Leonard McCoy
Leonard "Bones" McCoy is an old fashioned country doctor that joined starfleet after his divorce and became the chief medical officer aboard the starship Enterprise.
Where is he from?
McCoy is one of the three main characters in Gene Roddenbury's groundbreaking 1966-1969 television series Star Trek, which pretty much defines everything we love about science fiction. (I'm probably going to get a little long-winded on this one. Sorry in advance.)
When J.J. Abrams rebooted the series with his 2009 movie, One of his best tricks was a series of slam-dunk casting choices. Karl Urban plays McCoy, and brings so much craggly charm you can't help but love him, to say nothing of how dead-on his interpretation of the original character is.
That said, Karl Urban is ALWAYS awesome. He's generally the best part of anything he appears in. While his McCoy is no exception, the character's role in the mythology of the series is sadly downplayed to something more akin to comic relief. Coasting on the irreproachable charm of your actor might be fine for some characters, but McCoy is a character so iconic he's almost an archetype, and it's a shame we don't get to see that.
That said, Karl Urban is ALWAYS awesome. He's generally the best part of anything he appears in. While his McCoy is no exception, the character's role in the mythology of the series is sadly downplayed to something more akin to comic relief. Coasting on the irreproachable charm of your actor might be fine for some characters, but McCoy is a character so iconic he's almost an archetype, and it's a shame we don't get to see that.
Deforest Kelley was a long-time veteran of westerns both on the big and small screen (including one of my favorites of all time, Gunfight at the OK Corral). He played McCoy in the original series, voiced him in the animated series, in six movies, and even appeared as a 137-year-old McCoy in the first episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation.
The genius of the character was that he was presented as passionate and driven by emotion, typified by Kelley's deep familiarity with the mythos of the old-west hero. His voice was the counterpoint to Spock's pure logic, giving every episode a built-in framing device to take high-concept sci-fi and turn it into a morality puzzle.
I must sound like an ancient old fanboy when I say this, but the modern Star Trek doesn't hold a candle to the classic.
The genius of the character was that he was presented as passionate and driven by emotion, typified by Kelley's deep familiarity with the mythos of the old-west hero. His voice was the counterpoint to Spock's pure logic, giving every episode a built-in framing device to take high-concept sci-fi and turn it into a morality puzzle.
I must sound like an ancient old fanboy when I say this, but the modern Star Trek doesn't hold a candle to the classic.