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He's not a bricklayer, an engineer, or a coal miner. He's a doctor and his name is McCoy.
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00:00He's not a bricklayer, an engineer, or a coal miner.
00:03He's a doctor, and his name is McCoy.
00:06Leonard Bones McCoy was one of the most celebrated doctors in Starfleet history.
00:10He was skilled in both surgery and psychology, and, during his time on the Enterprise, invented
00:15several new medical techniques that saved the ship on many occasions.
00:19He also had a unique no-nonsense attitude that mixed well with Kirk and Spock's personalities.
00:24The three of them had a very interesting dynamic, but the other two got most of the attention.
00:30Sadly, McCoy never really got a lot of time focused on him specifically.
00:34His backstory was mostly told in small parts, scattered across different episodes and films.
00:39In this list, we're going to look at 10 things that you might not know about Dr. McCoy's
00:44history, family, and personal life.
00:46Bones was far more than just the guy they hired to say,
00:49he's dead Jim, every episode.
00:51He was actually a very deep and complex character with a dark history.
00:55With all that being said, I'm Bree from Trek Culture, and here are 10 things that you
00:59didn't know about Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy.
01:02Number 10.
01:03He didn't attend the Academy.
01:05A lot of confusion here comes from the 2009 Star Trek film in which McCoy joined Starfleet
01:10Academy right at the same time as Kirk.
01:13In the prime timeline, McCoy never attended the Academy.
01:16Instead, he got a medical degree from the University of Mississippi and was commissioned to join the
01:20Starfleet ranks, and later the Enterprise, because of his talents in that field.
01:25Many don't realize that the Academy is not the only path towards serving on a Federation starship.
01:30McCoy always saw himself as more of a doctor than a Starfleet officer, so for him, medical
01:35school was the way to go.
01:36Why he decided to attend the Academy in the alternate universe is unknown, but it could have
01:41something to do with how much more militarized Starfleet had become after the USS Kelvin was
01:45destroyed by the Romulans.
01:47Maybe this caused Starfleet to be more picky about who they'll let on their ships.
01:51Number 9.
01:52McCoy didn't invent his most iconic catchphrase.
01:55Don't get mistaken, Bones was a doctor and absolutely nothing else.
01:59McCoy's iconic catchphrase, I'm a doctor, not a, followed by literally any other job title,
02:05has been used by McCoy a staggering number of times.
02:08If you're interested in looking through all the examples of this, there is a Memory Alpha
02:12page that has compiled them all together.
02:14Among other things, McCoy is confirmed to not be a bricklayer, a physicist, a mechanic,
02:20an engineer, a coal miner, or an escalator.
02:23This line has also been repeated by plenty of other characters throughout Trek, most frequently
02:27by Julian Bashir on Deep Space Nine and the Holographic Doctor from Voyager.
02:32What's surprising is that I'm a blank, not a blank was used years before McCoy was even
02:37born by Phlox.
02:39So McCoy himself didn't invent the expression, though he certainly popularized it in Trek.
02:44It's the perfect way for folks in Starfleet to passive-aggressively tell their superiors
02:48that something is totally outside of their area of expertise.
02:52Number 8.
02:53His First Appearance
02:54It's well known that most of the cast from the original series were replaced after the
02:58first pilot episode, The Cage.
03:00The ship's chief medical officer at the time was Dr. Philip Boyce, who served under Captain
03:05Pike before Mbenga in Strange New Worlds.
03:07Kirk replaced Pike in the second pilot episode where No Man Has Gone Before, and we also
03:12got the first appearance of Scotty and Sulu, but McCoy was still nowhere to be seen.
03:17In this episode, Kirk's chief medical officer was Dr. Mark Piper.
03:21It wasn't until the series got picked up by a network that we finally saw Bones for the
03:25first time.
03:26Gene Roddenberry and others decided to replace Dr. Piper with McCoy because they felt that
03:31the role needed a somewhat younger actor.
03:33The first appearance of McCoy, along with Ohura and Janice Rand, was in the episode
03:38The Corbomite Maneuver, and he continued to serve aboard the Enterprise until the end of
03:42its five-year mission, at which point he took a hiatus before jumping back into service in
03:46the motion picture.
03:47Interestingly, DeForest Kelly was actually one of Gene Roddenberry's top picks to play the
03:51doctor in The Cage, but director Robert Butler suggested to go with John Hoyt instead.
03:57Number 7.
03:58He Nearly Stood Up to Khan
04:00In 2020, a deleted scene from the original series episode Space Seed went viral on YouTube.
04:05It showed McCoy standing up to Khan after he overpowered the crew and demanded control
04:10of the Enterprise.
04:11In the scene, McCoy approached Khan with phasers pointed at him from every angle and told him,
04:16I never thought I'd say this to a patient, but you owe me something.
04:20In case you've forgotten, I saved your life.
04:23In his frustration, he grabbed ahold of Khan's arm and was shot to the ground by one of the
04:28other augments. Khan explained to Spock that McCoy was simply stunned and that he tried
04:33to avoid bloodshed if possible. It's not really known why the scene was cut, but it
04:38might have been to make Khan seem more threatening. After all, we know that in the final cut of
04:43the episode, Khan actually tries to kill Kirk in a decompression chamber, which made him
04:48seem much more insane while keeping it non-violent enough for television standards at the time.
04:52Still, this deleted scene is a rare showcase of McCoy's bravery under pressure, even if it's
04:58not technically canon.
05:00Number 6. McCoy and Spock, Kirk's Angel and Devil
05:04Star Trek Beyond was praised by a lot of fans for nailing the chemistry between the original
05:08series' characters, specifically Spock and Bones. In issue 184 of Star Trek Magazine, the film's
05:14writers, Simon Pegg and Doug Young, explained that they had a lot of fun writing scenes for
05:19these two and beyond. Specifically, Young liked the idea of having the emotional represented
05:24through McCoy and the logical represented through Spock, so the two of them could serve as kind
05:30of an angel devil on Kirk's shoulder, guiding him through his decisions. And you know, this
05:35is a very interesting way to look at their relationship. It was always fun to watch Spock
05:39and Bones argue in the original series, and the scenes between the two of them and beyond
05:43definitely call back to that old dynamic. They could get pretty heated at times, but it
05:48was always clear that they actually cared about each other very much.
05:51Number 5. His Daughter
05:53It's easy to miss because it was only mentioned in one episode, but Bones actually had a daughter
05:58named Joanna McCoy. She was originally going to pop up as a love interest for Kirk in the
06:04original series episode The Way to Eden, which definitely would've shook things up a bit between
06:09him and McCoy, but the character ended up being replaced with Irina. The only time she was ever
06:15actually mentioned was in the animated series episode The Survivor. Evandorian shapeshifter
06:20came aboard the Enterprise disguised as the famed space philanthropist Carter Winston, and McCoy
06:25thanked the imposter for saving his daughter, Joanna, ten years prior. Carter Winston was one of the
06:31wealthiest private traders of the time. He was a generous guy, so he used his private fortune to go
06:37around the galaxy helping needy people. The people of the planet Cerberus went through a catastrophic crop
06:42failure in 2259 that left them at risk of starvation. Luckily, Winston came along and used his wealth to
06:48feed the population, saving everyone on the planet including Joanna McCoy. Soon afterwards though,
06:55Winston mysteriously went missing. The Vendorian imposter revealed that Winston's ship had crashed on the
07:01planet Vendor and that he had died shortly after. However, the Vendorian became more and more like
07:06Winston every day, so it's possible that he went on to continue Winston's good deeds after being taken
07:12away by the authorities at the end of the episode. Number four, McCoy's adventures while trapped in
07:18Earth's past. There have been countless non-canon depictions of McCoy in video games, books, and more,
07:24but the most compelling was a novel by David R. George III that was tied to the original series.
07:30Crucible, McCoy, Provenance of Shadows. David had previously worked as a writer for Star Trek
07:35magazine and the Voyager episode Prime Factors. He created the Crucible series to celebrate the
07:4040th anniversary of the original series. It was a trilogy that focused on the original series episode,
07:46The City on the Edge of Forever, from the perspectives of the three main characters from
07:50the episode. McCoy's novel in the series explored the episode's two different timelines,
07:55one in which Kirk's love interest, Edith Keillor, was killed in front of him, just like what happened
07:59in the original episode, and one where McCoy saved her, causing a butterfly effect that
08:04removed the Federation from history. The alternate universe segments of the book give us a rare look
08:09at McCoy's character on his own. At first, he tried desperately to contact the future for help,
08:14but over time gradually started to accept that he was alone. Eventually, he settles down after working
08:20through some of his past regrets. The story was non-canon, but it gave some interesting context
08:25for McCoy's life in the alternate reality from the original episode. Number three, his thoughts on
08:31technology. Dr. McCoy had a very complicated relationship with technology. He considered
08:36the 20th century hospital from the voyage home medieval in comparison to 23rd century medicine,
08:42but he was slightly distrustful of technology and didn't want to rely on it too much in his work.
08:48He was skeptical of everyday Starfleet devices like the transporter and even shuttlecrafts in the
08:53alternate universe films. He also tried to take advantage of the body's natural healing ability as
08:58much as possible when treating his patients. In the Corbomite Maneuver, Kirk asked McCoy,
09:03aren't you the one that always says a little suffering is good for the soul? This isn't to say
09:08that he wanted his patients to suffer, just that he believed the easy fix wasn't always the best fix.
09:14First and foremost, he thought people shouldn't allow technology to coddle and replace humanity.
09:19After seeing Dr. Ta'ana's medical chainsaw from Lower Decks, it's hard not to be a bit weary of
09:26accepted Starfleet medical technology. 2. McCoy's Pain
09:31In The Final Frontier, Spock's brother Cybok used his unique ability to tap into people's deepest pain
09:37to force McCoy to relive the death of his father, David McCoy. David was diagnosed with an incurable
09:43disease, and after living for too long in constant pain, pleaded with his son Leonard to take him off
09:48of life support. Leonard didn't want to watch his father die slowly and painfully, so he disconnected the
09:54life support system to preserve his dignity. Leonard had regrets about his decision, but the worst pain
10:00came when, shortly after David's death, a cure was discovered for the disease. If Leonard had not
10:06deactivated the life support, then his father may have lived much longer. He continued to regret this
10:11decision for years. Cybok's interventions seemed to help McCoy move past his pain. If nothing else,
10:17it helped him realize that his father's death was not entirely his fault.
10:211. The origin of the nickname Bones
10:25It's been assumed for ages that McCoy's nickname Bones was evolved from Saw Bones, a term used for
10:30military doctors in the American Civil War because of the saws that they had to use to perform amputations.
10:37This was never stated outright in canon, and to complicate matters further, the 2009 alternate
10:43universe films implied that the nickname's origin was something entirely different. Right after first meeting
10:49Kirk aboard the Starfleet recruit shuttle and complaining about the horrors of outer space,
10:54McCoy grumpily explained that he and his wife had just recently divorced and said,
10:58all I got left is my bones. The camera then cuts to Kirk, and it's pretty clear what's being implied.
11:04JJ Abrams explained in his DVD commentary of the film that this reveal was actually not scripted.
11:10Carl Urban was a Star Trek fan and thought the nickname could use an explanation, and thought of the line
11:16while filming. Fans can debate which origin is canon to the prime timeline, but the term coming from
11:21the American Civil War seems to be much more realistic, given that many terms in Starfleet
11:26were borrowed from the United States military, and that Kirk in particular was a big American history
11:32buff. The explanation in the Star Trek 2009 film feels unnecessary and kind of silly, much like the
11:38origin story given to Han Solo's name in the Solo movie. And there you have it, those were 10 things that
11:44you didn't know about Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy. If you liked this video, go ahead and give us a thumbs up,
11:49and let us know in the comments if we missed anything. If you like what we do here on this
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12:05at TrekCulture, and you can find me on various social medias at TrekkieBrie. I hope everyone has a
12:11great rest of their day, and don't forget to Live Long and Prosper!
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