Tamara Johansen

"...that made it war, and that's what we do."

- Tamara Johansen

First Lieutenant Tamara Johansen, also known as "T.J.", is a United States Air Force field medic in the Stargate Program, and has some off world experience. With paramedic level training, she is able to triage serious injury. In 2009, she became trapped on board the Ancient starship Destiny along with 80 other people after an attack on Icarus Base.

Before Destiny
Tamara Johansen was born sometime in 1983 and came from a modest background. She has both surviving parents, and a sister. Her father worked as a tailor; he actually taught her how to do stitches, after he stitched himself in an injury. He had since retired. Johansen is also an aunt to both her sister's children, and is quite fond of them.

At some point, she trained to become an officer in the United States Air Force, and became assigned to the Stargate Program, where by 2009, she would be assigned to Icarus Base, working under Simms, the lead medic at the base. She had an affair with her commanding officer, Colonel Everett Young, a married man. After some time, she decided to end it, and to avoid any further complications, decided to leave the Air Force after her scholarship to a Seattle University was approved. This raised suspicions by the base's IOA representative Camile Wray.

Arrival on Destiny
One night, the base was under attack by the Lucian Alliance. The attack fatally injured Simms, despite her attempts to save him. After they evacuated to the other end of the nine chevron address, she and around 80 others arrived on Destiny, and cut off from Earth. Since Simms died, the responsibilities of becoming the lead field medic fell to her hands. Immediately, she tended to Young after he arrived unconscious, and later to Alan Armstrong after he collapsed from internal bleeding, which accelerated from the warfarin from his heart medication. While a team was sent to a desert planet to find lime to repair the ship's life support, she looked after Young, who at the time was occupied by Colonel Telford. He put Young's body through more physical stress, forcing her to sedate him until Young returned to his own body.

A day after repairing the life support, Young officially reinstated her as medic. She tended to Nicholas Rush after he collapsed from a nervous breakdown when the ship's power reserves failed. After a while, the ship was sent to an unalterable course to a Star, Young chose her and Matthew Scott as the two people in charge of another 15 on Destiny's last remaining Ancient shuttle and live on another planet. After the shuttle left, T.J considered those stuck on Destiny lucky, as they faced the prospect of spending the rest of their lives on a desolate planet. When it was revealed that Destiny went to the star to refuel, the shuttle returned in relatively one piece.

After more time passed, Scott and Young went to an ice planet to replenish their water supply after half of their reserves mysteriously disappeared by what would later turn out to be the dust bug swarm Scott inadvertently brought back from the desert planet. Young appointed T.J in charge of the Destiny Expedition during his absence. Despite this, she still looked to Rush and others for guidance. She discovered about the dust bugs and planned to rid of them after they took more water and severely wounded Corporal Gorman. She successfully lured them to a water barrel and sent them to "Hoth". However, despite her best efforts of saving Gorman, he died from his injuries.

Weeks later, Young wanted her to perform psychiatric evaluations on the crew to determine their mental states. After questioning a few reluctant volunteers, news of this spread, and the others attempted to avoid being questioned by her about how they are coping.

By 2010, TJ discovered that she was pregnant and, as a result, felt moody and sick. The father is presumably Colonel Young and Chloe is the only one aware of the pregnancy.

Alternate realities

 * In an alternate reality, she was part of an expedition to a jungle planet to gather fruit and its seeds to grow more food. However, some of the other members, including Dale Volker and Chloe Armstrong, started collapsing from an illness that was, at the time, unknown. That night, the team were ambushed by nocturnal creatures. She was able to survive the first night, but despite their best efforts to defend their position the following night, she was violently killed by one of the creatures.
 * From another alternate reality that was itself altered from the first, she stayed on board Destiny, where she worked out that the illness was not caused by the planet, but from the water they brought back from Hoth. She exhausted the ship's entire supply of antibiotics. After viewing the Kino footage, she determine the venom from the creatures served the key to curing them. However, four people, including Volker, Chloe, Vanessa James and Jeremy Franklin died; she found their deaths too much to bear.

Behind the scenes
Tamara Johansen originally had the surname of Jon and was of Asian descent, but her surname was changed to Johansen and her race was changed to Caucasian before she appeared in any episodes of Stargate Universe. Her first name would suggest a Slavic origin, whilst the -sen ending suggest Nordic descent, since -sen-surnames are very common in Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Norway. Johansen would mean 'Son of Johan (John)'.