McCoy's Daughter Barbara

Star Trek: The Original Series story editor Dorothy Fontana and actor DeForest Kelley envisioned in 1967 that Dr. Leonard McCoy had a daughter from his failed marriage. (See my previous post about the history, creation and background of the character.) Although Joanna McCoy never appeared onscreen, Gold Key Comics brought a version of her to life in the 1970s by way of Barbara McCoy. She appeared in two comics, “Furlough to Fury” (#40) and “The World Beneath the Waves” (#43). Both stories have been attributed to author Arnold Drake, who was believed to have written 22 of Gold Key’s Star Trek stories.

Star Trek comics at the time did not maintain continuity between stories, and this afforded the author the opportunity to approach the character from different perspectives in her two appearances. Today such differences stand out. In both comics, Leonard loves his daughter without fail, and the only negative comment he made was in #43 that she had a bitter streak. That’s consistent with Fontana’s original concept. Notably, her grudge against her father seemed significantly deeper in #43, so much so that she told Scotty she didn’t have a father. Also, she’s a civilian with black hair in #40 and a Starfleet officer with blonde hair in #43.

Technically speaking, Barbara’s background and career as a xenobiologist establish her as an older, different character than McCoy’s daughter Joanna, who was a 20-year-old nurse. But Dorothy Fontana and DeForest Kelley envisioned Leonard McCoy to have only one daughter. Despite the differences, then, Barbara is the first dramatization of McCoy’s daughter. Let’s compare Barbara’s character in each comic against the original concept:

“Furlough to Fury” (Gold Key #40)
Same

• Lovely daughter with dark hair
• Didn’t hug her dad at first sight, but did greet him warmly
• The marriage had failed, resulting in her holding a grudge
• (In this case, she hasn’t forgiven her father or “any man in uniform, for that matter”)
• She goes on a date with Kirk to see a play at a theater
• Kirk and Barbara did hold hands, and she suggested she might visit “one of these days”

Different

• They don’t meet aboard the ship
• Kirk met her first, before she saw her father
• She’s a civilian, not in Starfleet
• She’s a doctor, a xeno-zoologist, rather than a nurse
• She graduated from college three years ago, suggesting that she is 25, not 20
• Leonard became a starship doctor before the divorce, not after
• No fatherly angst against Kirk, as Leonard was unaware Kirk took her on a date
• Story took place off-ship, so there was no disruption of the ship’s operation

 

The McCoys left on good terms at the end of #40.

“The World Beneath the Waves” (Gold Key #43)
Same

• Met Kirk and Leonard McCoy aboard the ship at the same time
• Hugged her dad at first sight
• She was wearing a Starfleet uniform (with lieutenant stripes, no less)
• The marriage had failed, resulting in her holding a grudge
• Complained about her father not being much of a father
• Was warned by Kirk that her grudge was not to disrupt the operation of the ship
• Snarky comments ensued during the mission, from both daughter and father
• (Her deeper grudge is found in later drafts of Fontana’s story outline)

Different

• She has blonde hair, not black
• Arrives via a shuttle, not the transporter
• She’s a full doctor, a xeno-zoologist, not a nurse (also suggesting she is older than 20)
• No Kirk-Joanna relationship; Scotty hit on her, though
• Father says her bitter streak didn’t come from her mother (In Fontana’s 2nd story outline, he said it did)
  

When they met again in #43, Barbara was more bitter.

How do both stories hold up, and how well do they fit into the Star Trek universe?

Both stories gave Barbara “action hero” moments: she played with a huge octopus while held upside down, rushed to calm a destructive creature (#40) and led an underwater landing party to explore an unfamiliar ecosystem (#43). She was presented in both as a professional career woman and an expert in her field.

However, she was depicted as a damsel in distress on both covers. In the events of #40, she did fall, having leaned over the edge of a wall too far while trying to calm the huge bear-like animal, which then caught her. In #43, she was threatened as seen on the cover, but she wasn’t alone, she was with Kirk, Spock and Leonard McCoy. Later, though, she screamed in terror at the sight of a large creature bearing down on her in a cave. Given the comfort and ease with which she acted toward similar animals in #40, her reaction could be interpreted as a natural fear of being in a real, unknown situation rather than in her lab with familiar creatures. Even so, I felt that it was out of character, a choice the author made to heighten the drama of the life-or-death situation.

The setting and overall story of #43 fit better into the Star Trek universe. It has a similar atmosphere to TAS “The Ambergris Element” in the relationships between air and water breathers, and with the misunderstanding of the others’ origins and motivations. Having Joanna relate to the plight of the royal family – which helps her to see her father’s side in the divorce – gives the story more personal impact than the TAS story. It does have the usual sprinkling of “Buck Rogers” tech typical of Gold Key’s Star Trek comics, including menta-pix (1950s-style virtual-reality gear), comp-ox capsules (pills of compressed oxygen for underwater breathing), and an Apollo-era-looking spacesuit.

#40 feels more like a throwback. The animal treatment is barbaric by today’s standards, with a telepathic bear kept in chains and sadism from a guard. It’s not wholly balanced by Barbara’s assertion that the animals she cares for are not chained. We saw a beggar with a sign saying “help an old starship vet” (Scotty in disguise, but still accepted as a normal sight). A crewman was rightly booted out of the service for suspicion of stealing a religious artifact. One of his two criminal friends says there “is nothing more than cash.” These story elements are out of place in this setting. TOS Earth is a paradise. On Earth, with its 23rd century post-scarcity economy, by definition there can be neither beggars nor a profit motive in crime. As to having a Starfleet crewman be a criminal, yes, Cmdr. Finney framed Kirk for murder in “Court Martial,” but that’s the only canon example. When crewmen with a penchant for crime popped up in solicited scripts (such as the drug-addicted helmsman and his dealer in Harlan Ellison’s original draft of “The City on the Edge of Forever”), Roddenberry wrote them out. If a TOS Star Trek story is to have profit-driven characters, the setting must be elsewhere, as we saw when encountering humans on the frontier like Harry Mudd and Cyrano Jones, or in TAS with pirates like the Orions.

On the side of Star Trek themes, it did provide two scary-looking beasts assumed to be monsters, one of which was playful, the other heroic and tragic. And despite the story problems inherent in the locale, visiting 23rd century Earth provided some fantastic world-building opportunities. We saw a starship repair base, Urey University (no doubt named after Nobel-Prize-winner Harold Urey, the discoverer of deuterium), a rover with a laser welder (like a moon buggy, used to repair the ship’s hull), security for the university, civilian police, a theater performance, a huge alien octopus, a telepathic bear, a seafood restaurant, and a cosmic storm. Despite the retro artistic style, the story kept my interest.

Both are good reads and worth a look. They were reprinted in “Star Trek: The Key Collection, Volume 5” by Checker Books in 2006, which can be found on Amazon.

Next time, we’ll compare Marvel’s two depictions of Joanna McCoy.