History TheMainCharactersDoEverything / LiveActionTV

* During 2014-15, ''Series/{{Hollyoaks}}'' had a large focus on the Dee Valley Hospital, with five characters (Lindsey, Kim, Celine, Tegan, and Dr S'Avage) as seemingly the only staff. They worked across every department from maternity to surgery to oncology, with seemingly little difference in the roles of the doctors vs the nurses. The few featured background extras did nothing, and when the team dropped down to four (first when Tegan went to jail and was later hospitalised herself; then when S'Avage was murdered) the remaining staff carried on as usual, without anyone else being hired.

** The one dedicated ''Defiant'' crewmember disappears following the episode she's introduced. She's also not even from Starfleet, but a serving Romulan military officer, which raises a lot of its own questions. Interestingly the reason she never appeared again was specifically because the writers thought the audience wouldn't be interested in a character with just one well-defined job.

** Archer serving as a bomb squad (Having to be given instructions by a man who can't get a good look at the alien bomb because he has a spike through his leg).
** Both Reed (Security and weapons) and Hoshi (Linguistics and comms), operating the transporter (which is brand spanking new technology, and we know is prone to constant malfunction after 200 years trying to perfect it).

* This trope is played straight, averted ''and'' thoroughly justified in SpiritualSuccessor ''TheWire''. The entire premise of the show is that a judge's inquiries prompt the creation of a detail unit charged with investigating one specific case, which later becomes established as a semi-permanent crime unit with no real definition to its role in the police force. This later results in the team being reduced to making small-scale drug arrests due to in-office politics - much to the team-members' protest. Nonetheless, the Baltimore police department is shown as realistically heavily departmentalized - to its own detriment in most cases - and the show has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters to boot.

*** Which isn't true. He was made field medic ''in the second episode'', and he has always been somewhat of an expert on the 20th century.

** Also justified in that House has pissed off so much of the hospital staff that a huge portion of them refuse to work with him.
** Also justified by the fact that House expects incompetence from anyone and everyone, so he only allows his hand picked staff to perform the necessary tests and surgeries.

** Stargate Command also has a dedicated team of scientists and medical staff who will work on tasks in the background, like studying alien technology that SG-1 have brought back, or finding a cure to a disease.

* ''TheMusketeers'': You'd be forgiven for thinking that the main four characters (plus the captain) made up the entire Musketeer regiment. The others can be glimpsed around the barracks and occasionally acting as silent backup, but the main characters never interact with them and they all seem to have exactly the same long-haired design.

* ''{{Series/Mash}} is particularly bad. Other surgeons are occasionally mentioned, but rarely seen. This leads to many instances of the four doctors working many hours straight without a break. There is also only one person who does the clerking work, when there should be somewhere between two and four.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' both averts and justifies this. This is helped by having LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters. For the Imperials, you never see any command officer fighting in combat, except for Vader, who wants to challenge himself and is the only one capable of fighting Jedi. With the Rebels, slightly more is done by high level people, though again only in situations where it would be likely and many of those earned those ranks in earlier battles (Han and Lando promoted to General). For the most part, on both sides, you see admirals, generals, [[CallARabbitASmeerp moffs]], and even the Emperor only giving orders.

** SFDebris points out the astounding number of times where Ensign Harry Kim does something well out of his element simply because the writers wanted to give him something to do. In spite of the incredibly open-ended nature of his job description, poor Harry suffered from LimitedAdvancementOpportunities and remained an ensign for the entirety of ''Voyager's'' sojourn in the Delta Quadrant!
** It's even worse in the case of Tom Paris, who is apparently knowledgable in everything from piloting, engineering, commando tactics, etc. And he's an ''ex-con''. SFDebris even points out a particularly ridiculous instance of this in "Year Of Hell" where within the space of 30 seconds he is describing modifications he made to ''Voyager's'' hull (engineering) inspired by the ''Titanic'' (history) when he is suddenly called to perform field medicine and, to quote Debris, "none of these things ''are even his '''job'''''." (piloting) Debris quickly comes to the conclusion that Paris was held in a prison for savants.

*** Later partially averted with Dr. M'Benga joining the medical staff; he's better skill with Vulcans and can cover for [=McCoy=] as acting CMO when necessary.

** In fact, the starship itself (at least if it's named Enterprise) seems to suffer this trope. We find the Enterprise patrolling the border, mapping the far reaches of space, ferrying VIP's on errands great and small, responding to natural disasters, hauling cargo (usually medical supplies, but still...), investigating weird phenomena, participating in warfare, trying to stop warfare, acting as all-purpose troubleshooter for any ship or station that calls, doing first contacts with alien races, negotiating treaties, AND just plain running into bad luck. This is later justified in stories and in peripheral media as Starfleet generally having a JackOfAllTrades approach to ship design and mission profiles, due to factors like maintaining the image of a peacekeeping force and the general bigness, weirdness, and hostility of space.

** The bridge of the Enterprise is ''never'' seen completely staffed by a backup crew. They must exist for the times when you see the main characters in a meeting or in the holodeck, but if there's a scene on the bridge, at least a few of principals are always on duty.

* The Australian soap opera ''{{Neighbours}}'' did this for many years with Dr. Karl Kennedy. He was a general practitioner, but any medical procedure of whatever kind always seemed to be done by Dr. Karl. Similarly, there have been various characters over the years who were nurses, and any stay in hospital would always see the characters cared for by that particular nurse.
** Nowadays, Karl works in Erinsborough General. Curiously, he always seems to be on duty, night or day, when one of the other main characters is rushed in. In a nod to realism, though, he does not perform surgery.
* ''Franchise/{{Emergency}}'' both averted and played it straight. The paramedics had their own job, but could also act as firefighters since they were firefighter/paramedics. Most hospital stuff, though, was done by one of the three main doctors (Early, Brackett and Morton) and although there were lots of background nurses, Dixie was the most often seen one.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': This may have been [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in the episode "The Ultimate Computer". When the M-5 computer is asked why it didn't pick Kirk and [=McCoy=] for a landing party, it cites them as "unnecessary personnel".

* In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' it almost feels like the thousand or so people on board the ''Enterprise-D'' serve at most as backup in case one of the officers gets incapacitated. And usually, if all the Main Characters are incapacitated, those ample replacements are also [[RuleOfDrama mysteriously absent or incapacitated]]. There were touches of this in The Original Series as well.
** Even random or alien phenomena tend to treat Main Characters differently from Extras. If a phenomenon causes people to disappear or die, it'll target the [[RedShirt extras]] first, [[MinimalistCast leaving only the Main Characters around to solve the problem]]. If a phenomenon is benign, or it teleports people to some interesting scenario, it'll always target the Main Characters only, leaving all of the extras back on the ship.
*** An example of this appears in the very first episode, "Encounter at Farpoint". When Q transports the crew into the court of post-apocalyptic horrors, he leaves O'Brien (at that time still an extra) back on the battle bridge. It is not explained why he chose to take all the others - who are all main characters. Q himself would later lampshade this on [=DS9=]:

** Speaking of TNG: Hey, there's a top secret and dangerous commando mission we need done. Instead of sending specially trained combat troops, we'll send the captain of our flagship (who has valuable information on our defense plans), a 45-year-old doctor with no combat training whatsoever, and our only Klingon. This isn't a huge risk to both the people involved and the Federation itself at all.
** Picard is apparently a starship captain, detective, attorney, and diplomat all in one. That last one is partially justified since he's the captain of Starfleet's flagship. The Enterprise is shown to be as much a diplomatic tool for the Federation as it is a tool for exploration or combat.
*** Still, the number of episodes where Picard's various duties conflict with each other is very high. With the ship being used so often for diplomacy, and is already carrying over 1,000 people, the Enterprise should've had a ''dedicated diplomat'' on board. Starfleet is holding the IdiotBall on that.
** In the TNG episode "Remember Me" Dr. Crusher attempts to call two of the other doctors on the ship in to examine a patient and is informed they apparently never existed. Although the viewer is supposed to be just as confused as Dr. Crusher, one must wonder why these other doctors have been so rarely seen before.

** FridgeLogic kicks in when the problem-of-the-week could be solved using a Vulcan or full-Betazoid's [[{{Telepathy}} telepathic]] abilities, and nobody thinks to ask if they have one on board -- though Starfleet didn't seem to have that many full-Betazoids. Also, it has been shown that Troi ''can'' communicate telepathically with other telepaths, even if she cannot do so with non-telepaths. Yet, there never seem to be any other telepathic members of the crew when such communication would be useful (such as in "Disaster").

*** Actually, there was a head engineer in the first season (seen in the episode where everyone has that drunk virus), who was ChuckCunninghamSyndrome -ed off the show when Geordi got his promotion.
*** Not one, several. In the first season alone, the ship goes through ''four'' chief engineers; Sarah McDougall (the above-referred "The Naked Now"), Argyle ("Where No One has Gone Before" and "Datalore", mentioned in "Lonely Among Us" and the only one of the four that was around for longer than a single episode), Logan ("The Arsenal of Freedom") and Leland T. Lynch ("Skin of Evil", one episode after Logan's introduction). It's actually possible that they were all there at the same time, as the episode "Where No One has Gone Before" has Picard make a reference to "One of our chief engineers, in this case, Mr. Argyle", but why the ship needs that many, or why only one at a time is ever seen or referred to, is not explained. Also not explained is how all four of them are apparently gone by the second season.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' is particularly bad at this, with Janeway frequently sending both herself and her first officer off the ship on ''routine patrols''.

*** He was once placed in command of Voyager in Janeway's absence - and not remotely for lack of other officers.

** There's a specific issue of this going on with Paris: aside from the Doctor, he's apparently the only person on the crew with medical training, and training someone who isn't a major character is obviously impossible. So for a significant chunk of the series, there are only two people working in sickbay, and one of them is the ship's chief helmsman.
** ''Voyager,'' at least, has two excuses: Half the original crew was killed in the first episode (including the doctor, nurse, chief engineer, lead helmswoman, and first officer), and they can't get specialized personnel from Starfleet. Those left on board ''have'' to step up from time to time.
** What remains unexplained is why, given the long expected duration of the journey home, some kind of continuing education program has not been worked into the regular duty schedule. The Doctor teaches Kes medicine until she is PutOnABus, but nobody else is apparently brought in for similar training despite them having no backup for the Doctor except for Paris. Otherwise Icheb and Naomi Wildman are the only ones seemingly pursuing further education, despite the former having already been an OmnidisciplinaryScientist and the latter being a child expected to get an education!

** It is arguable that only Sisko, Kira, Worf and Dax would be capable of taking command among the main cast, and as such, these four characters leaving would essentially drop command to whoever the 5th most senior officer left on the station, which is so far down the list that no-one of that level of seniority was ever made a character.

*** The issue with Kira was somewhat resolved when Worf showed up: he would usually serve as first officer of the Defiant from that point onward. The one time Kira took command over Worf ("Tears of the Prophets") was shortly following an episode where Worf's command abilities had been called into question ("Change of Heart"). Later on Kira was given a commission as a Starfleet officer, but ironically she was never part of the Defiant crew in that role.

* In fact, the starship itself (at least if it's named Enterprise) seems to suffer this trope. We find the Enterprise patrolling the border, mapping the far reaches of space, ferrying VIP's on errands great and small, responding to natural disasters, hauling cargo (usually medical supplies, but still...), investigating weird phenomena, participating in warfare, trying to stop warfare, acting as all-purpose troubleshooter for any ship or station that calls, doing first contacts with alien races, negotiating treaties, AND just plain running into bad luck. This is later justified in stories and in peripheral media as Starfleet generally having a JackOfAllTrades approach to ship design and mission profiles, due to factors like maintaining the image of a peacekeeping force and the general bigness, weirdness, and hostility of space.
** The number of times the ''Enterprise'' (whichever one) has to do something it's actually not really prepared/staffed/equipped for because she's the only ship in range really beggars belief too. Okay, just about permissible out on the frontier of known space when they're deliberately going where no-one's gone before – but it happens when she's visiting ''EARTH'' for god's sake, the capital world of a sprawling interstellar community. Even assuming Earth is just a designated political capital like Washington DC or Canberra, that's still like finding there's only one taxi cab available for the whole city.

* ''SpaceAboveAndBeyond'' - are they space marines, or fighter pilots?
** Lampshaded in the series itself, wherein one character chastises the cast for voicing that complaint off-screen, informing them that, as Marines, their job is simply to follow whatever orders they recieve (a not-so-subtle TakeThat at the letters they had recieved on the matter).
* ''Series/StargateSG1'': SG-1 actually averts this trope to an extent, which is impressive given that the four main characters are the focus of 90% of every episode. The term SG-1 refers to their primary FirstContact crew that they send first through an established stargate connection and is composed of the main characters, and is just '''one''' team of many. While it does seem like SG-1 does everything, this is because their team is designed to be generalist - it always [[CommandRoster has a military leader, scientist, archeologist, and alien warrior]]. We frequently hear of or see other teams which have more specialist duties (SG-3 led by Colonel Makepeace is an all Marines unit charged with high risk missions or providing armed backup to other teams, for example). A lot of episodes start with SG-1 following up on some other team's work.

*** And yet, more often than not, the other scientific "experts" are shown to fail miserably (and humorously) when trying to fill in for Sam (Doctor Lee in "Arthur's Mantle") or Daniel (Doctor Rothman in "Crystal Skull".)

** ''Series/StargateAtlantis'', however, follows the trope more closely. Only Sheppard's team + whoever is in charge of Atlantis that season + the doctor of the season ever get to do ANYTHING or are ever SHOWN to do anything. In fact, it gets silly as they will treat Rodney [=McKay=] being disabled as their entire science crew - save Zelenka - being disabled, despite the existence of 20 or so other scientists on his team who are some of the most brilliant ones alive.

** When preparing to repel a reclamation force sent from Earth, Ivanova insisted on piloting a Starfury because they were asking their pilots to [[{{CivilWar}} fire on their own]], and (paraphrasing) "one of us ''has'' to be out there with them".
*** JMS has stated that the command officers need to log a certain amount of flight time to maintain their pilot's licence. This might be required for [=EarthForce=] personnel based on ships and stations where there is a risk of having to spacewalk or use escape pods. And of course in the B5 universe there are no magic teleporters to travel to a planet surface, you have to go up and down the old-fashioned way.

*** There was a cast member who was basically pushed on the show, an ace Star Fury pilot. Well... he didn't last until the end of the season. This character was added at the insistence of the studio, who felt that the show needed an all-American hot-shot pilot. JMS... did not share their vision.
*** Come to think of it, why ''is'' the station commander automatically also the Earth ambassador? Command of the station is a strict military/administrative position. While diplomacy is a skill that command officers would do well to have, there are a number of high-ranking military officers in real life that prove it's not a common, or even necessary, skill. There should have been a separate Earth ambassador.
**** It is mentioned that the Mimbari would only participate in the Babylon treaty which forms the legal basis of the station if Sinclair was named head of the station. There is a good chance that their insistence may have extended to giving him full diplomatic and military power on the station. The fact that Sinclair isn't the best qualified officer to hold his position is a running subplot in the first season. When Sheriden shows up later he *is* a much more distinguished officer taking over and established position.
** Either averted or justified in the ''Series/{{Crusade}}'' spin-off, although Gideon will still put himself in danger, despite being TheCaptain. Given that he only has 4 years to cure the population of Earth, his willingness to put his life on the line may be a necessity. Matheson mostly sticks to being his NumberTwo (despite the fact that he's a lieutenant not a commander) and rarely uses his telepathic abilities (mostly due to much stricter regulations in the post-Telepathic War world). Chambers pretty much sticks to medicine, and Eilerson (although he's a civilian) sticks to archaeology and linguistics). Dureena and Galen aren't really members of the crew (or even [=EarthForce=]), so they don't count. Dureena is a thief, and Galen just comes and goes as he pleases, and hardly anyone questions a technomage.

* In ''YesMinister'', Hacker has dealt with hospitals, transport infrastructure, finance, smoking, gender equality, and everything else you can name. On the DVDCommentary the writers said they deliberately gave him a fictional department (Administrative Affairs--basically anything that involves bureaucrats and red tape is in its purview) in order to get him involved in as many issues as they could.

** It was clear what their official titles, but they'd often go beyond them, particularly communications staff Toby, Sam and Will, who besides speechwriting would basically do all the same political and legislative affairs work Josh and Leo handled (all speechwriting in the show, not matter how small, was also handled by these three, though a [HandWave] explained this - in some episodes it was said the rest of the real-life White House Speechwriting team weren't good enough for big speeches and in one episode, they all quit in protest when Will was made Communications Deputy). CJ usually stuck to her press secretary duties seasons 1-5, while Josh and Leo were justified in having somewhat broader remits. However, other key titles in the White House staff like Legislative Director barely existed however. In the final two seasons, it was also noticeable that titles would move in and out of prominence depending on whether a main character held them (e.g. having the Deputy NSA and Deputy Press Secretary in staff meetings suddenly becomes important in season 6 for reason when Kate and Annabeth join the cast, the VP's chief aide attends when Will takes that role, when Josh leaves having a WH Deputy Chief of Staff more or less suddenly stops mattering, and in season 6-7 Toby then Will doubles as Press Secretary and Comms Director, with no Deputy Comms Director around).
** If one was completely unfamiliar with the American political system outside of this show, they could be forgiven for believing the president's personal staff sets all policy for the entire country.

* On ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'', although there are more than 20 "Actives" in the L.A. Dollhouse, any assignment that turns out to involve the MythArc will go to one of the four main characters. It's justified with Echo, since she's the house's #1 Active and therefore the one requested most often, but there's no reason why _all_ the non-Echo assignments go to the other three.

* On ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'', although there are more than 20 "Actives" in the L.A. Dollhouse, any assignment that turns out to involve the MythArc will go to one of the four main characters, even if there's no in-character reason why it should.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' has Agent Scully serving as a field agent and performing her own autopsies.

* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' averts this as part of [[ShownTheirWork it's surprising accuracy in how medicine works]]. They play a lot off the contrasts between medical and surgical, blue scrubs for medical doctors and green scrubs for surgeons. Both J.D. and Elliot have to face choosing a specific field (Elliot especially being pushed towards OB-GYN) and both eventually go for general practitioner. Other episodes involve the characters having to trade favors, bribes or blackmail to get lab results done quicker or a CAT scan done after hours. Turk talks about being rotated to different areas of surgery, from orthopedics and cosmetic, and he later makes a point that he doesn't have experience in pre-natal when asked to assist on one as a favor.