application

[mintjulep]

[nick / name]: Gadgets
[personal LJ name]: fiercesunshine
[other characters currently played]: Ariadne :: Inception :: oneminutemaze
[e-mail]: felidae.tigris@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: AIM: gadgetsandgears, Y!M: stripedgadgets

[series]: Star Trek XI
[character]: Dr. Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy
[character history / background]: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Leonard_McCoy_(alternate_reality)
[character abilities]: He’s a doctor, dammit, not a superhero.

No but seriously, he is an extremely competent doctor and surgeon. At Starfleet Academy, he was top of his class in anatomical and forensic pathology. His training in Starfleet means he has a wide range of experiences that include Starship knowledge, diplomacy, and alien life forms. He also makes a wonderful Finagle's Folly and his eyebrows are terrifying.

[character personality]:

Throughout the movie, there seem to be three aspects of McCoy’s personality: the bitter divorcee, the best friend, and the competent CMO. At the center of all of these things is something that dates back to the original Star Trek television series – the golden trio of Drive, Heart, and Mind.

The three main characters of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) and the reboot movie are Captain James T. Kirk, his half-Vulcan friend Spock, and a grumpy Southern doctor by the name of Leonard H. McCoy. Captain Kirk, the decision-maker, is the drive and body of the trio. He listens to each of his friends, but he is the one who calls the shots. Spock, a member of a culture that values logic over emotions, is the mind. He talks about the statistics and shows the numbers. Dr. McCoy, however, is the heart. Though he comes off as grumpy and callous, it is his role to show how emotions can impact others. Is it better to kill a few for the sake of the many? Is it best to forgive and forget or to capture a criminal years after his crime? Should we kill the last of a species when it is attacking the ship, or should we let ourselves be hurt? Questions like these are where the heart comes in.

Of course, this McCoy isn’t from TOS. His friendship with Spock has not yet started, while his friendship with Jim Kirk has already had a few years to develop. Let us go back to the first of the three aspects of McCoy: the bitter divorcee. When McCoy is first met in the movie, he is angry, likely drunk, and scared. He is going to Starfleet because he has nothing left, even though he hates space and is afraid of flying. He is desperate, without hope, going to the last place in the universe he ever thought he would go because there is nothing left for him. At this point, he comes off as crazy, though well-educated – he rambles about the dangers of space to Kirk after being dragged out of the bathroom. After Jim reassures him, however, he starts to morph into the next aspect of his personality, offering Jim a sip of his flask – an undoubtedly personal gesture.

Paranoia, in fact, is something that never leaves McCoy’s personality. It’s part of what makes him an excellent doctor – he is cautious, careful, doing his best to save his patients and prevent them from being hurt or getting sick in the first place. Prevention is key with McCoy, something that is difficult to achieve when your best friend is as impulsive as his is. As the best friend, McCoy is a shoulder of support for Jim to lean on…sometimes. However, as much as McCoy is the heart, his exterior is not the warm and gooey place that his inside is. Instead, it is prickly, barbed with words and glares as a defense mechanism. As hurt as McCoy has been, he thinks he needs it to prevent people from getting close. That said, his inside is that of a kind man. He’s a doctor, after all.

During the course of the movie, McCoy becomes more than a doctor – he becomes the Chief Medical Officer, or CMO, of the Enterprise. Bumped up to a command position, McCoy suddenly has a whole ship to worry about (not that he wasn’t worrying already). This position is one with a lot of responsibility that McCoy easily shoulders: as CMO, he is capable of forcing the captain to step down for medical reasons, and when Spock resigns his commission, it is McCoy he addresses. As a CMO, he can’t always support his best friend – he doesn’t move to stop it when Spock has Jim thrown off the ship, and he says “You’ve got to be kidding me” when Jim comes back and assumes captaincy. However, throughout the movie, it’s shown that McCoy doesn’t always support Jim anyway, at least not the way Jim would like. Leonard McCoy is a man who believes in tough love, and there are a lot of people (especially his blue-eyed best friend) who need it. McCoy is hardest on himself above all. His aviophobia almost made his career in Starfleet an impossibility, and so he organized seminars on the topic and, by the time Nero attacks, seems to be over it entirely.

His position as CMO doesn’t mean he won’t bend the rules occasionally, however. If McCoy has strong feelings on a subject, you’re bound to know about it – the man is quite loud when he has something to say, which is often. Though it happens before he’s a CMO, McCoy refuses to leave Jim behind on Earth “looking all pathetic” and sneaks him onto the ship (a decision that ultimately saves the day). While he rolls his eyes at Jim’s bravado during the Kobayashi Maru, he is ultimately impressed when Jim succeeds (through cheating) where others have failed. His comment that he ‘likes’ Spock is simply to enforce a point to his wayward best friend: you can’t get away with everything, Jim, and someday – like today – it’s going to catch up to you.

It catches up to Jim in more ways than one, but McCoy is still his friend and still thinks with his emotions, even when he can see the reason for decisions made against the other man’s favor. After Spock maroons Jim on Delta Vega, McCoy approaches him. He asks for permission to speak freely and says one of his famous lines: “Are you outta your Vulcan mind?!” It is here that he shows that he’s the heart of the three more than all, saying that while it is probably the logical decision, it is not the right one. He thinks highly of his best friend and it shows. He then gets extremely upset at Spock’s emotionless exterior, saying that the man could at least pretend to care. McCoy doesn’t understand living without emotions. Vulcans, and even half-Vulcans, are therefore extremely hard for him to comprehend.

Perhaps because he cannot live without emotions or comprehend such a life, McCoy’s emotions tend to range on the extremes. When he is angry, get the hell out of the way. When he is worried, he won’t sleep a wink. When he is happy (though he seldom shows it on his face), his feelings could light up the whole room like it’s Christmas. It is his penchant for extremes that drove him to Starfleet, yet another extreme, and perhaps what keeps him such good friends with an extreme man like Captain Kirk. It is, unfortunately, also a personality trait that, when combines with his pre-existing paranoia, leads him toward pessimism. He hopes things will work out for the best – he really does. That said, don’t expect him to tell you everything will be okay if there’s a very good chance it won’t, despite his skill as a doctor. If you want someone to give you a reality check or to under promise, McCoy is your man.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: After the Enterprise ships out at the end of the movie.


[journal post]:
This is Leonard McCoy, Chief Medical Officer aboard the USS Enterprise. Bridge, do you copy?

[ There’s a man in science blue standing next to the fountain, looking cold and grumpy as he shakes his device. ]

Damn interference… Enterprise, this is McCoy. I don’t know what the hell happened with those infernal transporters, but I’m damn sure I ain’t where I’m supposed to be. Scott, can you hear me? Jim? Uhura? Sulu? Chekov? Chapel? Anyone?

… Spock?

[ Nothing, not even the hobgoblin. Dammit. ]

Right, well. Looks like I’ll try and blend in.

[ Except since his communicator couldn’t reach the Enterprise, it broadcasted his conversation to the entire city instead… ]

[third person / log sample]:

Leonard still wasn’t entirely sure how the hell he had ended up here. Just like last time, it was a sea of cadet red and staff gray. Unlike last time, however, Jim wasn’t next to him – it was Chekov, the Russian teenager who, seventeen or not, sure as hell had a brain in that curly-haired skull. Next to him was Sulu, grinning in a way that Leonard was fairly certain would always remind him of pilots and “other idiots like Jim”: cock-sure, confident, with easy grace and (though he hated to admit it) usually a reason to smirk like that. Really, it was the differences that were easier to notice: just a few days ago, sitting next to Jim and wondering what the hell they had been called in here for (and a sinking feeling in his gut that had been proven right with the next words spoken in the crowded room), it had been… well, the phrase “human sardine can” came to mind. He had known Jim and some others; mostly cadets that he worked with at the Academy hospital, or his more recent (or regular) patients. Now, however, they all knew why they were there.

Most of the fleet had been destroyed. Vulcan had been destroyed. And one James Tiberius Kirk, his reckless idiot of a best friend who he had met on a shuttle while reeking of booze (not that Jim had looked a whole lot better), had saved them all, and was being given his prize: the flagship, the ship that had saved Earth. The Enterprise.

Watching as Pike was wheeled out, Leonard (and he was proud enough of Jim to call himself “Bones” in his own head today; usually he put up more of a fuss against… well, against himself, and against juvenile nicknames) glanced around the crowd again. There were faces from the last crowd that he would never see again – too many faces. But there were also faces that he knew better now; Chekov and Sulu, an Andorian who he had changed the dressings on while fuming at Spock for marooning Jim, a brunette who had broken her collarbone but had insisted on supporting a badly bleeding ensign into sickbay, and… well, and Captain – now Admiral – Christopher Pike himself, sitting in a wheelchair but alive and expected to walk again, with time and physical therapy (and god, but that had been the most nerve-wracking surgery of his life, trying to detach that damn slug from the brainstem while the ship shuddered and cracked around them).

They all knew that Jim was being promoted; hell, most of the crew had already signed on. Bones wasn’t sure if it was Jim who didn’t believe it or if he was projecting; he still couldn’t quite figure out how this had all happened, snapping at anyone (Spock, mostly, when they ran into each other at briefings and funerals) who tried to explain about alternate realities and time travel. He was chalking it up to really fucking terrible luck (for all the deaths Nero had caused), really damn good luck (for being alive), and his best friend, and that was all there was to it. No one had been more surprised than he had been when he had signed up to be the Enterprise’s CMO, but hell, he’d already done it once, and if Jim was there…

Shaking himself slightly as the same admiral who had called Jim to the stand at their last little powwow began to speak, Bones watched the proceedings with his usual scowl. It was Jim who had saved them, and it was he who would be saving him for the next five years – that gave him the right, dammit, and besides, someone had to keep the idiot grounded (especially if he tried another space jump again, good god, that was going to give him nightmares for a week).

It wasn’t until the auditorium was clapping and cheering and Jim was grinning up at them that Bones realized that he was repeating what had been said over and over again in his mind.

“I relieve you, sir.” “I am relieved.”

He couldn’t have said it better himself.