My Five Favorite McCoy Episodes - The Country Doctor

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My Five Favorite McCoy Episodes
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People have been asking for a list since June, so here it is. These aren't the five best episodes of Star Trek. They're the five best episodes for McCoy, picked by a nurse, which is a different list. One line each, because if I start telling you the stories we'll be here all night, and you should go watch them anyway.

1. "Miri" (1966)

He tests an unproven cure on himself because he's run out of time to do it any other way. Don't you ever do that. But I understood it.

2. "The Devil in the Dark" (1967)

The patient is made of rock and he treats her anyway, griping the whole time. That is emergency medicine in one hour of television.

3. "Friday's Child" (1967)

McCoy the obstetrician, with a patient who wants nothing to do with him, and he wins her over. Every labor and delivery nurse I know loves this one.

4. "Spectre of the Gun" (1968)

The crew ends up at the O.K. Corral on the wrong side of the Earps. Watch it after the 1957 movie and tell me the man who played Morgan Earp didn't enjoy himself.

5. "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (1968)

For once McCoy is the patient, and he handles it about as well as every doctor I've ever had in a bed in my department, which is to say not at all.

THE ONE I LEFT OFF ON PURPOSE

"The City on the Edge of Forever" (1967). Yes, it's wonderful, and yes, it's on everybody's list. But McCoy spends most of it out of his head and offstage, and this is his page, so it can go on somebody else's.

AND ONE FROM THE MOVIES

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). McCoy loose in a 1986 hospital, horrified by everything he sees, handing a woman on dialysis a pill. Every nurse who has ever worked a dialysis unit has wished for that pill. I saw it in a theater with three other nursing students and we cheered so loud an usher came down the aisle.

Have a favorite I didn't pick? Tell me about it. I am keeping a list of yours, and "Amok Time" is winning.

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Last updated September 23, 1999