The Mc Coy - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Mc Coy

"There's no bones about it! He is not the real McCoy!"

By God, Jim! You can't seriously be considering this!? Screw the Prime Directive, there's no time for debate! We have to act now to rescue the high priestess; forget the MacGuffin and think about doing what's right!

What's that, Spock? 'Logic?' If we listened to your cold reasoning, you'd have us look for that stupid Cosmic Keystone while innocent people suffer! The greater good? Better in the long run? The Klingons will kill us in five minutes if we go to rescue the high priestess unprepared? Dammit man, dare we call ourselves human if we don't?! What do you mean 'Thank You?'

The McCoy is part of a Power Trio along with The Kirk and The Spock. Where the former is rational and intuitive, and the latter is cold and logical, the McCoy is emotional and humanistic. He cares about others deeply; for him doing the right thing is not a question of convenience or moral relativity, but about the concrete reality right now. Which is to say, someone like The Kirk cares about saving people; the McCoy cares about making things right. This often leads the heroes into hot water as this concern for others blinds him to complications in the Moral Dilemma Of the Week and leads him to advocate (or take it upon himself to do) "the right thing", regardless of how disastrous it would be in the short or long run.

That said, they help keep the drama of a situation personal both for the characters and the viewer, reminding us just why the Littlest Cancer Patient deserves for The Hero to use the phlebotinum that only works once on him rather than to get them home. To be fair, the Spock can be just as compassionate, but is tempered with detachment and enough forethought to realize that the right answer might not be the correct one (illogical as that sounds).

The McCoy is frequently a target for reminders about the Prime Directive, and one or more episodes might focus on how having his heart on his sleeve can actually cause quite a bit of damage to the people he "helps" with the best of intentions.

Also, the McCoy exists as a counterpart to The Spock. If they are the moral center of the team in general too, then they are The Heart as well.

The McCoy is the Honor Before Reason trope personified, and may occasionally be a Strawman Emotional.

Examples

Anime

The main characters of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fit directly into this trope. Rather than simply listening to logic, they prefer to screw the rules and dive right into a situation.

Literature

In The Brothers Karamazov, the brothers form a Power Trio: Alyosha as an idealistic Kirk, Ivan as The Spock, and Dmitri is The McCoy.
Ron Weasley is very much this in the Harry Potter books.
- Debatable. Ron tends to take the longer view. Hermione fits the role better, especially with her insistence that the House Elves be freed, no matter what they happen to think of it.
  - Hermione alternates between being The Spock and being The Mc Coy depending on the situation. They're all combinations of The Kirk, The Spock and The Mc Coy.
Ned Land from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea is an emotional harpooner who isn't excited about going around the world on the Nautilus and simply wants to return to civilization, in contrast to Aronnax's Kirk and Conseil's Spock.

Live Action TV

The trope is named for Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy. He not only stressed humanism, he was all but dominated by his emotions, to the point that he seemed to find no value in logic whatsoever, even in situations where it would fit... um, logically. There are many a Star Trek The Original Series episode wherein, had they listened to the Doctor instead of Spock, the Enterprise would be a cloud of space dust. In fairness, that came with his position and area of responsibility, as well as his Hippocratic oath, and is why he was in charge of running the medical division and not the ship; but he often served as Kirk's conscience.
- There's a clear ideological bent this way in Starfleet medical school in general — an inclination to take "first do no harm" as far as the Prime Directive allows it; this may be because subsequent series are a Generation Xerox of the first. (Starfleet members from the American South are also frequently like this.) Examples include Dr. Crusher, who quite often would ignore rational ordeals and run into the battleground to try and save someone, and the more obnoxious Dr. Pulaski, McCoy's Distaff Counterpart. They definitely take an oath like the Hippocratic one, perhaps a modern modification of the oath like this one, or perhaps something unique to the Federation.
  - DS9 had Kira Nerys, while Odo was usually the more logical one.
  - Voyager used Captain Janeway in this role, while Tuvok and Chakotay would try to balance her out with logic.
  - Enterprise had "Trip" Tucker (engineer).
Jack O'Neill in Stargate SG-1 was more often than not the McCoy in addition to The Kirk; playing a foil to the more rational Samantha and Daniel (Teal'c had his McCoy moments as well). He'd sometimes choose to help others, or incessantly bug Sam and Daniel to explain to him why they shouldn't help others.
- Daniel himself is more often the McCoy especially when he feels the current situation is SG-1's fault. O'Neill was more often the calm, rational military leader and Daniel has to convince everyone else on what was right.
Lost In Space had its own Power Trio with Will Robinson, the Robot and Doctor Smith. Ironically, the most logical of them all, the Robot, would frequently prove his great titanium alloy heart by performing a Heroic Sacrifice for the crew.
- Although Doctor Smith was closer to The Spock with his self-serving interests, he had quite a few Pet The Dog moments of humanistic behaviour himself.
Babylon 5 had Dr. Stephen Franklin.
- Except, notably, in a scene in the fourth season. While talking a member of the Mars resistance, he has to defend Sheridan's decision to use Shadow-modified telepaths against the Earth Alliance fleet. While he still doesn't like it, he acknowledges that they don't have any better options:
Resistance fighter: You're using these people! Using them as if they were weapons!
Franklin: They are weapons. ... We can't remove these implants without technology back on Earth. They're fighting for their freedom like the rest of us, they just don't know it.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Willow and Xander alternated — and often tag-teamed — as the McCoys of the Scoobie Gang, wanting to do what they thought was right, no matter how stupid or reckless it was, and occasionally put Giles down for trying to stay rational in emotional situations, calling him heartless.
Oddly, Jack Mc Coy of Law And Order is not The Mc Coy for the show. That role is typically filled by the female A.D.A. Except when Angie Harmon played that role as a conservative Republican, so they made the new D.A. a female college professor, and made her The Mc Coy. Of course, some can take it too far: Serena Southerlyn was too much The Mc Coy, which resulted in her being fired. This also led to a Wall Banger example of Suddenly Sexuality.
Sheldon, from The Big Bang Theory, insists that since he's Spock and Leonard is Kirk then Leonard's girlfriend Stephanie must be McCoy.

Film

According to co-writer Roberto Orci, the 2009 Star Trek film maintains this trope, but swaps Kirk and Mc Coy:

"Mc Coy in a way represents for us, or represented for us, the extremes of Kirk and Spock. If Spock is extreme logic, ... extreme science, and Kirk is extreme emotion and intuition, here you have a very colorful doctor, essentially a very humanistic scientist. So he, in a way, is literally and figuratively a representation of two extremes that often served as the glue that held the trio together."

Though it comes off in a very similar manner to the show, and is very well played.

Anakin Skywalker shows elements of this trope in the Prequel Trilogy. Especially since this was the reason he turned to The Dark Side.
Mr White of Reservoir Dogs, in comparison to the cold and logical Mr Pink and the psychotic Mr Blonde. He tells the dying Mr Orange his name and defends him all through the movie from accusations that Orange is a rat, based purely on the fact that he likes the guy.

WesternAnimation

Katara from Avatar The Last Airbender. She once detained the group for three days to help a village who lived on a polluted river, even destroying the factory that polluted it.
Teen Titans: Cyborg.
- Ironic in that you'd think a Hollywood Cyborg would be The Spock.
Sam in Danny Phantom. She forces Vegan meals and steals frogs from being dissected in her school, displays her disguise on a Beauty Contest to bring individuality to the girls, and other humanitarian beliefs she has up her sleeves. When she's not doing that, then she makes sure Danny is going the right path.

Webcomics

Durkon and Elan sometimes fall into this, in contrast with V's The Spock.
- Mostly Elan, as Durkon usually takes a more passive role. And has more common sense. Durkon is the party Scotsman, though...
- Miko Miyazaki was also sometimes like this, although she mostly expressed her concern by slicing the cause of the problem to ribbons.
Arcturus Winrock from Suicide For Hire pulled a HUGE Mc Coy on Hunter when he killed a cancer patient.

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