Joseph M'Benga
Doctor Joseph M'Benga was a male Human Starfleet officer and physician who lived during the mid-23rd century.

Starfleet career

Early career 
Joseph M'Benga conducted his medical internship on , an experience that made him particularly skilled in treating members of that species. () However, during all of his time studying Vulcan medicine, M'Benga never had an opportunity to deal with a katric transfer. ()

M'Benga had a relationship with a woman named Debra. In 2248 she bore him a daughter, Rukiya. ()

At some point prior to 2259, M'Benga served aboard the . ()

Serving under Pike 
Prior to 2259, he was previously acquainted with Christopher Pike, with Pike having guided M'Benga through his home of Mojave and M'Benga having guided Pike through Kenya. 

By 2259, he was assigned to the  as chief medical officer under Captain Pike, with Nurse Christine Chapel as part of his staff. ()

Serving under Kirk 
During the late 2260s, M'Benga continued to serve under Captain James T. Kirk, where, in the event of Leonard McCoy's absence, he served as the ranking medical officer.

In 2268, M'Benga treated Commander Spock for a serious gunshot wound he was inflicted with on Neural. He had to slap Spock violently to bring him out of his Vulcan healing state. ()

Later that year, Dr. M'Benga supervised his colleague Dr. Sanchez with an autopsy of Ensign Wyatt, who had died after  merely touched him. M'Benga reported that Wyatt's entire body had suffered cellular disruption: the touch had "blasted" every  in his body from the inside out. In reply to Spock's inquiry regarding the incident, M'Benga explained that Sanchez had found that no known disease-causing organism had been responsible for the death. 

He later reported that engineering Technician John B. Watkins had also died from a similar cellular disruption. ()

Appendices

Appearances

Background information 
Doctor M'Benga was played by Booker Bradshaw in The Original Series and Babs Olusanmokun in Strange New Worlds.

This character was actually created by Darlene Hartman, in her purchased (but never produced) TOS script entitled "Shol". The notes for that script give Dr. M'Benga's first name as "Joseph" (confirmed in canon only in ), and stated that he was originally a native of Uganda. His brother, Commander Simon M'Benga, was the first officer of USS Hope, a Federation hospital ship, in the planned-but-never-developed Star Trek spinoff Hopeship. 

An early draft of the script for  (dated ) included a character by the name of "Nurse M'Benga". However, in research notes submitted for that episode (on 29 September 1966), de Forest Research noted the redundancy,  stating that  "M'Benga is the name of a doctor in 'A Private Little War'."

In a later inter-department communication between Gene Roddenberry and John Meredyth Lucas (dated ), Roddenberry noted that regarding "Nurse M'Benga. There is no such Nurse existing on our spaceship. If we need a Nurse, we use our semi-regular Nurse Chapel."

The first draft script for "That Which Survives" misspelled this character's name "Mboya".

In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, M'Benga wears the rank insignia of a Commander, although this hasn't been confirmed in dialogue and many characters are wearing incorrect insignia, likely because of costuming errors.

Apocrypha 
Jean Lorrah's  The IDIC Epidemic gave his first name as "Geoffrey". Meanwhile, David Mack's  established his first name as "Jabilo", a word for "healer" in the Luo language of Kenya,  and set his assignment before the Enterprise as Starbase 47, also known as "Vanguard". The novella The Tears of Eridanus, set in an alternate universe, gives his full name as Jabilo Geoffrey M'Benga.

The Vulcan Academy Murders presented M'Benga's time at the Vulcan Academy hospital and McCoy's subsequent recruitment of M'Benga for Enterprise. Tying into this, The Klingon Gambit, by Robert E. Vardeman, established that his internship on Vulcan lasted four years.

, a great-granddaughter of this character, is portrayed in several novels written by William Shatner.

M'Benga's mirror universe counterpart appeared in the novel The Sorrows of Empire. Following 's death from xenopolycythemia in 2269, he succeeded him as the chief medical officer of the . He continued to serve in that position until at least 2287. The novel likewise stated that his first name was "Jabilo".

External links 
 
 

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Humans
Starfleet sciences personnel
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) personnel
Medical practitioners