THE ONLY NORMAL ONE ON THE SHIP!

 

As a kid watching the Star Trek 25^th Anniversary Special, I remember Deforest Kelley describing the character of Dr. McCoy as the only normal person on board the ship.  This is a such a great characterization of the Doctor.  He is an old country doctor who all this alien world stuff is still kind of new for him.  He often has to slap Kirk and Spock back into reality often.   

McCoy escorting a Yeoman who has had a rough time!

Some of my favorite “normal” moments for Dr. McCoy are as follows.  “One of these days I would like to beam down and say ‘Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel’” from the episode “Bread and Circuses.” In the episode “Return to Tomorrow” Kirk is all in on Sargon’s plan to take control of their bodies and use them to accomplish their tasks and McCoy is only one pointing out what dangerous and strange idea this is.  In “All of Our Yesterdays,” Spock explains to Kirk that they are in some sort of artic environment to which McCoy replies “he means it’s cold.”

McCoy sharing a cure made into a drink!

Doctor McCoy also happens to be the GOAT of his profession.  I cannot think of any doctor in the Star Trek universe that is better than him.  He comes up with a cure for the naked virus, which was infecting the Enterprise’s entire crew and had killed an entire crew of the space station they had visited, all while the ship was doing a death spiral towards the planet.  When McCoy was on Miri’s fake Earth, he was able to cure a disease that had wiped out her entire planet’s population. He was able to cure the aging sickness, while himself being infected with it, just in time to treat Captain Kirk so he could save the ship from the Romulans.  He found a way to pull Kirk out of Flash time, and developed a device so the miners of Ardana won’t be infected with brain damage from doing their jobs.  There was also the time McCoy consulted ancient medical text and prevented Kirk and Spock from having to live their lives as talking fish.

Spock and McCoy give the Captain their concerns

However, there was never a medical miracle performed by the good Doctor like the one we saw in “The Devil in the Dark.”  In this episode McCoy must cure a silicon-based lifeform.  After first shouting, “I am a doctor, not a bricklayer” he then got to work.  McCoy pulls the only thing he can think of and tries to use concrete to patch up the poor Horta.  It works and he cures her.  McCoy afterward is stunned by his own awesomeness, proclaiming he could probably cure a rainy day.  
 

McCoy has a hard time getting over the fact that he is awesome!

Lastly, I would like to defend the good doctor on one common charge.  That is the accusation that he is some sort of bigot.  Now I will acknowledge that sometimes he can be ethnocentric, which is usually used by writers as having him and Spock play opposites in Kirk’s moral dilemmas, a good example is “The Apple.”  However, what people are often taking a back by is when he lays on Spock for being a Vulcan.  There are a couple of points I want to make about this.  Although there are many definitions of racism, one of the important ones is the combination of bigotry and power.  Classic example is white people harassing black people in a society, such as ours, that long promoted white supremacy. There is none of that in the Federation.  Vulcan was not conquered and its people put into a subordinate place.  McCoy making fun of Spock’s Vulcaness is more equivalent to an Englishman making for a Frenchman for being French, with also the Frenchman giving equal grief to the Englishman back, and with each party speaking in jest.   

McCoy with Spock often presented two sides of an argument to Kirk.

This brings me to my second point that is those who tally up all the mean things McCoy says to Spock about Vulcans and being Vulcan often tend to ignore all the times Spock says to McCoy (and everyone else) equally mean statements about humans and being human. Spock says just as much anti-human stuff as McCoy’s anti-Vulcan stuff.  I would also add you only see McCoy say things to Spock in order to tease him.  McCoy doesn’t say these types of things to Sarek, T’Pau, or any other Vulcan he meets.

Getting to know Spock's parents!

McCoy stands alone as the greatest doctor in all of Star Trek if not of all science fiction.