Sarah Chambers

This article is about the CMO of the Excalibur. For the ISN reporter, see: Miss Chambers

Sarah Chambers
Race	Human
Gender	Female
Hair color	Black
Eye color	Brown
Relatives	Jenny Chambers (sister) Unnamed niece
Affiliation	Earth Alliance Earth Alliance Health Organization
Portrayed by	Marjean Holden

Sarah Chambers was a medical doctor and the leading virologist with the EAHO, who served as the Chief Medical Officer aboard the Excalibur.

History

The eldest child in her family, Sarah's mother would often remind her that she'd be the one to have to look after everyone someday, especially her sister Jenny. Sarah spent much of her early career working on cures for viruses, making several medical breakthroughs and saving many lives. She developed a reputation of not only a reliable and incredibly gifted doctor, but also as a compassionate human being, dedicated to the well being of her patients' soul as much as to the their bodies.

In 2266, Chambers was on Mars during the Drakh attack and following the quarantine order was forced to remain there despite her repeated requests to return to Earth to be with her sister and her family. Sarah eventually chose to sign on with the Excalibur at Captain Gideon's request, turning down the post of CMO on the science vessel Olympus.

Mars Conference

Gideon is later ordered to Mars to attend a conference set up by Dr. Stephen Franklin, where she had been asked to give the keynote speech at a conference about the plague. There were threats against the conference which Gideon was investigating. When she began her speech, Gideon interrupted her to try and draw out the would-be assassin. The conference was eventually safeguarded and she was able to present her speech.

Attempted Alien Takeover of Excalibur

Not long into their mission, the Excalibur ran into an alien ship. They found the entire crew dead, with one survivor in a life pod. They brought the creature and pod aboard the Excalibur to try and save it. The creature started to die and a member of the medlab team, Janey, entered the isolation lab to try and save it. The creature died, but before it did it was able to infect Janey and transferred its race consciousness into her. Janey began to transfer the being to other people so that it could take over the ship.

Gideon's plan involved having the crew depressurize the sectors that the alien were in. They do and they managed to bottle the alien in the body of a deceased crew member, Stewart Greenberg. They then ejected the body and destroyed it.

Technomage Virus

At the end of March, the ship reached a dead planet that the crew believed the Drakh plague had been. When the crew began to be killed in mysterious ways, Chambers preformed autopsies which uncovered a Technomage nano-virus which had caused them to kill each other without them even being aware of it. Galen discovered this with her and left for the planet to destroy the other Technomage. When Galen returned, he needed to be treated for a shoulder wound, where Dr. Chambers discovered machines attached to his back. Chambers was able to reverse engineer recovered nano-bots and create a way to temporary block the similarly designed Drakh plague from infecting a person for up to 48 hours.

Medical Test to Develop a Cure

Later Dr. Franklin came aboard to do an experiment on a human who was willing to be infected by the plague. They did this and they found out that the virus was only affecting major organs and not anything else, almost like it knew where it was going. Then they found out that the virus was a nanovirus. Then the ship was attacked by the Drakh and the sterilization process was accidentally started. Franklin rescued the man who had volunteered and later went back to Earth with him.

The Needs of Earth

The Excalibur came across some information that indicated that a fugitive by the name of Natchok Var was in the possession of state secrets, some of which would be medical files that could potentially help in finding a cure. It turned out that his race had decided that all its art, literature, and music was decadent and unpure, so an edict was sent down calling for the destruction of it all. Var was able to save one final copy of all their society's musical and literary accomplishments. He smuggled this information off his homeworld, and set out to find someone worthy of giving this information to. Galen was initially miffed about how they spent time chasing information that was not valuable to their mission, though Dr. Chambers believed that they did what was right.

Theta 49

In June 2267, the Excalibur was ordered to a planet that apparently had no value of any kind to retrieve some colonists who reportedly had left the planet around the time that Earth was infected by the plague. When they got there they find the colonist's ship and the crew, and take a blood sample from their leader. They find out that they are infected with the plague.

Chambers then went through their trash and found out that the colonists' food had been contaminated with the plague. Some of the colonists took her as a hostage in an attempt to escape, but Gideon was successful in convincing them to give up.

On Babylon 5

While Gideon was trying to secure the rights to land on the planet Lorka VII, she and Max Eilerson visited the station. When Cynthia Allen, Max' ex-wife turns up in debt and in trouble with some very dangerous people, Max convinces Sarah to stay with Cynthia while he deals with the problem in his own way.

Notes

• Prior to filming, Dr. Chambers was originally named "Dr. Hoffman".
• Marjean Holden had previously portrayed the Excalibur's Navigation officer in the TV movie ("A Call to Arms"). Her performance so impressed the producers that she was later cast as Dr. Hoffman (later renamed Chambers) for Crusade. In the movie's DVD commentary, JMS jokingly proposed that the two were twin sisters.

Appearances

Crusade "Racing the Night" "The Needs of Earth" "The Memory of War" "Each Night I Dream of Home" "Patterns of the Soul" "Ruling from the Tomb" "The Rules of the Game" "War Zone" "Appearances and Other Deceits" "To the Ends of The Earth" (Unfilmed) "Value Judgements" (Unfilmed) "End of the Line" (Unfilmed)

External Links

• Sarah_Chambers at The Great Machine