That's not how McCoy got his nickname!
- Thread starter Trekker4747
- Start date
That's the way I took it. It was a wink at the audience that he says this and his nickname is Bones. But it doesn't have to be the reason for the nickname (I still prefer to go with Sawbones).
A
Amaris
Guest
So? Trekker, people have nicknames for various reasons. They don't always go with the traditional explanation. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that Kirk liked McCoy's phrasing on his divorce, and in empathy, started calling him "Bones". You don't have to like it, and you can scream all day that he actually derived the name from an archaic nickname for a surgeon, but the fact is this is how McCoy got his nickname: "She took the whole damn planet in the divorce, and all she left me were my bones."
Ta da.
J.
Not if you can show me, for sure, Kirk made up the nickname then from that remark.
McCoy also said "blood" so it'd make just as much sense to name him "Blood" as it would "Bones" going by this logic.
Exactly. Leonard McCoy did not coin the nickname "Bones." It's been around for a long time.
The line of dialogue is canon. Whether or not that is the origin of the nickname is certainly not.
Also, people need to stop saying "canon." The word is becoming meaningless.
becoming?
Do people in the military still used that term? My impression is that the term "sawbones," which would have been familiar to tv audiences forty years ago, has largely fallen out of the common vernacular. They might as well have called him "Twenty-three skidoo" or "zoot suit." If they didn't want modern audiences scratching their heads, they needed some sort of explanation for the name.
The divorce crack filled the bill, plus allowed them to work in that old apocryphal backstory about the unhappy marriage. (I wonder if we'll ever see McCoy's long-lost daughter?)
The divorce crack filled the bill, plus allowed them to work in that old apocryphal backstory about the unhappy marriage. (I wonder if we'll ever see McCoy's long-lost daughter?)
We were never told the canonical way he received his name, but we all assumed it was based on the military tradition of the past. This is a way to allow an audience to connect the dots without having to know archaic military slang. This is one of the choices which makes this Trek a hit. Don't bog casual viewers down with details that are really not key to enjoying the story. Oh, and I thought the line was delivered really well.
Rii
Rear Admiral
That's an interesting interpretation of the word "fact".
Oh, for Chrissakes. He talks about his divorce in the movie, and Kirk calls him that nickname at the end.
How the hell hard is this to comprehend? Stop overthinking this!
How the hell hard is this to comprehend? Stop overthinking this!
I like you're use of the ever popular "nu"...twice in one post too!! Well done lad, well done.
There is a big difference between what people would like to happen, and what happened. Ok, you dislike their answer to his nickname, perfectly fine to disagree with it. However, it WAS stated on screen, and you simply cannot make up something that wasn't said in the movie. I'm going to stick with what they actually said in the film.
A
Amaris
Guest
Indeed. However, what is more likely in this particular situation?
"McCoy, I remember when you told me that in your divorce, your wife left you nothing but your bones, so I'm going to start calling you Bones as a measure of empathy and affection."
- or -
"McCoy, I'm a big fan of ancient military vernacular, and I think you should be given the nickname of Sawbones, which I will shorten to "Bones", because military surgeons of the day, (that being several decades before the Civil War of the United States), used that name."
J.
Similar threads
