Leonard McCoy
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| Leonard H. McCoy | |
 Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, in "Shore Leave" episode |
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| Species | Human |
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| Gender | Male |
| Date of birth | 2227 |
| Home planet | Earth |
| Affiliation | Starfleet |
| Posting | USS Enterprise & USS Enterprise-A chief surgeon/chief medical officer |
| Rank | Lieutenant commander, Commander, Admiral |
| Portrayed by | DeForest Kelley, Karl Urban |
Leonard H. McCoy (nicknamed "Bones"), played by DeForest Kelley, is the Doctor character in the original Star Trek series, and the first six Star Trek films. The character does not appear in the two pilots for the series, "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before"; the ship's doctors in those episodes are Philip Boyce (John Hoyt) and Mark Piper (Paul Fix), respectively.
Karl Urban will play a young Leonard McCoy in the upcoming Star Trek film to be directed by J.J. Abrams.[1]
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[edit] Overview
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Leonard McCoy was born in 2227 according to Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: "Encounter at Farpoint". He attended the University of Mississippi, where he once met Emony Dax, a female Trill athlete with whom it is implied he had a "brief involvement" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode: "Trials and Tribble-ations")[2].
By 2265, McCoy had been promoted to lieutenant commander and was assigned as a medical observer to the planet Capella. The assignment was unfruitful, as the Capellans found little need for medical arts and existed under a tribal society where only the strong survived ("Friday's Child").
He is suspicious of advanced technology, especially the transporter, which he regards with distrust and outright dismay (often expressing a suspicion that the device will irretrievably scatter his atoms), and occasionally is bigoted with regard to Spock's half-Vulcan ancestry. A divorcé, he often showed a flirtatious side to female members of the Enterprise crew [3]. He is the only American Southerner depicted among the racially and ethnically diverse crew of the USS Enterprise.
McCoy is a physician of considerable skill, capable of successfully treating creatures whose physiologies he is unfamiliar with, such as the Horta ("The Devil in the Dark"), though he often hesitates at operating on Vulcans due to his relative unfamiliarity with their anatomy[4] and has no practical knowledge of Klingon anatomy [5]. As a doctor, McCoy prefers old-fashioned, personalized or less-intrusive remedies to cutting-edge treatments and computerized medicine, once complaining that the refit Enterprise's sickbay was more a computer center than a medical office.[6] He also is a great believer in the body's own recuperative powers, though he also realizes that medicine as it exists in the 23rd Century has to help along the process.
In 2266, McCoy was posted as chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk, replacing Doctor Mark Piper.[7] McCoy and Kirk became good friends, but the passionate, sometimes cantankerous McCoy frequently argued with Kirk's other close friend and confidant, Spock. In 2268, he was diagnosed with Xenopolycythemia, a normally incurable and fatal blood disease. After an encounter with the Fabrini civilization travelling inside the asteroid colony ship Yonada, McCoy was able to discover a cure for the disease.[8] He served on board Enterprise until 2270, when the ship's five-year mission was completed. He resigned his commission or was placed on inactive reserve.
During the 2271 V'Ger Crisis, Admiral Kirk requested McCoy specifically as a member of Enterprise's crew for the investigation of the V'ger entity. At Kirk's request, Nogura employed what McCoy described as a "little-known, seldom-used reserve activation clause," which McCoy likened to being drafted, to reactivate McCoy's commission as a commander and chief medical officer aboard the refit Enterprise (Star Trek: The Motion Picture).
By 2285, McCoy served as an instructor at Starfleet Academy. He was on board Enterprise when Admiral Kirk was required to take command during the events surrounding the escape of Khan and his subsequent seizure of the Genesis Device. During this action, Spock was killed while repairing the ship's warp engines. Before attempting this, he nerve-pinched McCoy and performed a mind-meld on the unconscious doctor, placing his katra or mental essence into the doctor's psyche. This proved key to Spock's eventual return from death, although the process was traumatic for both. During the return from the Mutara Sector, McCoy began to exhibit erratic behaviors, and even began at times speaking and acting as if he were Spock. After trying to charter a ship to the by-then-embargoed Genesis Planet, McCoy was arrested by Federation Security and was to undergo psychological testing to determine his sanity. At the same time, Kirk finally realized (with the aid of Sarek) what had transpired. He rescued McCoy and with the aid of the other main officers of Enterprise, stole Enterprise in a bid to rescue Spock's body from the Genesis Planet and re-unite it with the katra within McCoy.
During the Enterprise crew's three-month stay on Vulcan, McCoy fully recovered. While in action on and over the Genesis Planet, the Enterprise crew had captured a Klingon Bird of Prey, which McCoy's "fine sense of historical irony" led to him to christen the HMS Bounty. After leaving Vulcan in Bounty, the crew returned to the year 1986 to retrieve a pair of humpback whales to placate an alien probe sent to communicate with the long extinct species. While there, McCoy found himself in the position of aiding an elderly woman with kidney dialysis problems in regenerating her kidneys. McCoy, along with the rest of Kirk's crew, were prosecuted for their illegal actions regarding the theft of the Enterprise and travel to Genesis. The charges, however, were dropped, with the exception of one charge solely directed at Admiral Kirk, who was demoted to Captain. In gratitude for the crew's actions in saving Earth from the alien probe, Starfleet Command gave him command of a new starship, the USS Enterprise-A (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).
McCoy remained with Kirk and the rest of the crew of the old Enterprise,serving in his capacity as chief medical officer (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country). During the Khitomer Crisis of 2293, McCoy was tried and convicted along with Kirk at a Klingon tribunal on the charges of aiding and abetting the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon. The charges were false, and the evidence that seemingly pointed to Enterprise had been engineered by both General Chang of the Klingons and Admiral Cartwright of Starfleet in an attempt to scrap a proposed peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. As part of the plot, the Federation was going to mount a large-scale military action to the Klingon penal asteroid Rura Penthe to rescue McCoy and Kirk. Instead, Enterprise (with the aid of Captain Sulu and Excelsior) were able to effect the rescue while still preventing a military breach between the two powers. McCoy was instrumental in exposing Chang and Cartwright's plot, as he and Spock rigged a photon torpedo to find Chang's cloaked ship.
Between 2295 and 2363, McCoy's life and activities are not accounted for. In 2363, a now elderly Admiral McCoy was briefly aboard the recently-commissioned USS Enterprise-D, and compared Data's mannerisms and speech to that of Vulcans and was as cranky and cantankerous as ever (Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: "Encounter at Farpoint").
McCoy appears in several non-canon novels, several of which revolve around him. In William Shatner's novels, McCoy is over 150 years old, thanks in large part to synthetic body parts (heart, lungs, digestive system, legs, etc.). DeForest Kelley's death in 1999 led to a DC Comics story chronicling McCoy's death, in which Spock and Scott visit McCoy on his death bed.
[edit] Catchphrases
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This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can (December 2007). |
McCoy is also known for using sayings which came to be considered catch phrases for the character, the most popular of which include the following.
[edit] "He's dead, Jim."
McCoy frequently declares someone or something deceased with the line, "He's dead", "He's dead, Jim", or something similar; the phrase is considered a "trademark line" of the character.[9] Examples of episodes where "Bones" has used this phrase include:
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"He's dead, Jim" has entered popular culture as a general metaphor, with uses as diverse as descriptions of an electronic circuit that is not powering-up properly,[10], an example of how to add an audio file to function as an alert sound in a computer system,[11] and an illustrative quote regarding how to know if one's opponent has been destroyed in an action hero game.[12]
Assistant Professor of Literature at MIT Henry Jenkins cited Dr. McCoy's "He's dead, Jim" trademark line as an example that fans actively participate in the creation of an underground culture, in which they derive pleasure by repeating memorable lines as part of constructing new mythologies and alternative social communities.[13]
[edit] "I'm a doctor, not a(n)..."
When McCoy is pressed to perform or give an opinion as something other than a doctor, he often remarks "I'm a doctor, not a(n)...", concluding with whatever profession he has been asked to perform. Popular culture often precedes the saying with "Dammit, Jim" although this expletive was never used in the original series in which profanity was uttered only once. The expletives "Dammit, Jim" or "Dammit, Spock" do frequently appear in the films, however they were still not often paired with "I'm a doctor, not a ..." routine.
The genesis of the catchphrase, albeit not in its familiar form, was in "The Corbomite Maneuver", after Kirk chastised McCoy for not interrupting his physical when the red alert indicator light came on: "What am I? A doctor or a moon shuttle conductor? If I jumped every time a light went on, I'd end up talking to myself." (By the time he said he'd end up talking to himself, Kirk was long gone, and McCoy was talking to himself.) The familiar form of the catchphrase appears to have been first uttered as "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer" in "The Devil in the Dark", when Kirk ordered him to treat the wounded Horta.("You're a healer...There's a patient....That's...an order!!!)
There was one instance which McCoy willingly assisted in a task that wasn't part of his training. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, when Spock asked McCoy if he was interested in performing surgery on a photon torpedo, McCoy answered in Spock's usual catchphrase: "Fascinating."
This McCoy catchphrase has been used in other versions of the Star Trek franchise media, such as the Star Trek films, spin-off TV series and video games. The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager sometimes uses the "I'm a Doctor..." phrase. Another model of the Emergency Medical Hologram, the EMH Mark 2, was also featured in one episode aboard a ship that had been taken over by Romulans. When the Doctor requested his help, he replied "I'm a doctor, not a commando!" (During his audition for the role of the Doctor, Robert Picardo was asked to merely say, "Somebody forgot to turn off my program." However, he then added the line, "I'm a doctor, not a nightlight". He then got the part.[14]) In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", when asked about events of the 23rd Century Doctor Bashir responds with "I'm a Doctor, not a historian."
In the movie Star Trek: First Contact, the EMH Mark 1 says: "I'm a doctor, not a doorstop." In the video game Star Trek: Bridge Commander, if engineer Brex is spoken to repeatedly, he will eventually respond with "Damn it, Jim! I'm an engineer, not a conversationalist."
For more on this topic as well as a full list of occurrences, see MemoryAlpha: I'm a doctor, not a....
Both the "He's dead, Jim" and "I'm a doctor, not a..." catchphrases have also been used in homages in other TV series and films, including The Simpsons, Family Guy, and innumerable others, most notably in the Futurama episode Where No Fan Has Gone Before, itself a Star Trek parody starring several members of the original cast (though not Kelley, who had died by this time).
[edit] References
- ^ "Karl Urban Confirmed as the new Leonard "Bones" McCoy", TrekWeb.com, 2007-10-17.
- ^ STARTREK.COM : Biography
- ^ "Shore Leave". The information on his divorce, while not strictly canon, comes from early script treatments for "The Way to Eden" written by Dorothy Fontana.
- ^ "Journey to Babel"
- ^ Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- ^ Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- ^ "The Corbomite Maneuver"
- ^ "For the World is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky"
- ^ Porter, Jennifer E. (1999). Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture. SUNY Press, p127. ISBN 0791443345.
- ^ Miller, Michael (2000). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Home Theater Systems. Alpha Books, 210. ISBN 0028639391.
- ^ Pogue, David (2002). Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. O'Reilly Press, 210. ISBN 0596004508.
- ^ Borgenicht, David (2002). The Action Hero's Handbook. Quirk Books, 42. ISBN 193168605X.
- ^ Jenkins, Henry (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. Routledge, 76. ISBN 0415905729.
- ^ IMDB segment about the Doctor
[edit] External links
- StarTrek.com: Leonard McCoy
- Leonard McCoy article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
- I'm a doctor, not a... article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
- Star Trek Parodies article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
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