Joseph M'Benga

Joseph M'Benga (also known as Jabilo M'Benga) was a supporting character who appeared in two episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) and as a regular cast member on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW).
He was originally played by in TOS, and by in SNW, where his first name of Joseph was revealed. 
Early in his career, M'Benga interned at a Vulcan medical facility, acquiring valuable knowledge on the treatment of Vulcans. Having joined Starfleet by 2258 he had a daughter named Rukiya. Learning that Rukiya was suffering from a deadly disease that would kill her in a matter of weeks, M'Benga used the medical transporter on the Enterprise to keep her in stasis, materializing her regularly to keep her pattern from degrading in the hopes that the Enterprise would eventually travel to a world that had a cure for her. Eventually the Enterprise encountered a concious entity inside a nebula that was able to help Rukiya ascend to a higher plane of existence, allowing her to be free of the constraints of her physical body and the illness that had been killing her.
Friends with both Captain Christopher Pike and Commander Una Chin-Riley, by 2259 M'Benga was the Chief Medical Officer of the USS Enterprise. Working with the newly arrived nurse Christine Chapel the pair used a genetic re-sequencing technique to disguise Enterprise crew members as aliens. A few weeks later he was called to treat a disease that caused a severe vitamin D deficiency, making crew members obsessed with finding sources of light. During an attack by the Gorn he was forced to treat a number of casualties with sickbay systems being off line. When a Vulcan ritual went haywire and caused Spock and his fiancee T'Pring to switch bodies, he helped return their katras to their own bodies. 
In 2264, M'Benga was assigned as a medical officer on Starbase Vanguard. The following year the USS Enterprise came to the Starbase, and M'Benga requested transfer back to the Enterprise, seeking to get back into starship medicine. He was assigned back to the Enterprise reporting to new CMO Leonard McCoy, and acted as CMO when McCoy was absent. 
M'Benga's earlier training in Vulcan medicine became vitally important after Spock was shot on Neral by a villager with a flint-lock rifle. He monitored Spock during the healing trance and told Nurse Chapel to call him and then do whatever Spock asked of her when he came out of the healing trance. What she did not know was that this would involve hitting the Vulcan, which she started doing until Montgomery Scott entered the room and restrained Chapel. Two watched in shock as M'Benga came in the room and began hitting the Vulcan until he fully regained consciousness. 
A few months later he was called again to act as CMO when Dr. McCoy was trapped on a Kalandan Outpost. After the computer controlling the outpost sent a projection of outpost commander Lorisa to kill several Enterprise crew members, M'Benga performed autopsies on the crew members and found they had died from complete cellular disruption. 
Having left the Enterprise by 2270, he was then working as a pathologist at Stanford Medical Center. In 2286, he went to work on the USS Enterprise-A alongside his colleagues from the old Enterprise. He eventually retired from the service, and moved to Vulcan to become a plomeek farmer. His great-granddaughter Andrea followed in his footsteps by becoming a medical doctor and Starfleet officer.
==Trivia==
*M'Benga was given the name Geoffrey in the novel The IDIC Epedemic. The Star Trek: Vanguard novel Harbinger stated his first name was Jabilo, which means "Healer" in the language of and . The alternate universe The Tears of Eridanus novella gave his full name as Jabilo Geoffrey M'Benga. His canon first name was finally revealed to be Joseph in the Strange New Worlds episode The Elysian Kingdom.
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