McCoy

Star Trek: The Original Series

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Dr. Leonard H. McCoy; Chief medical officer aboard the Starship Enterprise under the command of Captain James Kirk, who gave him the nickname "Bones." "The Corbomite Maneuver". As of 2267, McCoy had earned the Legion of Honor, and had been decorated by Starfleet surgeons. "Court Martial".

McCoy attended the University of Mississippi on Earth. While a student there, he met and had a romance with Emony Dax while she was visiting Earth around 2245 to judge a gymnastics competition. "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9). Early in McCoy's medical career, his father was struck with a terrible, fatal illness. Faced with the prospect of his father suffering a terrible, lingering death, McCoy mercifully "pulled the plug" on him, allowing him to die. To McCoy's considerable anguish, a cure for his father's disease was discovered shortly thereafter, and McCoy carried the guilt for his father's possibly needless death for many years. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Prior to his assignment to the Enterprise, McCoy had been romantically involved with the future Nancy Crater. "The Man Trap". In 2253, McCoy developed a neurosurgical technique that was used in 2372 by the Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram to repair the damaged cerebral cortex of Danara Pel. "Lifesigns" (VGR)

McCoy first joined the Enterprise crew in 2266, and remained associated with that illustrious ship and its successor for some 27 years. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. In 2267, McCoy suffered a serious overdose of cordrazine in a shipboard accident. In the paranoid delusions that followed, McCoy fled the ship, and then jumped through a time portal being studied by Enterprise personnel. In the past, McCoy effected serious damage to the flow of time until Kirk and Spock followed him to restore the shape of history. "The City on the Edge of Forever". In 2268, McCoy was diagnosed with terminal xenopolycythemia and chose to resign from Starfleet so that he could marry a woman named Natira, high priestess of the Yonadan people. McCoy rejoined Starfleet after a cure was found in the Yonadan memory banks. "For the World is Hollow and I Have touched the Sky"

McCoy retired from Starfleet after the return of the Enterprise from the five-year mission, but he returned to Starfleet at Kirk's request when the ship intercepted the V'Ger entity near Earth. Star Trek: The Motion Picture McCoy, along with Kirk, was wrongly convicted of the murder of Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in 2293, a conviction that was later overturned. McCoy was scheduled to retire shortly after the Khitomer peace conference, but he either changed his mind, or later returned to Starfleet. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. As a retired Starfleet admiral, McCoy made an inspection tour of the Enterprise-D in 2364 at the age of 137. "Encounter at Farpoint. Part I" (TNG)

An unofficial part of McCoy's backstory was developed by Original Series story editor Dorothy Fontana, who had written a story, entitled "Joanna," which would have established that McCoy had been married and later endured a bitter divorce, and it was the aftermath of this experience that drove him to join Starfleet. The episode would have introduced Joanna, McCoy's now-grown daughter from that failed marriage. "Joanna" was written for the Original Series's third season, but was so heavily rewritten (becoming "The Way to Eden") that Fontana removed her name from the final version.

The Animated Series Dr. McCoy appeared in 20 episodes. Dr. McCoy's daughter, Joanna, was mentioned in the episode, "The Survivor". The original draft of the original STAR TREK series episode "The Way to Eden" was called "Joanna" and had McCoy's daughter as one of the space hippies. The script was extensively rewritten and her character became Irina Galliulan. In the episode, "Albatross", The Enterprise crew return to a planet where Dr. McCoy had once headed a mass-innoculation program against Saurian virus 19 years earlier, the U.S.S. Enterprise crew find that McCoy is wanted for starting a plague that killed most of the planet's population following that earlier visit. This episode's story was quite similar to the seventh-season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Emergence". In "Emergence", the U.S.S. Enterprise-D passed through a magnescopic storm, this caused the ship's computer to briefly exhibit an emergent intelligence. Coincidentally, the computer in that episode even made use of the holodeck to act out some of the facets of its new personality, and Troi, Worf and Data were trapped and endangered there for a time. Recall that in "The Practical Joker" the U.S.S. Enterprise computer trapped Uhura, Sulu and McCoy in the holographic Recreation Room and subjected them to dangerous weather and other pitfalls.