Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Dr Leonard 'Bones' McCoy
He's not a bricklayer, an engineer, or a coal miner. He's a doctor and his name is McCoy.
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00:00 He's not a bricklayer, an engineer, or a coal miner.
00:03 He's a doctor and his name is McCoy.
00:06 Leonard Bones McCoy was one of the most celebrated doctors in Starfleet history.
00:10 He was skilled in both surgery and psychology and, during his time on the Enterprise, invented
00:15 several new medical techniques that saved the ship on many occasions.
00:19 He also had a unique no-nonsense attitude that mixed well with Kirk and Spock's personalities.
00:25 The three of them had a very interesting dynamic, but the other two got most of the attention.
00:30 Sadly, McCoy never really got a lot of time focused on him specifically.
00:35 His backstory was mostly told in small parts, scattered across different episodes and films.
00:40 In this list, we're going to look at 10 things that you might not know about Dr. McCoy's
00:44 history, family, and personal life.
00:46 Bones was far more than just the guy they hired to say "He's dead, Jim" every episode.
00:51 He was actually a very deep and complex character with a dark history.
00:56 With all that being said, I'm Bri from Trek Culture and here are 10 things that you didn't
01:00 know about Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy.
01:02 10.
01:03 He didn't attend the Academy A lot of confusion here comes from the 2009
01:08 Star Trek film in which McCoy joined Starfleet Academy right at the same time as Kirk.
01:13 In the prime timeline, McCoy never attended the Academy.
01:16 Instead, he got a medical degree from the University of Mississippi and was commissioned
01:20 to join the Starfleet ranks and later the Enterprise because of his talents in that
01:24 field.
01:25 Many don't realize that the Academy is not the only path towards serving on a Federation
01:29 starship.
01:30 McCoy always saw himself as more of a doctor than a Starfleet officer, so for him, medical
01:35 school was the way to go.
01:36 Why he decided to attend the Academy in the alternate universe is unknown, but it could
01:41 have something to do with how much more militarized Starfleet had become after the USS Kelvin
01:45 was destroyed by the Romulans.
01:47 Maybe this caused Starfleet to be more picky about who they'll let on their ships.
01:51 9.
01:52 McCoy didn't invent his most iconic catchphrase Don't get mistaken, Bones was a doctor and
01:58 absolutely nothing else.
01:59 McCoy's iconic catchphrase "I'm a doctor, not a" followed by literally any other job
02:04 title has been used by McCoy a staggering number of times.
02:08 If you're interested in looking through all the examples of this, there is a Memory
02:12 Alpha page that has compiled them all together.
02:14 Among other things, McCoy is confirmed to not be a bricklayer, a physicist, a mechanic,
02:20 an engineer, a coal miner, or an escalator.
02:23 This line has also been repeated by plenty of other characters throughout Trek, most
02:27 frequently by Julian Bashir on Deep Space Nine and the holographic doctor from Voyager.
02:32 What's surprising is that "I'm a blank, not a blank" was used years before McCoy
02:37 was even born by Phlox.
02:39 So McCoy himself didn't invent the expression, though he certainly popularized it in Trek.
02:44 It's the perfect way for folks in Starfleet to passive-aggressively tell their superiors
02:48 that something is totally outside of their area of expertise.
02:52 8.
02:53 His First Appearance It's well known that most of the cast from
02:56 the original series were replaced after the first pilot episode, "The Cage."
03:00 The ship's chief medical officer at the time was Dr. Philip Boyce, who served under
03:04 Captain Pike before M'Benga in Strange New Worlds.
03:08 Kirk replaced Pike in the second pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
03:12 And we also got the first appearance of Scotty in "Sulu," but McCoy was still nowhere
03:16 to be seen.
03:17 In this episode, Kirk's chief medical officer was Dr. Mark Piper.
03:21 It wasn't until the series got picked up by a network that we finally saw Bones for
03:25 the first time.
03:26 Gene Roddenberry and others decided to replace Dr. Piper with McCoy because they felt that
03:30 the role needed a somewhat younger actor.
03:34 The first appearance of McCoy, along with Ohura and Janice Rand, was in the episode
03:38 "The Corbomite Maneuver," and he continued to serve aboard the Enterprise until the end
03:41 of its five-year mission, at which point he took a hiatus before jumping back into service
03:46 in the motion picture.
03:47 Interestingly, DeForest Kelly was actually one of Gene Roddenberry's top picks to play
03:51 the Doctor in "The Cage," but director Robert Butler suggested to go with John Hoyt
03:56 instead.
03:57 7.
03:58 He Nearly Stood Up to Khan In 2020, a deleted scene from the original
04:02 series episode "Space Seed" went viral on YouTube.
04:05 It showed McCoy standing up to Khan after he overpowered the crew and demanded control
04:10 of the Enterprise.
04:11 In the scene, McCoy approached Khan with phasers pointed at him from every angle and told him,
04:16 "I never thought I'd say this to a patient, but you owe me something.
04:20 In case you've forgotten, I saved your life."
04:23 In his frustration, he grabbed ahold of Khan's arm and was shot to the ground by one of the
04:28 other Augments.
04:30 Khan explained to Spock that McCoy was simply stunned and that he tried to avoid bloodshed
04:35 if possible.
04:36 It's not really known why this scene was cut, but it might have been to make Khan seem
04:40 more threatening.
04:41 After all, we know that in the final cut of the episode, Khan actually tries to kill Kirk
04:45 in a decompression chamber, which made him seem much more insane while keeping it non-violent
04:50 enough for television standards at the time.
04:53 Still, this deleted scene is a rare showcase of McCoy's bravery under pressure, even
04:58 if it's not technically canon.
05:00 6.
05:01 McCoy and Spock – Kirk's Angel and Devil Star Trek Beyond was praised by a lot of fans
05:06 for nailing the chemistry between the original series' characters, specifically Spock
05:10 and Bones.
05:12 In issue 184 of Star Trek Magazine, the film's writers, Simon Pegg and Doug Young, explained
05:17 that they had a lot of fun writing scenes for these two in Beyond.
05:21 Specifically, Young liked the idea of having the emotional represented through McCoy and
05:25 the logical represented through Spock, so the two of them could serve as kind of an
05:30 angel-devil on Kirk's shoulder, guiding him through his decisions.
05:34 And you know, this is a very interesting way to look at their relationship.
05:37 It was always fun to watch Spock and Bones argue in the original series, and the scenes
05:41 between the two of them in Beyond definitely call back to that old dynamic.
05:46 They could get pretty heated at times, but it was always clear that they actually cared
05:49 about each other very much.
05:51 5.
05:53 His Daughter – It's easy to miss because it was only mentioned in one episode, but
05:57 Bones actually had a daughter named Joanna McCoy.
06:00 She was originally going to pop up as a love interest for Kirk in the original series episode
06:05 The Way to Eden, which definitely would have shook things up a bit between him and McCoy,
06:10 but the character ended up being replaced with Irina.
06:13 The only time she was ever actually mentioned was in the animated series episode The Survivor.
06:19 A Vendorian shapeshifter came aboard the Enterprise disguised as the famed space philanthropist
06:24 Carter Winston, and McCoy thanked the imposter for saving his daughter, Joanna, ten years
06:29 prior.
06:30 Carter Winston was one of the wealthiest private traders of the time.
06:34 He was a generous guy, so he used his private fortune to go around the galaxy helping needy
06:38 people.
06:39 The people of the planet Cerberus went through a catastrophic crop failure in 2259 that left
06:44 them at risk of starvation.
06:46 Luckily, Winston came along and used his wealth to feed the population, saving everyone on
06:51 the planet, including Joanna McCoy.
06:54 Soon afterwards though, Winston mysteriously went missing.
06:57 The Vendorian imposter revealed that Winston's ship had crashed on the planet Vendor and
07:02 that he had died shortly after.
07:04 However, the Vendorian became more and more like Winston every day, so it's possible
07:09 that he went on to continue Winston's good deeds after being taken away by the authorities
07:13 at the end of the episode.
07:15 4.
07:16 McCoy's Adventures While Trapped in Earth's Past
07:19 There have been countless non-canon depictions of McCoy in video games, books, and more,
07:24 but the most compelling was a novel by David R. George III that was tied to the original
07:29 series.
07:30 Crucible.
07:31 McCoy.
07:32 Provenance of Shadows.
07:33 David had previously worked as a writer for Star Trek Magazine and the Voyager episode
07:37 Prime Factors.
07:38 He created the Crucible series to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the original series.
07:43 It was a trilogy that focused on the original series episode "The City on the Edge of
07:47 Forever" from the perspectives of the three main characters from the episode.
07:51 McCoy's novel in the series explored the episode's two different timelines, one in
07:55 which Kirk's love interest, Edith Keeler, was killed in front of him, just like what
07:59 happened in the original episode, and one where McCoy saved her, causing a butterfly
08:03 effect that removed the Federation from history.
08:06 The alternate universe segments of the book give us a rare look at McCoy's character
08:10 on his own.
08:11 At first, he tried desperately to contact the future for help, but over time gradually
08:16 started to accept that he was alone.
08:18 Eventually, he settles down after working through some of his past regrets.
08:22 The story was non-canon, but it gave some interesting context for McCoy's life in
08:26 the alternate reality from the original episode.
08:29 3.
08:30 His thoughts on technology.
08:32 Dr. McCoy had a very complicated relationship with technology.
08:36 He considered the 20th century hospital from the Voyage Home medieval in comparison to
08:41 23rd century medicine.
08:43 But he was slightly distrustful of technology and didn't want to rely on it too much in
08:47 his work.
08:48 He was skeptical of everyday Starfleet devices like the transporter and even shuttlecrafts
08:53 in the alternate universe films.
08:55 He also tried to take advantage of the body's natural healing ability as much as possible
08:59 when treating his patients.
09:01 In the Corbomite Maneuver, Kirk asked McCoy, "Aren't you the one that always says a
09:05 little suffering is good for the soul?"
09:07 This isn't to say that he wanted his patients to suffer, just that he believed the easy
09:12 fix wasn't always the best fix.
09:15 First and foremost, he thought people shouldn't allow technology to coddle and replace humanity.
09:20 After seeing Dr. T'Ana's medical chainsaw from Lower Decks, it's hard not to be a bit
09:25 weary of accepted Starfleet medical technology.
09:29 2.
09:30 McCoy's pain.
09:31 In The Final Frontier, Spock's brother Cybok used his unique ability to tap into people's
09:36 deepest pain to force McCoy to relive the death of his father, David McCoy.
09:41 David was diagnosed with an incurable disease, and after living for too long in constant
09:46 pain, pleaded with his son Leonard to take him off of life support.
09:50 Leonard didn't want to watch his father die slowly and painfully, so he disconnected the
09:54 life support system to preserve his dignity.
09:57 Leonard had regrets about his decision, but the worst pain came when, shortly after David's
10:02 death, a cure was discovered for the disease.
10:05 If Leonard had not deactivated the life support, then his father may have lived much longer.
10:09 He continued to regret this decision for years.
10:13 Cybok's intervention seemed to help McCoy move past his pain.
10:16 If nothing else, it helped him realize that his father's death was not entirely his fault.
10:21 1.
10:22 The origin of the nickname "Bones".
10:25 It's been assumed for ages that McCoy's nickname "Bones" was evolved from "Sawbones", a term
10:30 used for military doctors in the American Civil War because of the saws that they had
10:35 to use to perform amputations.
10:37 This was never stated outright in canon, and to complicate matters further, the 2009 alternate
10:43 universe films implied that the nickname's origin was something entirely different.
10:48 Right after first meeting Kirk aboard the Starfleet Recruit shuttle and complaining
10:52 about the horrors of outer space, McCoy grumpily explained that he and his wife had just recently
10:57 divorced and said "all I got left is my bones".
11:01 The camera then cuts to Kirk, and it's pretty clear what's being implied.
11:04 J.J. Abrams explained in his DVD commentary of the film that this reveal was actually
11:09 not scripted.
11:11 Carl Urban was a Star Trek fan and thought the nickname could use an explanation, and
11:15 thought of the line while filming.
11:17 Fans can debate which origin is canon to the prime timeline, but the term coming from the
11:21 American Civil War seems to be much more realistic given that many terms in Starfleet were borrowed
11:27 from the United States military, and that Kirk in particular was a big American history
11:32 buff.
11:33 The explanation in the Star Trek 2009 film feels unnecessary and kind of silly, much
11:38 like the origin story given to Han Solo's name in the Solo movie.
11:42 And there you have it!
11:43 Those were 10 things you didn't know about Dr. Leonard Bones McCoy.
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