〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Leonard H. McCoy
CHARACTER AGE: 33
CANON ORIGIN: Star Trek (reboot film series)
CHRONOLOGY: Post Star Trek Into Darkness
CLASS: Hero

BACKGROUND: Leonard H. McCoy was born in 2227. He is the son of David McCoy, a doctor, and Eleanora McCoy. He dreamed of being a professional basketball player in his childhood, complaining that he already spent half his life in his father’s clinic. He was directionless into his teens years, something which caused a strain of his relationship with his parents, until a chance encounter with Emony Dax at Mississippi University made him to decide to become a doctor.

Attending that same university, McCoy completed medical school and became a certified doctor prior to 2255. He was married to a woman named Pamela Birch in that time and had a daughter, Joanna. In his own words, the first few years were bliss but they drifted apart due to different careers and the divorce was particularly harsh on him. With nowhere else to go and remembering the dream of a young patient that died in his care, McCoy enlisted in Starfleet. He met Jim Kirk after being dragged out the bathroom to sit with the other passengers. They shared a drink and became friends at the Academy.
During this time, he acquired the nickname “Bones”, a comment he made referring to his divorce that Kirk latched onto. McCoy participated in Kirk’s Kobayashi Maru simulation, a famously unwinnable scenario, and was surprised when his friend managed to beat it on his third try. Unfortunately Kirk was soon accused of cheating by reprogramming the simulation to make it possible to win. McCoy watched Kirk and Spock trade words until a distress call from Vulcan interrupted the hearing and they were activated for assignment. Unable to leave his crestfallen friend behind who was on academic suspension, McCoy infected Kirk with a vaccine to protect against an infection of Melvarian mud fleas and enabled him to bring Kirk aboard the Enterprise as a patient.

It was Kirk’s presence on the Enterprise that saved everyone on board. Kirk deduced the lightning storm in space was in fact the Romulan ship that had attacked his father’s ship and the crew of the Enterprise. Although they managed to avoid the traps, the Romulan ship fired on them and the ship’s Chief Medical Officer was killed. McCoy assumed the role of Chief Medical Officer and saw to the survivors of Vulcan, including Kirk who was injured trying to prevent the planet’s destruction.

McCoy was present when Kirk argued with Spock over what to do next. McCoy sided with Spock’s decision to rendezvous with the rest of the Federation fleet. He was witness to Kirk’s attempted mutiny, shouting at him to stop before Spock rendered him unconscious and ejected him from the ship. In a later private discussion, McCoy was given the permission to speak freely and voiced his displeasure with Spock’s decision to maroon Kirk on Delta Vega. Spock disagreed with him and an infuriated McCoy called him a green blooded hobgoblin.

He was present on the bridge when Kirk beams onto the Enterprise and goads Spock into attacking him, proving he is emotionally compromised by the mission. Coming to his sense, Spock tells McCoy is resigning his command as a result. Despite being his friend, McCoy is still incredulous when Kirk becomes acting captain. He is also present when the crew discuss how to stop the Narada and reacts the same way about Chekov’s idea to beam onto the Narada without being noticed. While Kirk and Spock do this, McCoy waits on the Enterprise and rushes to the transporter room to help an injured Captain Pike.

McCoy continued serving on the Enterprise after Kirk received full command of the ship. A year later, McCoy was on a planet called Nibiru helping to prevent a Volcano from causing the extinction of a primitive species while trying to avoid breaking the prime directive. Kirk accidentally stunned the ride McCoy got for him and they were forced to jump off a cliff and dive to the Enterprise, which was hidden beneath the waves. On the bridge, McCoy listened to Spock, who was activating a cold fusion device to stop the volcano’s eruption, and angrily informed the Vulcan they were trying to rescue him. Spock refused – getting the Enterprise in range to beam him out would expose the ship and ignore the Prime Directive. Kirk asked McCoy what Spock would do in his shoes and the doctor replied he would let him die. Regardless, Kirk decided to ignore the Prime Directive and rescue Spock.

Later, Kirk was ordered to hunt down John Harrison, a man behind a bombing in London and an attack on Starfleet Headquarters, an attack that left Admiral Pike, Kirk’s father figure, dead. McCoy believed his friend was too inexperienced and emotionally compromised by the mission to combat him. McCoy remained on the Enterprise while Kirk, Spock and Uhura searched for John on Qo’noS. Kirk ordered McCoy to investigate the source of John’s superhuman strength and, after taking a blood sample and analysing it, McCoy discovered that it possessed regenerative platelets, which he experimented with by injecting into a dead tribble.

Acting on a tip from John Harrison, Kirk had McCoy and Carol Marcus to examine one of the 73 experimental photon torpedoes that Admiral Marcus had given them to fire on John’s location. McCoy accidentally activated and trapped his hand. Kirk ordered him to be beamed up, but was warned that doing so would also bring the torpedo aboard. Fortunately Marcus deactivated it before she could be beamed up. The two then opened the torpedo and found it to contain a man in cryogenic stasis.

Harrison explained he was actually Khan Noonien Singh, having been revived and forced by Admiral Marcus to make weapons and ships designed for war. He attempted to rescue his people but had to flee when Marcus discovered his plan. Believing Marcus killed his people, he retaliated and bombed London and San Francisco. Admiral Marcus then appeared in one of these ships Khan designed and opened fire when Kirk refused to hand over Khan. Luckily, the weapons were disabled due to Montgomery Scott being on board the ship. Kirk and Khan allied to fly over to commandeer the ship, but Spock asked McCoy to remove the cyropods from the torpedoes.

Khan betrayed Kirk and took the starship for himself. As McCoy removed the cyropods, Spock was able to use the torpedoes against Khan and crippled his ship. Both ships damaged, they began hurtling to Earth. Kirk entered the wrap core to reactivate the Enterprise’s engines, but suffered radiation poisoning and died. McCoy had to take a moment to examine his friend’s body where he found the dead tribble he experimented on came back to life. McCoy ordered one of the cyrotube be brought to sickbay. It’s occupant was removed and reanimated, but left in a medically-induced coma, so they could place Kirk in suspended animation to preserve his brain. Spock, having pursued Khan, subdued him with Uhura’s help which allowed McCoy to perform a blood transfusion on Kirk.

McCoy later greeted a conscious Kirk as his doctor, checking his vital signs and whether the fusion had any psychological effects on his friend. Almost a year after their encounter with Khan, McCoy attended a memorial service for the lives lost and continued serving on the repaired Enterprise. He was less pleased to learn they were embarking on a five-year mission and asked God to help him.

PERSONALITY: First appearances paint Leonard McCoy as a prickly doctor with a cynical temperament, an equally foul mouth to go along with it, and a man carrying a constant chip around on his shoulder. Outwardly, McCoy seems pessimistic and jaded most of the time, but he's really an inherent optimist -- he needs to believe that there's some good out there in the universe because if he doesn't, then who is? His faith in humanity and all that is going to put him at odds with Spock for the next five years, which may cause a battle of wits to erupt between the emotional human and logical Vulcan that can only end when someone steps in to separate the two of them (spoilers: this is definitely going to happen). He can be mistaken for being prejudiced against other species and spinning such lines like "green-blooded hobgoblin" or "pointy-eared bastard" don't really help his case, but his comments are born out of a need to show him that emotions aren't weakness.

Behind this intimidating front he puts up, McCoy masks a deep caring side and possesses a personal prime directive to help people in need, whether they are friends or enemies to the Federation or to himself: allegiance just doesn't register to him when someone is injured and he certainly doesn't prejudice against who is lying on his operating table when they need his help. Helping people is his calling in life and before he settled on this career path, he was directionless and uncertain about his future and what he could do with himself. He knew a "little about things, but not a whole lot" in his own words and it put a strain on his relationship with his parents. It was only after a chance meeting with Emony Dax at Mississippi University that he decided he was going to pursue a career in medicine, like his father and grandfather did before him, after he got a taste of battling to keep another being alive.

He was also taught old fashioned ideals around this time and they have stayed with him over the years. McCoy often laments how people have forgotten these over the years, which is to act like a gentleman, treat a lady right and value learning and as a result, he does act older than he actually is. He's a man who is -- putting it quite simply -- stranded in the twenty-third century with technology that terrifies him and now stuck in a career that he never even considered until recently. He's a man full of compassion and pain, coming off the back of a bitter divorce to his high-school sweetheart who cheated on him, lost his dream of owning a private practice in Georgia, losing custody of his daughter, plus a young patient called Jenny who had a dream of enlisting in Starfleet. All in all, he was in a pretty rough patch in his life when he decided to honour Jenny's dream and enlist. It took a lot of personal strength and determination for him to put these fears behind him and put himself on this career path. He even organised a seminar on aviophobia, which was the first of its kind. He is shown to be loyal to his friends and his crew. This was shown when he risked his career with Starfleet and smuggled Kirk onto the Enterprise with him. He's willing to bend protocol and risk himself to protect other people following his own prime directive to help people.

Not to say he's an entirely perfect role-model. He can make it exceedingly difficult for people to get close to him because of his off-putting attitude and after coming out of a relationship that left him with "nothing but his bones", it's understandable he would be guarded around people and there have only been two close friends in his life -- and one of them is James T. Kirk. He acts as a sounding board for the younger man and a voice of conscience, unbound by rules and regulations in the Federation, happily offering his opinion to the newly-instated Captain. One of his vices is drinking and if he should fall into melancholia about something, the bottle is the first thing he'll reach for instead of discussing his problems with someone else.

He's a very smart man and possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of the field he studied in. He is capable of thinking on his feet and an example of this particular trait was when he decided to help out Jim Kirk by injecting him with a vial vaccination against melvarian mud fleas, in order to make him exhibit the symptoms and get him on board the Enterprise as his patient. He's sharp-minded enough to recognise symptoms and use proper the medication and doesn't buckle under pressure. When his co-worker was killed, he took charge and was flippant to his commanding officer who announced his promotion under dire circumstances.

POWER:

Empathic_Healing: This power can heal emotional wounds, burdens and traumas of another character. It can't heal actual physical injuries and it can only be applied through physical touch. This ability has the power to remind people all the good they have lived or been rewarded with and what it's like to feel, even if it's pain. Due to the mental strain of using this power, he can concentrate enough to use it once a day.

Flight: McCoy can fly like Peter Pan! He will never ever use this power. His flight speed will be extremely limited. He will be unable to accelerate and it will resemble something like floating in zero gravity or air swimming. He would be unable to go beyond the borders of the atmosphere and be prone to altitude changes.

FINAL NOTES: McCoy arrived with a medkit from his world. These kit contains a hypospray preloaded with up to six drugs in suspension, such as cordrazine, Masiform-D, a neural paralyzer/melenex, and tri-ox compound, as well as a spray applicator, a medical scanner, and a palm-sized reader tube.