McCoy & Clark Terrell: Old Friends?

[Noddy]

^We know that he attended the Academy in the timeline created by Nero's intervention. Is there evidence that he attended the Academy in the Prime timeline?

This is only my opinion, but I just have difficulty seeing how Nero destroying the Kelvin would have caused McCoy to enroll in the Academy, where he originally didn't. And I do like to think that some of the things in Abrams' films did happen roughly the same in the prime timeline.

 

[Christopher]

This is only my opinion, but I just have difficulty seeing how Nero destroying the Kelvin would have caused McCoy to enroll in the Academy, where he originally didn't.

The butterfly effect. Changing one event can cause ripples that spread in all directions and alter things in unpredictable ways. Say, because the Kelvin is destroyed, the husband of a lost crewmember retires from Starfleet out of grief, so someone else gets promoted into their job who would otherwise have gotten an administrative post at Starfleet Medical, so someone else gets that post instead, and they make different policy decisions, and regulations are changed so that civilian doctors who enlist for starship duty have to train at the Academy first.

So just about anything, at least in terms of individuals' choices and actions, could turn out differently in the Abramsverse than it did before. Things might have been similar in many ways, true, but we can't assume that for sure. So, again, the question is what evidence we have in the Prime universe about McCoy's background.

 

[Noddy]

And McCoy first met Nancy one year before he joins Starfleet in the new reality, as in "The Man Trap" he says they first became involved twelve years ago, which would place the event in 2254. So perhaps McCoy did enlist in Starfleet earlier in the prime reality.

 

[Stevil2001]

I actually rather like the idea that McCoy's entry into Starfleet happened in roughly the same way and at the same time in the prime reality as it did in the altered one (apart from meeting Kirk at the same time though, as Kirk would already have graduated at that time, thanks to his father's influence). Perhaps Starfleet Academy is where McCoy met and became briefly involved with Nancy, from "The Man Trap"?

My thought in working on McCoy's backstory for A Choice of Catastrophes was that it's the same until he enlists in Starfleet in 2255. In the Prime universe, he's posted to Republic after enlisting (with Nancy Crater), and completes training onboard ship, while in the New universe he undergoes that training at Starfleet Academy.

Why would he only train on the Republic in one reality, and not the other?

This is a good question that I think I had an answer in mind for in 2010. According to the earliest draft of the novel I can find, McCoy "wheedles" the assignment because he wants to serve with Nancy, who is doing a tour on the Republic. I believe my thought was that different fleet deployments in the the New Universe (because of the Kelvin destruction and the drastically different construction patterns) would mean that the Republic assignment was unavailable to McCoy. I too favor the Prime and New Universes being the same as much as possible. (Basically, what Christopher said.)