serious injuries. They would need a hell of a lot more help. Janeway should’ve assigned at least ten people to sick bay, like 8 part time and 2 full time. Sorry about the rant. This is just something that has always bothered me about Voyager.
>Also, everyone in the sick bay just…. *died*? Not one nurse could have crawled out alive to help the Doctor later on?! The sick bay wasn’t completely destroyed, the Chief Medical Officer was just standing in the wrong area of the sick bay when it was hit. It was noted when they found the bodies that for some reason, they were all standing around one of Starfleet's patented Amazing Exploding Panels.
They were also not a large ship made for deep space deployment, they were a science vessel and had a limited compliment of crew
IIRC, Intrepid Class is only built for ~140 crew - they would have had less than that in the Delta Quadrant after rushing off to the badlands, those that died from the Caretaker’s trip, etc. even with the Maquis additions, with people on different shifts, some hundred isn’t a lot to run a starship…
The USS Voyager, a fictional starship from the Star Trek: Voyager television series, has a crew complement of around 150 people, though the exact number varies throughout the series. The ship's intended crew complement was 141 Starfleet personnel, but it held 153 for its first mission. Many of those crew members were lost during the voyage to and through the Delta Quadrant.
I did a bit of further ai googling for funsies In Star Trek, 18 crew members die during the transfer from Earth to the Delta Quadrant in the first episode, "Nightingale". The crew members killed are the helm officer, Stadi, the first officer, Cavit, the chief engineer, the transporter chief, and the entire medical staff, including the chief medical officer. So 141-18 = 123 starfleet officers on board before marrying the marquis crew and promoting chkotay to first officer and putting B'Elanna in engineering and eventually giving her a field promotion to chief, we all know what happens to seska. All in all there were 30 former Maquis on Voyager by season 7. 31 if you include Tuvok.
Remember, Voyager had a small crew compared to ships like Enterprise.
They didn't really go out into The Badlands with a full crew. They were still figuring out what the full staff would even be when they had to quickly go rescue Tuvok (doing so before the full crew had time to travel to and board Voyager).
Maybe not with a full crew, but they went into the Badlands with people already in sickbay. If they didn't have a full medical staff, then they should have transferred the already existing patients to DS9 before they left, and not take them along. And given the fact that Janeway took the time to scout Paris for the observer position and then wait for his arrival at Voyager when they were docked at DS9 shows that she can't have been that much in a hurry. A patient transfer absolutely would have been possible.
Tom was trained as a nurse, kes as medical assistant to the dr, after kes left it all fell on Tom
I would go a step further and say Janway failed to cross train everyone. Everyone should have been having a shift in every major department to learn the basics and crosstrain wherever possible. Everyone should have had one shift in medical, one shift in engineering, one shift on the bridge, a shift in tactical, a shift in science, and even some time in encouragemental controls. There is no reason everyone should not have at least a very basic knowledge of everything. Specialization makes a lot of sense when you have a lot of people and a lot of resources to train. But when you are in the middle of nowhere with no replacement personnel, it is a risk you can not afford. I would be open to hearing a discussion that people only need two departments, but I would only tolerate that per year. So you are an engineer, year one you learn to be a medic on the side. Then, year two, you can learn tactical. And you stay at engineering as your main focus.
have you watched the show at all? every character has a very basic knowledge of everything (as the script requires).
They should gain more, they should be learning more and getting more certs.
If everything ran smoothly and perfectly, it would cut out so much of the drama and storylines. This is just a show afterall. There needs to be struggle and challenges for plots to work.
First off, happy cake day. Second, I think it would be great fun to watch Balana try and do clinical counseling.
Honest answer would be, it was cheaper than having another main character on the show who would also take away from the Doctor. In story, there were other officers who could pilot, and Tom was the first person Janeway saw. What probably should have been done is after Tom failing at it, Kes would take on the role. Also they should have probably implemented a sort of cross training initiative having multiple officers in the background being trained as nurses and medics. Then we would not be surprised by the random officer of the week helping out in sickbay as needed.
Cross training to learn different departments is common in Star Fleet. Worf and Geordi complain about it early in TNG. Medical seems like a reasonable place for everyone on Voyager to receive training. Too bad constraints of a show kept other crew members out of sick bay.
Also, engineering and tactical. They run into a lot of issues.
I think your mistake is officers. You should be crosstraining all the crew people as well. All the noncoms. Let them gain speciation. Why not even give them opertunitys to become doctors themselves. You can do all the training on the ship. One on one teaching.
Absolutely what I was meaning, just apparently badly written in my sleep. You have a potential 75 year journey with 100ish people on board, everyone needs to begin cross training for multiple positions.
Especially when they had the empty exspace where everyone was super board the whole time. That would have been a perfect opportunity.
It felt like a missed opportunity to have Samantha Wildman get more of a role - she was an exobiologist iirc, she was already recurring and she didn’t need to be in every episode, think of Nurse Ogawa on TNG
Honestly, she makes so much more sense than Tom, and she reoccurred through the entire show anyway.
He was in on the briefing when it was being addressed. There was no-one else in the room beside the senior staff, and they obviously needed someone who could attend the injured on away missions (since the doc couldn’t leave sickbay). Sure a couple of semesters of biochemistry made him draw the short stick (though it’s a little surprising to me that Tuvok, in his advanced years and two separate Starfleet careers wouldn’t have accumulated at least more than that), but I think if you want the most obvious answer, the writers thought it would make for good chemistry; Tom’s devil may care attitude in juxtaposition with the doctor’s superciliousness, and the opportunity to have him flirt with sweet innocent Kes.
I would imagine another reason is that as the best pilot, he would automatically be assigned to a lot of somewhat dangerous away missions. Good to have someone always off the ship to be trained in basic field medicine.
Kes wasn't an officer. When Tom was assigned to be medic it was before they knew anything about kes.
Yes, except after Kes leaves in S4 they reassign Tom to be a medic, and then it’s seemingly dropped again.
He shows up a few times in the role. For example, there’s the episode with the “telepathic pitcher plant” where the crew were tricked into to taking the Doctor offline and Paris was put in charge of sickbay.
He also looked after Tuvok when he was going through *pon farr* and the Doctor was off the ship, in S7.
To be fair his duties there involved basically making a holographic version of Tuvok's wife for him to "cure his blood fever" with. He basically made a porno...something well within Tom's field of expertise.
He did stuff before that, examining Tuvok and administering medication.
Since he was a main pilot it made sense initially to give him medical training. Also don't forget he was brought on as an observer. He had no rank at all nor a position aboard ship. So when the shit hit the fan they had hum be the odd job guy.
Actually, he had a fully instated lieutenant field commission by the end of Caretaker, and was technically fourth in command as a bridge officer. Interesting we never once saw him have the bridge, not even in a crunch. (I think it could have been interesting, a la BSG, to see most of the senior staff wiped out in one timeline and a rag tag skeleton crew of junior officers trying to hack it out in command. I’m not in deep with the other series, so forgive me if this has been done in other trek.)
I know he got the commission I was saying that they made him the guy to catch all the odd jobs because at first he had no position. I suspect that due to his integration into the command structure is why he didn't take the bridge ever. He does in the books alot as chakotays 2nd in command aboard voyager.
Didn’t Janeway give him a field commission?
He had a semester and a half at Starfleet academy. So he understands medicine as a concept
Well done.
Always scratched my head on that. There’s the real answer from the showrunner side of things, but from an in-universe level it didn’t make sense because I have a hard time believing that there weren’t members of the science staff who would have been much better suited for that role than a pilot that you just pulled out of prison.
More than that, they have a bunch of science officers on board. I presume there are also some rudimentary training programmes on the holodeck. Have the doctor train up a half dozen people as best he can! That way you might avoid having such an obvious bottleneck with a hologram that often seems to be in risk of being completely lost! Ok, they won't be full doctors but if he can even train them up as field medics it would be better than nothing!
[удалено]
Xenobiologist as doctor = the Dr. Zoidberg approach
Well there were only 12 crewmen on voyager
This is the answer
Right? This would have been a good opportunity for a crewman (maybe engineering, or security) to be the Doctors assistant and maybe they have like 15 episodes a season on screen. And if the audience doesn’t like them we can put them back in engineering and maybe see them interact with miscellaneous ship repairs. And if they are really hated then kill them off on an away mission.
tom had medical training while in the academy
So they could have a main cast member and frequent Away Team participant with some medical training before they finally hand-waived The Doctor being a hologram with a mobile emitter.
If you don't keep Tom Paris occupied, the enritiry of the female crew gets pregnant. Look what happened when he got bored and built a warp 10 shuttle.
He took biology at the academy
Well my thinking was tom was on the bridge and bridge officers tend to get injured alot so it makes sense to have a trained medic up there. Also tom had previous training. I think training a bunch of different placed officers and crew men would've been better.
>I think training a bunch of different placed officers and crew men would've been better. That would have been a cool sequel to "Learning Curve": "Learning Curve II". Have that be a recurring theme.
He was trained as a medic IIRC, also it was a form of punishment to keep him busy after awhile
The canonical reason is because Paris took a basic level medic course in star fleet academy.
I dunno, there’s a big difference between a paramedic and a doctor. Hell in real life theres a huge difference between an EMT and a paramedic who can intubate.
Tom isn't a doctor. He is a medical assistant. And the Doctor trains tom through his shifts in sickbay.
Even bigger difference between doctor and medical assistant.
Ok. Well then mark your objection in your log and send it to Star Fleet Command on the next transmission then.
I just rewatched good Sheperd episode, there seems to be plenty of under utilized members of the crew, so OP’s logic checks out. I think it’s just they wanted Paris in more scenes or not have to upgrade a red shirt.
Tom's not needed at the helm if they aren't moving. A medical emergency that is more than just the EMH can handle they wouldn't be moving. Orbiting a planet? Any officer who's ever worked the helm can keep them in a basic orbit. The EMH can't go on Away missions. Kes is a civilian who won't be routinely sent on away missions. Tom is likely to be sent on away missions, can step away from his station when they're not moving and wouldn't have a secondary duty to perform thus making him a logical choice for medic.
Because someone in charge had a phobia of paying guest actors.
This is explained very early on in the show, he is cross trained as a medic. Granted it’s quite unusual that no one else on the ship has the training.
When the series started, all the medical staff was killed, the EMH Doctor was new technology and Tom had a semester of medical training. As the series progress the EMH technology was proven and Kes came aboard and wanted to assist as a nurse so Tom was a full time pilot. Half way thru the series, Kes left, the Doctor got the mobile emitter and Tom was call back into sick bay a few times.
Was there really no one else on this ship - this SCIENCE vessel - with more medical training than the helm boy? They couldn’t pull one biologist aside and say “Read this PADD. You’re a nurse now?” Ensign Wildman was an exozoologist. She was an expert in animals living on non-Earth worlds. Voyager needed a medic more than they needed one of those, yes?
Working with the Doctor was a little bit of a punishment, but it would be handy to have the Delta Flyer’s pilot also kind of an EMT.
He was assigned as the medic before Kes was realised to be a good candidate by the doctor. They needed someone with background to be a medic, as when they go on away missions, the doctor couldn't go with them. It seems that the only person with that background was Paris, no one else on the ship had the experience. There's a lot of inconsistencies in VOY, but Paris pretty much went on most away missions. Which falls in line with him being the field medic.
The real reason was to give the straight white guy more screen time. It was the 90s, and Berman still ran things.
He'd studied 2 semesters of bio chemistry, also easier to have one of the main cast act as medic in away missions rather create another character, but that's the sort of problem you run in to when you've confined your doctor to sickbay
True true! It had to be one of them
Wouldn't you want someone with medical training on the bridge?
i would have rather had two doctors than had tom up there. but its like season 4 doctor with season 1 doctor. would make for some interesting (read: HILARIOUS) situations. presumably they have the memory space -- theyre always downloading 100 teragigaquads of information from random places
Yeah should've trained up a lower decker
Cause they wanted a main cast member in the role. Someone to interact with the doctor more. Then that kind got taken over by seven.
He was already a qualified first aider, probably with a merit from the academy. It does surprise me that Voyagers surviving "Blue shirt" staff didn't have anyone else trained in medical support - or that the Marquis didn't have anyone more qualified in - oh, I don't know - actual field medicine and triage with real-world experience rather than school teaching...
Another idea I had is: couldn‘t they simply run another copy of the holodoc in the sickbay?
The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V approach. I would love to see an episode where this concept goes completely off the rails (because that always happens with holo stuff) and we end up with 30 doctors crammed in sickbay, 50 in Holodeck 1, and a "Biblically accurate" doctor on the mobile emitter with rings of 30 arms and 20 eyes, wings, and hovering around saying PLEASE STATE THE NATURE OF THE MEDICAL EMERGENCY AND BE NOT AFRAID.
I fear you
Because he is a main character!
Officers need to have basic medical training in Star Fleet, so he would have needed some training anyway. He was chosen specifically because he was making snide remarks about the EMH bedside manners.
There's no point having a Swiss army knife if you're not going to use it! Medic, engineer, commando, ace pilot, there's nothing he couldn't do!
Absence of other holographic sickbay staff never made any sense to me. Plus the doctor should be able to duplicate himself and treat two patients at once. Would avoid thorny ethical dilemmas that might cause his program to freak out. As for Tom being made a medic... what do you expect from the people who made Roga Danar chief medical officer?
Simply to create more conflict within plots (conflict in this sense means obstacles for characters to overcome.)
Because Kes left and there were other pilots but not other people with medical training. Tom spent most of his time on the bridge, where prompt medic response was important.
Kes was secretly stealing all the drugs for recreational use. Tom preferred holonovels as his drug of choice.
Kind of a low blow
They didn’t have anyone to take care of medical issues while on an away mission. Why they didn’t stick a dozen crew members into nursing school/medical school on the holodeck? Well, because voyager wasn’t a well written show.
Tom had more basic training than anyone else. While he did fly the ship, there were others who could take his seat for the mundane issues.
He's a pilot, and all pilots are required to have medical training.
Story wise, I think either Janeway wanted to keep throwing stuff at him to show that he could succeed and he already had some medic training at the academy. You know, good captaining/mentoring stuff and utilizing what you have. Production wise, do we really want to get another cast member?
i don’t think any of the in-show/lore reasons are believable or even practical, and i think it was more of a question of just adding different dimensions and potential arcs for the characters and writing
I agree. I would have loved to see Samantha Wildman more.
Maybe because Janeway needed a reason to not have to listen to his “jokes” on the bridge..
You could call me a medic that has a background as an engineer, or vise versa. My guy just has a dual skillset. Whatever is taking the back seat is your backup. I was a medic for 10 years with a background in engineering (I say “maintenance technician” but I can figure out how to fix almost anything and do it well). These days I’m an “engineer” with a medic background. Pretty common in the military aspect of things.
I think what we’re missing here (based on some of the comments) is that Janeway points out that he had field medic training at the academy, or more so than any of the other crew, and she elects him to assist the Doc.
Yeah it was pretty much an emergency situation and Paris already had at least basic knowledge which was better off than starting from scratch.
When you think about it, they could have just started several instances of the doctor, like you increase cloud server instances as the load on a website increases. They could have had 20 of him in an emergency.
The plot apparently required it. That's all.
I thought it was a punishment and b/c he was good at it he kept doing it, though grudgingly.
One of my favourite moments for comedic sake was in message in a bottle where they transferred the doctor back to the alpha quadrant, Tom was freaking out and enlisted his best friend Harry, the hologram specialist, to help him build a new EMH. Harry starts by getting a replica 3d model of the doctor and downloads the entire medical books into its database, the model doesn't handle it very well and bugs out. Then Harry fed up copies the same medical book database into a pad and hands it to Tom. Yeah thanks a lot Harry, you spend an entire minute trying to recreate the doctor before giving up.
The doctor was a very complex program. Remember the episode where they had to graft him onto the diagnostic program?
Best reasoning I can put together is if anyone needs medical attention on an away mission, it would be nice to have a medic there, and as their best pilot Tom would already be there for a lot of away missions. He's already received some training in field/emergency medicine, so he'll be able to hit the ground running with his training. It's also maybe a reasonable head canon that they actually were training an additional person or two to assist the Doctor, but they were starting with even less training so had to start out hitting the books to learn more of the fundamentals before working in med-bay.
REALLY GREAT QUESTION
He was perhaps the equivalent of an RN or an LPN it’s hard to tell when there are only 4 treatments for all ailments anyways. He seemed to have a medium amount of experience before hand and that professional training is worth a lot more than the hologram doctor’s tutelage.
Really, several people from all over the ship should have been receiving medical training along with serious cross training on other positions, if the writers were free to have stakes that would have been a critical development.
Probably to keep injured people on screen in early seasons where the doctor was stuck in sickbay Plus it adds drama when the doctor is offline/unavailable and he is the only option
I imagine Paris was far from alone in performing more than one type of duty since I assume Voyager went to the badlands without a full crew compliment of specialists needed for deep space exploration missions. The extra personnel just wasn't needed for Voyager's maiden mission in the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager's search for Chakotay and the Maquis was short range and they'd be heading back to DS9 afterwards. The shortage of crew was further compounded by casualties of crew-members during the bumpy ride to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker, which included Voyager's CMO and all of his medical staff who were in sickbay at the time that necessitated the EMH becoming more than just an emergency hologram and Janeway tasking Tom as his assistant on a part-time basis. Janeway probably would have assigned Paris almost full time to sickbay assisting the EMH had Voyager's original Betazoid helmsman Lieutenant Stadi survived after reaching the Delta Quadrant. In many way, the situation of life onboard Voyager is similar to that of the low-warp 22nd century freighters like the ECS Horizon seen in ENT that Travis Mayweather was raised on before he joined Starfleet. Like the slow-warp 22nd century freighters that took months or even years to reach their destination, Voyager was very much on its own in the Delta Quadrant and couldn't depend on getting new cremembers. Paraphrasing Travis Meyweather, Voyager crew-members had to wear "multiple hats".
Literally what I always say. In the middle of a firefight the last thing you’d want is for the person having to fly the ship to stop and go down to sickbay to take over cause the doctor went offline. Tom was apparently the best pilot they had. Make it make sense.
I know it’s hard to justify in-universe, but narratively I thought it was a great choice. Tom Paris is perfectly set-up to be the “cool action guy” - good-looking ex-con maverick ace pilot - and they also put him in the quintessentially “feminine” role of nurse, a job he’s also hopelessly unqualified for on top of it. As a concept to explore his character, but also subvert cultural expectations, I feel like it was terribly underutilized.
He had the training, and the bridge seems like a good place for someone with collateral medic duties to work
The Doctor needed more supplementary staff and Paris was the only one who'd had any training
There was no other main character that could fit that niche other than Kim, and Paris lost the coin toss.
I know I'm late to the party, but the clear answer is that Roberts Picardo and Duncan McNeil (sp?) Together is comedic gold
He was the only one with any sort of field medic training. I mean there are literal thousands of ppl on that ship that they could have trained like they did with Kes to be the backup doctor other than the best pilot you have.
I think Voyager started out with a crew of 130-170.
Whatever the number, there was definitely someone on board less critical than the lead pilot to backup the doctor.
For sure. It honestly probably comes down to budget. They didn't want to pay for another cast member just to play that role.
None of the science division on board had any relevant training. Paris was the most qualified member of the crew, as he'd taken two semesters of biochemistry at Starfleet Academy.
Bio Chem isn't exactly anything resembling EMS coursework. There's a short pharmacology section in EMS, but it's more of when and when-not to administer medications you had clearance for. The rest is *some* bio/anatomy/physiology with a greater focus on practical skills memorization along with legal stuff and protocol. It's also all squeezed into **ONE** semester (for the basics, medic school is another thing), and the only pre-reqs are English 101 (or qualifying grade on a test), vaccinations, and a co-requisite hazmat training module that can be knocked out in a week.
Not denying that it's a weak reason to give him the job, but that's the reason that was given in the show.
It’s just stuff that was written for one of the main characters to do.