Medical Center follows surgeons working in an otherwise unnamed university hospital in Los Angeles. The show focuses both on the lives of the doctors as well as the patients showcased each week. At the core of the series is the tension between youth and experience, as seen between Drs. Lochner and Gannon. Besides his work as a surgeon, Gannon, because of his age, also works as the head of the Student Health Department at the University. Helping the doctors was the very efficient Nurse Eve Wilcox.
O. J. Simpson plays a character he is familiar with, an All-American football player and No. 1 draft choice of the pros with a potential million dollar bonus. But he's sick. Nose bleeds and dizziness Indicate something serious, but he refuses to admit it. It's a dramatic and meaty role and with the help of Cicely Tyson, as his wife, O. J. does well.
Young doctor Joe Gannon (Chad Everett) believes a child patient is the victim of a beating and has a run-in with the kid's father, Robert Lansing. In this series Gannon plays the fighter teeing off at those who interfere before the climactic scenes in surgery.
A wounded college senior who has been under the influence of drugs staggers through the hospital's emergency entrance. There is lots going on in this case history about a college student with a bullet in his neck. Not only is there a drug angle and possible facial paralysis, but father rejection and a job offer from a friendly patient too.
Guest star Barbara Rush portrays Nora Caldwell, a famed author's wife, who learns that her first pregnancy may be endangered by her heart condition.
Lily Wu, an injured Vietnamese girl, is brought to the United States for treatment, then resists it.
Tim Considine stars as a college student whose admission to the hospital for treatment of an internal ailment results in the discovery that he is a drug addict.
The teenage daughter of a university professor suffers a kidney injury in an auto accident. Thousands of miles separates 19-year-old Jenny Webb from those she needs most. Jenny has a hermorrhaging kidney and a baby on the way, but her father feels only outrage, and her boy friend does not dig marriage.
Dr. Roger Farrell takes over as hospital chief of surgery and immediately overrules Joe Gannon's opinion concerning one of his patients.
Sorenson, a student (Michael Burns) makes an apparently unprovoked attack on a psychology professor. When the boy's behavior continues to be a problem, Dr. Gannon(Chad Everett) suspects the student has a physical problem which is manifesting itself in an emotional upset. Lloyd Bochner also is featured as the professor.
Big name guest stars Walter Pidgeon and Viveca Lindfors add a touch of glamor to the hospital atmosphere. Pidgeon plays an ambassador with a bad ticker that requires surgery, but his son (Linden Chiles) opposes any such move. Doc Gannon first tries the reasoning approach with the son, and then brings in outside help in the person of Viveca Lindfors, a great and good friend of the ambassador's.
A two-hankie show. In for a thyroid examination, a rich widow meets a cute Mexican kid whose mother was killed in a crosswalk accident. The widow is running away from involvement, but Doc Gannon brings the two together hoping for a happy ending.
Doc Gannon hasn't had time for nurses this season, but in this episode he extends a helping hand to a student, with a feeling for her trouble. Belinda Montgomery plays a bumbling, well meaning nurse in need of a second chance.
A behlnd-the-scenes look at interns competing for valuable residency posts. Doc Gannon plays mother hen, and is upset when a talented young woman doctor makes a mistake on a routine case. The lady, it seems, has an intern on her mind, and that isn't good. Patricia Quinn is the woman medic and she is easy to take, mistakes and all.
Gannon gets a mysterious turndown when he asks the mother of a girl needing a kidney transplant to become her daughter's donor. He then discusses the case with the girl's father and begins to unfold tne reasons for the mother's strange attitude.
Dr. Paul Lochner faces one of the most difficult assignments of his career when he must tell his daughter Jennifer that she has a serious arterial condition that may require surgery and possibly delay her planned wedding. Co-star James Daly's daughter Tyne Daly is the guest star.
Fans see another side of hero Doc Gannon in this episode when he puts up a runaway kid in his apartment. Gannon displays sympathy listening to the youngster's complaints, while hunting for an answer to the blackouts suffered by the kid.
Dr. Gannon has a dilemma seldom experienced on "Medical Center." A girl's blindness is brought to his attention after she had been in a motorcycle accident. While treating her injuries he becomes more and more interested in her blindness, which he diagnoses as stemming from a mental rather than physical cause. He can cure her, but he must bring back the shattering event that caused the blindness, and the girl's parents are fearful of the results.
Martin Sheen guest stars as a young minister whose heart condition flares up to jeopardize his chances of maintaining a foundation for parolees.
Marj Bowen is a veteran nurse who faces surgery and the fact that her job, to which she was dedicated, will no longer be possible for her to carry out. Head nurse Marge Bowen dispenses hope as well as pills, especially to a young singer who fears a throat operation.
Medical Center doesn't stray too far from its basic premise for a love story. The girl in Dr. Gannon's life is played by Shelby Grant. She is a tour director the doctor meets while on a Mexican vacation.
Doctor Gannon begins to treat his boyhood football idol and is startled to discover that ailing Ollie Wayne (Forrest Tucker) does not really seem to care whether or not he is cured. Gannon (Chad Everett) delves into the patient's personal life to find reasons for his peculiar behavior.
Dr. Gannon locks horns with a co- worker when he insists on more tests on a purported cancer cure before using it on a 19-year old patient.
Gannon squares off against angry father Carl Betz. Gannon has a Tartar in Betz who brings Joe before the medical board. With his forceful manner, Betz adds a flash of life to the show and manages to capture sympathy along the way.
One of Doctor Gannon's associates whose son is a strong candidate for the Olympic diving team finds it difficult to believe that the young athlete has a muscular disease that could end chances for the International championships.
This one is an interesting drama about a young resident doctor, a talented black who is denied a research grant. The resident suspects Doc Gannon lacks confidence in him and pressures our hero for the chance to perform a gallstone operation. Gannon gives in and then doubts his decision in the climatic surgery scenes.
This series does its best with good guest performers, and in this episode, it's Sharon Farrell's turn to spark the hour. She plays a teaching assistant who wants sterilization, which requires a bit of digging into her background by our own Doc Gannon.
The series opens its second season with a drama about a doctor who has symptons of multiple sclerosis. Just as surgeon Tom Forley (George Grizzard) is perfecting a new technique, he is stricken with a muscular ailment. The doctor cannot hide his crippling condition from his pretty wife Anne (Elizabeth Ashley), and she bares all to hero Joe Gannon.
Guest star Paul Burke plays a dedicated research scientist whose vital work on a new drug is threatened when he receives anonymous letters.
Gannon tries to save a 16-year-old girl from heroin addiction. His efforts are continually frustrated by her father, a professor who refuses to acknowledge the problem
Shattered trust and an emotional crisis open a fifth season of medical and psychological dramas. Dr. Gannon's patient is a young woman who is stricken with hysterical paralysis after seeing her mother with a lover. Julie Harris plays her guilt-ridden parent.
Tough-talking Dr. Gannon opens his sixth season by confronting a gitted surgeon who wants to leave the hospital. The doctor is determined to start a new life after learning that his wife is a pornographic-movie star.
Dr. Joe Gannon finds himself helping a doctor friend decide a major medical change in his life.
Dr. Gannon returns to the scenes of his childhood and probes deeply and painfully into his past. When Gannon is stricken with psychogenic symptoms which prevent him from functioning as a physician and he is unable to deal honestly with a patient who is doomed to die, he seeks the cause and cure of his condition in his past. The shocking, long-buried revelations he discovers about himself help him to emerge with new insight as a doctor and as a man.
Complete episode guide for Medical Center with detailed information about every season and episode including air dates, summaries, ratings, and streaming availability in United States.
This episode guide is organized by seasons, making it easy to track your viewing progress or find specific episodes. Use the episode information to plan your binge-watching sessions or catch up on missed episodes.
Bradford Dillman guests as a methodical police inspector who is accumulating evidence that points to Gannon's protege, resident Carl Webson, as the psychopath responsible for the murder of a young woman.
Vera Miles guest stars as an unbending woman doctor who clashes with Dr. Gannon after a coed's death from a bungled abortion.
Maverick director of a ghetto clinic goes against the rules by shielding a stabbing victim and a young drug addict. William Devane gives a good performance as a doctor who runs a ghetto clinic but runs it by his own rules and even tosses out an inspector sent by the Center which supplies his funds.
Dr. Gannon recommends treatment for Jenny, an abnormally active little girl. What do you do with a gifted child? Doc Gannon believes in a school for exceptional youngsters, and since he is the godfather of the child, he pushes a bit. Gannon's adversary is Mom, who takes an opposing position, and the friction between the two sparks the hour.
Dr. Eric Canford, a brilliant surgeon, comes back from war service with a dinking problem but refuses to admit it is affecting his work.
Dana Wynter appears as a witch doctor of sorts in a spooky episode. Chad Everett is involved because of a young student who has left the hospital (the fourth such girl to do so), even though she needs treatment for Addison's disease. Dick Kallman, who used to be Hank on the short-lived TV series, plays a superstitious doctor, the kind who doesn't want to operate on Friday the 13th.
Suspicious Barry Sullivan flares up over his wife's appointments with Gannon while Joe, of course, remains Simon pure, merely keeping his patient's illness from her husband at her request.
As it must to all TV heroes, blindness comes to Dr. Gannon on Medical Center. He's been in a car wreck, caused by bad brakes which, we soon learn, had been tampered with. It's not a good time for him, what with that young lady who needs heart surgery only he can perform. Frank Converse is the man who is trying to kill Gannon (and his motivation, when we finally learn it, is weak) and George Chakiris is a surgeon who may have to take over and operate in Gannon's greens — if he can learn the technique.
More complications for Dr. Joe Gannon (Chad Everett), as a coed, suffering from a possible brain tumor, claims he fathered her unborn child. Of course, he's innocent, but the question is, would surgery endanger her pregnancy.
Roddy McDowall plays a lawyer and Keenan Wynn a cop in a drama that has Gannon accused of shielding an injured cop who allegedly shot a student without provocation.
A brash, long-haired surgeon runs afoul of his colleagues.
17-year-old Baby Freitag is a mentally retarded girl who has been treated as an infant all her life.
A hospital entertainer volunteers to help a girl who has tried to commit suicide, unaware that he himself is seriously ill.
Tom Desmond is at his wits' end: he has a sick wife, a 3-month-old baby, no source of income and a towering pride that rejects all help.
An insight into Lochner's personal life as Ruth, his ex-wife, and Bobbie, his daughter turn up at the hospital. Now widowed, Ruth Marlowe would like to pick up the pieces of a relationship shattered by an annulment many years before. However, here are obstacles: Ruth's heart condition-and her disapproving daughter.
A once-brilliant surgeon has become very withdrawn. The crack surgeon who retires to do research and will not come out, shares the spotlight with Doc Gannon. The embittered medic is asked to perform a new operation on his former wife who will not allow a substitute.
This episode concludes the murder mystery, but odds are you just have figured out the killer before Gannon beats the cops to the solution. Anyway, evidence piles up against Nora Crayton, Dr. Lochner's sister, and when she's in an accident and needs surgery, she doesn't seem to have any will to live. That little Oriental girl with the pancreas problem plays a major part in the solution to this. Part Two.
A visiting woman doctor (Claudine Auger), an old flame of Dr. Gannon's, is accused by a hospital official of failing to give emergency aid to an accident victim.
A Mexican witch doctor and his physician son are involved in treatment of a woman who claims an evil spirit is causing her illness.
A drama about the relationship between an ailing prostitute and the idealistic young resident who is falling in love with her.
Dr. Iris Cameron, a famed woman surgeon, whom Dr. Gannon considers to be "knife-happy" is appointed the Medical Center's chief of surgical services, and thereby becomes his superior. Dr. Gannon finds himself immediately at odds with Dr. Cameron over her tendency to decree instant surgery for seriously ill patients, whose fate now seems to hinge upon whether her free-swinging surgical philosophy or Dr. Gannon's conservative one is applied to them.
Loriss is a sinister professor of South American anthropology whose comely academic assistant is in critical condition— mental and physical— due to a possible voodoo curse.
A gripping tale of sibling conflict unfolds when Maggie Spencer, a renowned executive, is injured during a horseback riding accident with her younger sister, Terri. Following surgery, Maggie becomes paralyzed. As he navigates the complex dynamics of their strained relationship, Dr. Joe Gannon aims to uncover the root of Maggie's paralysis, suspecting it may have a psychological basis.