Our exploration of long-running and/or otherwise significant series in medical dramas continues! 

With The Good Doctor finishing with 7 seasons under its belt—putting it among the most well-known network TV programs in history— I’m doing a deeper dive into the medical drama genre, which launched on TV in the 1950s. Check this out for a reminder of why the 7 year-mark has historically been important in network TV… and also why you won’t find M*A*S*H discussed here… for it’s time to move into the ‘70s!

Just three years after Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey cleared the airwaves (again, see my previous post in this series for more about those shows), a new battle-of-the-network-medical-dramas came to life. This time the most popular doctor on TV was Marcus Welby– not a young heartthrob, but an experienced family practitioner who happened to share his private practice with relatively young heartthrob of “the now generation” Dr. Steven Kiley. (Robert Young, a.k.a. Welby, was 62 when the series started; his co-star James Brolin was 29.) The additional twist was that Welby was the one offering more unique, outside-the-box methods of treatment to Kiley’s traditional ways.

Like its early-60s predecessors, Welby took on medical topics that were new to TV at the time, including impotence, mononucleosis, rape, Alzheimer's disease, and sexually transmitted diseases (a topic that NBC had refused to greenlight during Dr. Kildare’s reign on prime time.)

MEDICAL CENTER

Aired on: CBS

Seasons: 7 (1969-76)

Episodes: 170

If the hyper-upbeat theme music was any indication, Medical Center looked to capture a younger demographic of viewers than its ABC competition. 

But there was a noteworthy difference between Medical Center and other medical dramas to that point: the “medical center” itself was part of an (unnamed) university hospital… creating more situations with young people, as is demonstrated in the scene below:

This likely paved the way for future dramas that featured teaching hospitals and/or clusters of young residents (as we had with The Good Doctor, of course!).

You’re looking at that scant number of episodes– 45, compared to the 170 contributed by the other 1969 medical dramas I just discussed– and wondering how this one made the cut, right? I’ve got a few reasons…

Here, in this clip from the show’s third season, the focus was on a new serum to fight sickle-cell anemia. Aside from the chalkboards used for illustrative purposes (several decades before whiteboards and “ShaunVision”), you might note the late great Louis Gossett Jr. guest starring as developer of said serum.

I wasn’t sure if I should include Emergency!, which was as much a high-stakes action show as it was medical drama (with the “action” part grabbing much of the attention). But if you think about some key situations within The Good Doctor–” Season 3’s earthquake immediately springs to mind– medical rescue units were key. Bringing such rescues to life on TV, and shining a light on the role of paramedics in the process, helped make Emergency! an instant hit for NBC.

All that said, you’ll notice that despite all the gear, flashing red lights, and a theme song that sounds like it has a siren’s wail embedded into it…it’s still the hospital staff that gets top billing. It could be a real-life case of experience prevailing this time, given that Randolph Mantooth (Johnny Gage) and Kevin Tighe (Roy DeSoto) were relative newcomers while Robert Fuller, Bobby Troup, and Julie London were all veteran actors and/or musicians by the 1970s.

But with Emergency! credited with introducing much of the world to pre-hospital care, making terms like EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) and CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) commonplace, the show's true star is easy to see.

Coming in the third EXTRA installment: a new youth vs. experience battle as the tone of medical dramas shifts significantly in the 1980s… 

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