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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.
00:40In 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.
01:12In the prime timeline, McCoy never attended the Academy.
01:16Instead, he got a medical degree from the University of Mississippi and was commissioned to
01:20join 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 have
01:41something to do with how much more militarized Starfleet had become after the USS Kelvin was destroyed
01:46by 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
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,
02:20an engineer, a coal miner, or an escalator.
02:22This 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
03:30the role needed a somewhat younger actor.
03:33The first appearance of McCoy, along with Ohura and Janice Rand, was in the episode The
03:38Corbamite Maneuver, and he continued to serve aboard the Enterprise until the end of its
03:42five-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 seem
04:48much 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
04:58it's not 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
05:14film's writers, Simon Pegg and Doug Young, explained that they had a lot of fun writing
05:19scenes for these two and beyond. Specifically, Young liked the idea of having the emotional
05:24represented through McCoy and the logical represented through Spock, so the two of them could serve
05:29as kind of an angel devil on Kirk's shoulder, guiding him through his decisions. And you know,
05:35this is 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 was
05:48always 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 original
06:04series episode The Way to Eden, which definitely would've shook things up a bit between him and
06:09McCoy, but the character ended up being replaced with Irina. The only time she was ever actually
06:15mentioned was in the animated series episode The Survivor. A Vendorian shapeshifter came aboard
06:20the Enterprise disguised as the famed space philanthropist Carter Winston, and McCoy thanked
06:26the imposter for saving his daughter, Joanna, 10 years prior. Carter Winston was one of the wealthiest
06:32private traders of the time. He was a generous guy, so he used his private fortune to go around
06:37the 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
06:48his wealth to feed the population, saving everyone on the planet, including Joanna McCoy.
06:53Soon afterwards, though, Winston mysteriously went missing. The Vendorian imposter revealed that
06:59Winston's ship had crashed on the planet Vendor and that he had died shortly after. However,
07:05the Vendorian became more and more like Winston every day, so it's possible that he went on to
07:10continue Winston's good deeds after being taken away by the authorities at the end of the episode.
07:15Number 4. McCoy's adventures while trapped in Earth's past. There have been countless non-canon
07:21depictions of McCoy in video games, books, and more, but the most compelling was a novel by David R.
07:27George III that was tied to the original series, Crucible. McCoy, provenance of shadows. David had
07:33previously worked as a writer for Star Trek magazine and the Voyager episode Prime Factors. He created
07:39the Crucible series to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the original series. It was a trilogy that
07:44focused on the original series episode The City on the Edge of Forever from the perspectives of the
07:49three main characters from the episode. McCoy's novel in the series explored the episode's two
07:54different timelines, one in which Kirk's love interest, Edith Keillor, was killed in front of
07:58him, just like what happened in the original episode, and one where McCoy saved her, causing a
08:03butterfly effect that removed the Federation from history. The alternate universe segments of the book give
08:08as a rare look at McCoy's character on his own. At first, he tried desperately to contact the future
08:13for help, but over time gradually started to accept that he was alone. Eventually, he settles down after
08:20working through some of his past regrets. The story was non-canon, but it gave some interesting
08:25context for McCoy's life in the alternate reality from the original episode.
08:29Number 3. His thoughts on technology. Dr. McCoy had a very complicated relationship with technology.
08:35He 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 too
08:47much in his work. He was skeptical of everyday Starfleet devices like the transporter and even
08:52shuttlecrafts in the alternate universe films. He also tried to take advantage of the body's natural
08:57healing ability as much 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
09:08say that he wanted his patients to suffer, just that he believed the easy fix wasn't always the
09:13best fix. First and foremost, he thought people shouldn't allow technology to coddle and replace
09:19humanity. After 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. Number 2. McCoy's pain. In The Final Frontier,
09:32Spock's brother Cybok used his unique ability to tap into people's deepest pain to force McCoy to
09:38relive the death of his father, David McCoy. David was diagnosed with an incurable disease,
09:44and after living for too long in constant pain, pleaded with his son Leonard to take him off of
09:49life support. Leonard didn't want to watch his father die slowly and painfully, so he disconnected
09:54the life 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. Number 1. The Origin of the
10:23Nickname Bones. It's been assumed for ages that McCoy's nickname Bones was evolved from Saw Bones,
10:30a term used for military doctors in the American Civil War because of the saws that they had to use
10:35to perform amputations. This was never stated outright in canon, and to complicate matters
10:41further, the 2009 alternate universe films implied that the nickname's origin was something entirely
10:47different. Right after first meeting Kirk aboard the Starfleet recruit shuttle and complaining about the
10:52horrors of outer space, McCoy grumpily explained that he and his wife had just recently divorced and
10:58said, all I got left is my bones. The camera then cuts to Kirk, and it's pretty clear what's being
11:04implied. J.J. Abrams explained in his DVD commentary of the film that this reveal was actually not
11:10scripted. Carl Urban was a Star Trek fan and thought the nickname could use an explanation, and thought of
11:15the line while 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 were
11:27borrowed from the United States military, and that Kirk in particular was a big American history buff.
11:32The explanation in the Star Trek 2009 film feels unnecessary and kind of silly, much like the origin
11:39story given to Han Solo's name in the Solo movie. And there you have it, those were 10 things that
11:44you
11:44didn'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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12:10I hope everyone has a great rest of their day, and don't forget to live long and prosper.
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