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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,
00:58and here are 10 things that you didn't know about Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy.
01:03A 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
01:20to join the Starfleet 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
01:29starship.
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
01:41have something 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, McCoy 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
02:04title, has 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,
02:19an engineer, a coal miner, or an escalator.
02:23This line has also been repeated by plenty of other characters throughout Trek, most
02:27frequently by 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 that
02:49something 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.
03:08Kirk replaced Pike in the second pilot episode where No Man Has Gone Before, and we also got
03:12the 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 The
03:38Corbomite Maneuver, and he continued to serve aboard the Enterprise until the end of its five-year
03:42mission, at which point he took a hiatus before jumping back into service in the motion picture.
03:47Interestingly, DeForest Kelly was actually one of Gene Roddenberry's top picks to play
03:51the doctor 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 of
04:10the 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.
04:29Khan explained to Spock that McCoy was simply stunned and that he tried to avoid bloodshed if
04:35possible.
04:35It's not really known why the scene was cut, but it might have been to make Khan see more
04:40threatening.
04:41After all, we know that in the final cut of the episode, Khan actually tries to kill
04:45Kirk in a decompression chamber, which made him seem much more insane while keeping it
04:50non-violent enough for television standards at the time.
04:53Still, this deleted scene is a rare showcase of McCoy's bravery under pressure, even if
04:58it's not technically canon.
05:00Number 6.
05:01McCoy and Spock.
05:02Kirk'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.
05:11In issue 184 of Star Trek magazine, the film's writers, Simon Pegg and Doug Young, explained
05:17that they had a lot of fun writing scenes for these two and beyond.
05:21Specifically, Young liked the idea of having the emotional represented through McCoy and
05:25the logical represented through Spock.
05:28So the two of them could serve as kind of an angel devil on Kirk's shoulder, guiding
05:32him through his decisions.
05:34And you know, this is a very interesting way to look at their relationship.
05:37It was always fun to watch Spock and Bones argue in the original series, and the scenes
05:42between the two of them and beyond definitely call back to that old dynamic.
05:46They could get pretty heated at times, but it was always clear that they actually cared
05:50about each other very much.
05:51Number 5.
05:52His 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.
06:00She was originally going to pop up as a love interest for Kirk in the original series episode
06:05The Way to Eden, which definitely would have shook things up a bit between him and McCoy,
06:10but the character ended up being replaced with Irina.
06:13The only time she was ever actually mentioned was in the animated series episode The Survivor.
06:19Evandorian's shapeshifter came aboard the Enterprise disguised as the famed space philanthropist
06:24Carter Winston, and McCoy thanked the imposter for saving his daughter, Joanna, 10 years
06:29prior.
06:30Carter Winston was one of the wealthiest private traders of the time.
06:34He was a generous guy, so he used his private fortune to go around the galaxy helping needy
06:38people.
06:39The people of the planet Cerberus went through a catastrophic crop failure in 2259 that left
06:44them at risk of starvation.
06:46Luckily, Winston came along and used his wealth to feed the population, saving everyone on the
06:51planet, including Joanna McCoy.
06:53Soon afterwards, though, Winston mysteriously went missing.
06:57The Vendorian imposter revealed that Winston's ship had crashed on the planet Vendor and that
07:02he had died shortly after.
07:04However, the Vendorian became more and more like Winston every day, so it's possible that
07:09he went on to continue Winston's good deeds after being taken away by the authorities at
07:14the end of the episode.
07:15Number 4.
07:16McCoy's adventures while trapped in Earth's past.
07:19There 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
07:29series.
07:30Crucible.
07:31McCoy.
07:31Provenance of Shadows.
07:33David had previously worked as a writer for Star Trek magazine and the Voyager episode
07:37Prime Factors.
07:38He created the Crucible series to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the original series.
07:43It was a trilogy that focused on the original series episode The City on the Edge of Forever
07:47from the perspectives of the three main characters from the episode.
07:51McCoy's novel in the series explored the episode's two different timelines, one in which Kirk's
07:56love interest, Edith Keillor, was killed in front of him, just like what happened in
07:59the original episode, and one where McCoy saved her, causing a butterfly effect that removed
08:04the Federation from history.
08:06The alternate universe segments of the book give us a rare look at McCoy's character on
08:10his own.
08:11At first, he tried desperately to contact the future for help, but over time gradually started
08:16to accept that he was alone.
08:18Eventually, he settles down after working through some of his past regrets.
08:22The story was non-canon, but it gave some interesting context for McCoy's life in the
08:26alternate reality from the original episode.
08:29Number 3.
08:30His thoughts on technology.
08:32Dr. McCoy had a very complicated relationship with technology.
08:36He considered the 20th century hospital from the Voyage Home medieval in comparison to
08:4123rd century medicine, but he was slightly distrustful of technology and didn't want to rely on it
08:47too much in his work.
08:48He was skeptical of everyday Starfleet devices like the transporter and even shuttlecrafts
08:53in the alternate universe films.
08:55He also tried to take advantage of the body's natural healing ability as much as possible
08:59when treating his patients.
09:01In the Corbomite Maneuver, Kirk asked McCoy,
09:03Aren't you the one that always says a little suffering is good for the soul?
09:07This isn't to say that he wanted his patients to suffer, just that he believed the easy fix
09:12wasn't always the best fix.
09:14First and foremost, he thought people shouldn't allow technology to coddle and replace humanity.
09:20After seeing Dr. Ta'ana's medical chainsaw from Lower Decks, it's hard not to be a bit
09:25weary of accepted Starfleet medical technology.
09:29Number 2.
09:30McCoy's pain.
09:31In The Final Frontier, Spock's brother Cybok used his unique ability to tap into people's
09:36deepest pain to force McCoy to relive the death of his father, David McCoy.
09:41David was diagnosed with an incurable disease, and after living for too long in constant pain,
09:46pleaded with his son Leonard to take him off of life support.
09:50Leonard didn't want to watch his father die slowly and painfully, so he disconnected the
09:54life support system to preserve his dignity.
09:56Leonard had regrets about his decision, but the worst pain came when, shortly after David's
10:02death, a cure was discovered for the disease.
10:05If Leonard had not deactivated the life support, then his father may have lived much longer.
10:09He continued to regret this decision for years.
10:13Cybok's interventions seemed to help McCoy move past his pain.
10:16If nothing else, it helped him realize that his father's death was not entirely his fault.
10:21Number 1.
10:22The 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
10:30for military doctors in the American Civil War because of the saws that they had to use to
10:35perform 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.
10:48Right after first meeting Kirk aboard the Starfleet Recruit shuttle and complaining about the horrors
10:53of outer space, McCoy grumpily explained that he and his wife had just recently divorced and said,
10:58all I got left is my bones.
11:00The camera then cuts to Kirk, and it's pretty clear what's being implied.
11:05JJ Abrams explained in his DVD commentary of the film that this reveal was actually not scripted.
11:11Carl Urban was a Star Trek fan and thought the nickname could use an explanation, and thought
11:15of the line while filming. Fans can debate which origin is canon to the prime timeline,
11:20but the term coming from the American Civil War seems to be much more realistic, given that many
11:25terms in Starfleet were borrowed from the United States military, and that Kirk in particular was
11:31a big American history buff. The explanation in the Star Trek 2009 film feels unnecessary and kind
11:37of silly, much like the origin story given to Han Solo's name in the Solo movie.
11:41And there you have it, those were 10 things that you didn't know about Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy.
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