McCoy's Two Daughters

The idea of Leonard McCoy’s daughter came from a talk between actor DeForest Kelley and script editor Dorothy Fontana in January 1967, where she thought McCoy might have a son from his failed marriage. Kelley suggested that it be a daughter. Fontana jotted down a story idea in a memo on January 24, 1967. In the story, the Enterprise took on new medical staff at a starbase, and Kirk and McCoy were in the transporter room as they beamed aboard. As Fontana wrote, “One of the women, a lovely dark-haired girl of twenty, takes one look at McCoy and flings herself into his arms, much to Captain Kirk's surprise. Then McCoy turns to Kirk, grimaces, and introduces Nurse Joanna McCoy — his daughter.”

Fontana wrote, “McCoy had been married a long time ago, but it turned sour and ended in divorce despite the birth of the child, Joanna. McCoy, soon after the divorce, entered the space service. He has provided for Joanna, but due to the demands of the service, has seen her very seldom as she was growing up.” In the story idea, Kirk and Joanna were attracted to each other, and McCoy turned into a protective father. “After never seeing much of her father, Joanna might begin to resent McCoy's sudden fatherliness, especially if it threatens a deepening relationship with Kirk. Kirk, too, would probably be first amused and then irritated by McCoy's changed attitude. All of which would play large hell with the smooth operation of both the medical and command departments of the U.S.S. Enterprise.” (Quoted from “These Are The Voyages, TOS Season 3”)

Roddenberry liked the idea and added it to McCoy’s background in the series bible. He also added it to “The Making of Star Trek,” the behind-the-scenes book published in Sept. 1968, on pages 240-41, thereby announcing it to the public while the series was still on the air.

As Fontana developed a story featuring Joanna, Roddenberry asked Fontana to provide much more drama to the father-daughter relationship. As a result, after four story outlines, Joanna had evolved into a space hippy who’d rejected being a nurse and rebelled against her absentee father. Even so, third season show-runner Fred Frieberger didn’t think that McCoy should have a 20-year-old daughter and ultimately nixed the character. Arthur Heinemann wrote a script from the outline which re-purposed the character as Irina Galliulin, a love interest for Ensign Chekov. That version of the story aired as “The Way to Eden.”

Onscreen, Joanna was just referenced once, in the TAS episode “The Survivor,” when McCoy said that philanthropist Carter Winston provided food to colonists during a crop failure on Cerebus, where she had been going to school.

Since then, several novelists and comic book writers have been inspired to bring to life the young career-minded version of Joanna.

In the 1970s, Gold Key twice featured her in five-year mission stories as “Barbara” McCoy. In issue #40, she was a civilian biologist on Earth, whom Kirk and Spock met while the ship was undergoing repairs. In issue #43, a slightly different version of her joined the crew as a Starfleet xenobiologist to lead a mission to an underwater world. Both stories explored how the divorce affected her, with the second story highlighting it through a character arc.

Marvel Comics also twice featured Nurse McCoy, with its stories set during the second five-year mission. In the first story (Star Trek #13), she was engaged to an aged Vulcan, providing additional paternal angst for Leonard McCoy. Revisited in the miniseries “Untold Voyages” in a story called “Past Imperfect,” she was caught up in repercussions of the events from “Miri,” tying together themes of abandonment and responsibility.

Novelists explored the character as well, beginning with “Crisis on Centaurus.” In the novelization of TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint,” David Gerrold wrote that Joanna was still alive and had several great-grandchildren. More recently, the novels “Best Defense” and “Purgatory’s Key” feature her.

Future posts will compare and contrast these stories.