Shaking hands with Death
Watch out, I am about to get all thinky on you all and prove that there is a strange mind in my head.
Long thinky thoughts about shaking hands with death, Terry Pratchett and Leonard McCoy under this cut
I will start this off on a little of a ‘what I did that prompted this’ recap for you all, so you can see why my mind made the connections it did and got me to wondering about a few things and in particular, a trope in fanfiction, about McCoy's backstory.
I had intended to watch a few of the better McCoy episodes of The Original Series (TOS) one night, but by the time I got home, I had time for one episode only and I decided on Friday’s Child. I came to this decision after
thistlerose and I had a little chat about TOS episodes and which were the best for McCoy being McCoy. I watched that episode, laughing at Spock being particularly put out about Jim’s and McCoy’s actions. Then a little thing occurred called sleep, but I woke up quite early and decided to watch the Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2010 with Sir Terry Pratchett to pass the time before I had to head into work. This was a very interesting lecture that was delivered by Sir Terry’s “stunt” Pratchett in Tony Robinson.
These links take you to a page where you can view the youtube of the lecture and two transcripts. This one from tedcrhis' online blog and the Guardian Edited version.
Both transcripts are slightly edited but near enough that you can get the gist of what he was talking about. If you have the time, I strongly urge you to watch the whole lecture. It is thought provoking while being filled with the typical Pratchett self-deprecation and humour.
The lecture was titled "Shaking hands with Death" and in it, Sir Terry talked about his experience in discovering he had early onset Alzheimer’s, the consideration he has since given towards assisted death and finally, why he is an advocate for it. Specifically in respect to his own situation, situations he has observed in his own family and those of people he has met with similar situations to himself.
In order to place my cards on the table at the start, I feel I should inform you all that my own personal beliefs are along the lines of Sir Terry's, as a humanist. So I believe in reason, ethics and justice as a basis of morality and decision making.
Watching this lecture got me to thinking about what I had watched the night before and McCoy’s actions in particular. Especially about the wider ramifications which included the death of his father on his psyche.
In Friday’s Child, McCoy is very aware of the Capellan’s beliefs and he will respect them, to a point, in line with the Prime Directive. If they try and ignore a health issue for too long, he then steps in and discovers that he has to use slightly different methods in order for medical attention to be agreed to by the Capellans.
McCoy shows over and again in the course of TOS that he puts his duty as a doctor first and as a Starfleet Officer second. He is not above using Starfleet regulations to ensure that what he thinks is right to happen or to just blatantly ignore them if they get in his way. In fact, in Friday's Child both Kirk and McCoy ignore the Prime Directive in order to stop the Teer's wife, Eleen, from commiting an assisted death in line with her people's beliefs. Spock, interestingly, assists them in flaunting the Directive. Is this a case of Spock's human side showing through? Or has Kirk and McCoy started to rub off on him? That is a whole another meta, though, so back on topic.
It is understood in TOS canon and in Reboot, through the explanations of JJ Abrams and Karl Urban in various interviews, that the death of David McCoy weighed heavily on his mind and were instrumental in helping McCoy make the decision to join Starfleet earlier than he did in TOS. We know that McCoy assisted his father to die to spare him further pain. He had been actively trying to discover a cure for his father's disease but was unable to at that point. In TOS, it was a short time after his father's passing that a cure was found and it was this that McCoy angsts over later on in his life. In terms of Reboot, there is no canon as to wether a cure was found or not. Most fanfiction writers tend to err on the side of following the TOS canon in Reboot as it was alluded to by both Abrams and Urban.
In fanon, it appears that we are seemingly putting our 21st Century views in relation to assisted death in considering McCoy's state of mind.
That is that he, as a doctor, 'killed' instead of cared. He did not protect the 'sanctity of life' that most anti-euthansia proponents espouse. Sir Terry, in his lecture, points out that during Victorian and Edwardian England, assisted death was a common and, in fact, expected duty that doctors would perform at that time. Ending the suffering was seen to be a 'greater good'. Now, we like to think that we are enlightened and progressive in our thinking in the 21st Century but the reality is that it is not so. That doctors in the Victorian era considered it part of the greater good to ease the way for patients towards death. That this attitude was accepted by society at that time is intriguing to consider how that is perceived nowadays. We tend to think of the Victorian era especially being a particularly moralistic and upright Christian society, and yet assisted death was accepted.
So what was it that really weighed on McCoy's mind?
Was it that he assisted someone to shake hands with death? Or was it more to do with that he didn't find the cure himself and quicker; that it was someone else who found the cure?
To my mind it is the latter as McCoy takes great pride in his ability as a doctor at the forefront of medicial science. He has pride in his own abilities and his intelligence. He willingly and often matches wits with Spock and Kirk. He even on occassions manages to win those battles. Kirk sometimes has to remind him of his skills as a physician and a scientist when doubts begin to surface. In TOS, Spock has occassionally served this role too. How much did the death of his father contribute to these doubts that McCoy has?
In Friday's Child, we can see how much value he and Kirk place on a life that does not yet have a voice. It is the fact that Eleen is carrying a child that causes them to act and intervene in the treatment of Eleen by the other Capellans and by Eleen herself towards her child. This does create some humourous moments when McCoy is trying to make Eleen care for the child and acknowledge it as hers. In the end he is able to get through to Eleen, so much so that she berates her fellow Capellans in not attacking the Klingon agent. She is willing to sacrifice her life in order to protect her people and her child. Her actions cause a change in attitude for the Capellans. They do not do a complete 360 degree turn around, but their honourable ways are forever changed due to McCoy's insistence on caring for life.
It is in that episode that we gain an insight into the society and beliefs of McCoy, Kirk and Spock in relation to sanctity of life.
We do have to consider, when looking at this episode, what the society was like at the time that the writer was living in. This was the 1960's where abortion was still considered 'taboo'. The situation with Eleen is not about whether she as a woman with her right to life, has a right to terminate the child, but whether her willingness to follow her societies beliefs and deprive them of a new leader as a woman should not live if her husband has died. This episode was more about exploring our own past culture and those that insist that women are a lesser being and only worthwhile as a breeding tool. The fact that she had a child growing inside her and was almost at term is what prompts Kirk, Spock and McCoy to act against her wishes and that of the Prime Directive. The child was used for a 'shock' value for a 60's audience to get behind the crew ignoring their orders and doing what was considered morally 'right'.
Is there proof in TOS or in the Reboot canon that assisted death is accepted?
No, but there is no canon proof for it not being accepted either. Maybe we should look at reasons as to why it could be accepted.
Canon shows us that life expectancy has increased significantly in the future. We are living longer and organ replacement is a common medical procedure in order to prolong our lives. Medical advancement is considerable, but there is still a need for medical practicioners. There are still many incurable diseases. Both McCoy and his father suffered from apparent incurable diseases. If the ethics in relation to organ replacement, growing and storing your own organs, quite possibly via the use of stem cells is accepted, why not then that a person of sound mind be given the choice to not grow those organs? To ascertain their own time when they will shake the hand of death?
It can be used as a convenient excuse for writers to explain McCoy's state on the shuttle and him seeming to run from his past life. In order for us to relate to characters, we need to recognise or understand their motivations. This is why we often have characters respond in certain ways that we ourselves might. This is doing a disservice to those characters, we need to take a step back and consider carefully if we are putting too great an emphasis on 21st century morals in order to please an audience or if we have considered the past of that character and what would be more appropriate for them in the possible ramifications of the 23rd century created by Gene Roddenberry and the other writers of TOS. As I said earlier, we also have to consider the mindset that created these characters and situations. It was a different era from the one we now live in. David Gerrold, in his "The World of Star Trek," stated that Science Fiction was the 20th Century's version of the morality plays.
In summary,
Star Trek attracts me as a writer as it makes me think about the future, what our life could be like and to reflect on the past history of humankind and the cycles in attitudes that seem to occur. Sir Terry at the start of his lecture referenced GK Chesterton and what he teaches us about fantasy writing. It is not that it gives us an opportunity to make things up, it is that it gives us an opportunity to look at the normal world and us in a different way. I believe the best sci-fi relates to this. Instead of playing with magic, we play with science and other species, but they all, in the end, are about us as a species. Some people are attracted to this series purely for the shiny. That is fine and they have a great time admiring the pretty, but I love it for the way it makes me think. The best writing and the best stories should make us understand ourselves better. As such, shouldn't we give a character we admire and love, in Leonard H. McCoy, some real depth and consideration to his past and the world he lives in?
Because LJ is still being stupid, this has been crossposted over from my Dreamwidth account. You can log into OpenID to comment at the original entry at http://noo.dreamwidth.org/86426.html, where there are
. If you see a locked post here, feel free to friend me over on Dreamwidth.
Long thinky thoughts about shaking hands with death, Terry Pratchett and Leonard McCoy under this cut
I will start this off on a little of a ‘what I did that prompted this’ recap for you all, so you can see why my mind made the connections it did and got me to wondering about a few things and in particular, a trope in fanfiction, about McCoy's backstory.
I had intended to watch a few of the better McCoy episodes of The Original Series (TOS) one night, but by the time I got home, I had time for one episode only and I decided on Friday’s Child. I came to this decision after
thistlerose and I had a little chat about TOS episodes and which were the best for McCoy being McCoy. I watched that episode, laughing at Spock being particularly put out about Jim’s and McCoy’s actions. Then a little thing occurred called sleep, but I woke up quite early and decided to watch the Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2010 with Sir Terry Pratchett to pass the time before I had to head into work. This was a very interesting lecture that was delivered by Sir Terry’s “stunt” Pratchett in Tony Robinson.
These links take you to a page where you can view the youtube of the lecture and two transcripts. This one from tedcrhis' online blog and the Guardian Edited version.
Both transcripts are slightly edited but near enough that you can get the gist of what he was talking about. If you have the time, I strongly urge you to watch the whole lecture. It is thought provoking while being filled with the typical Pratchett self-deprecation and humour.
The lecture was titled "Shaking hands with Death" and in it, Sir Terry talked about his experience in discovering he had early onset Alzheimer’s, the consideration he has since given towards assisted death and finally, why he is an advocate for it. Specifically in respect to his own situation, situations he has observed in his own family and those of people he has met with similar situations to himself.
In order to place my cards on the table at the start, I feel I should inform you all that my own personal beliefs are along the lines of Sir Terry's, as a humanist. So I believe in reason, ethics and justice as a basis of morality and decision making.
Watching this lecture got me to thinking about what I had watched the night before and McCoy’s actions in particular. Especially about the wider ramifications which included the death of his father on his psyche.
In Friday’s Child, McCoy is very aware of the Capellan’s beliefs and he will respect them, to a point, in line with the Prime Directive. If they try and ignore a health issue for too long, he then steps in and discovers that he has to use slightly different methods in order for medical attention to be agreed to by the Capellans.
McCoy shows over and again in the course of TOS that he puts his duty as a doctor first and as a Starfleet Officer second. He is not above using Starfleet regulations to ensure that what he thinks is right to happen or to just blatantly ignore them if they get in his way. In fact, in Friday's Child both Kirk and McCoy ignore the Prime Directive in order to stop the Teer's wife, Eleen, from commiting an assisted death in line with her people's beliefs. Spock, interestingly, assists them in flaunting the Directive. Is this a case of Spock's human side showing through? Or has Kirk and McCoy started to rub off on him? That is a whole another meta, though, so back on topic.
It is understood in TOS canon and in Reboot, through the explanations of JJ Abrams and Karl Urban in various interviews, that the death of David McCoy weighed heavily on his mind and were instrumental in helping McCoy make the decision to join Starfleet earlier than he did in TOS. We know that McCoy assisted his father to die to spare him further pain. He had been actively trying to discover a cure for his father's disease but was unable to at that point. In TOS, it was a short time after his father's passing that a cure was found and it was this that McCoy angsts over later on in his life. In terms of Reboot, there is no canon as to wether a cure was found or not. Most fanfiction writers tend to err on the side of following the TOS canon in Reboot as it was alluded to by both Abrams and Urban.
In fanon, it appears that we are seemingly putting our 21st Century views in relation to assisted death in considering McCoy's state of mind.
That is that he, as a doctor, 'killed' instead of cared. He did not protect the 'sanctity of life' that most anti-euthansia proponents espouse. Sir Terry, in his lecture, points out that during Victorian and Edwardian England, assisted death was a common and, in fact, expected duty that doctors would perform at that time. Ending the suffering was seen to be a 'greater good'. Now, we like to think that we are enlightened and progressive in our thinking in the 21st Century but the reality is that it is not so. That doctors in the Victorian era considered it part of the greater good to ease the way for patients towards death. That this attitude was accepted by society at that time is intriguing to consider how that is perceived nowadays. We tend to think of the Victorian era especially being a particularly moralistic and upright Christian society, and yet assisted death was accepted.
So what was it that really weighed on McCoy's mind?
Was it that he assisted someone to shake hands with death? Or was it more to do with that he didn't find the cure himself and quicker; that it was someone else who found the cure?
To my mind it is the latter as McCoy takes great pride in his ability as a doctor at the forefront of medicial science. He has pride in his own abilities and his intelligence. He willingly and often matches wits with Spock and Kirk. He even on occassions manages to win those battles. Kirk sometimes has to remind him of his skills as a physician and a scientist when doubts begin to surface. In TOS, Spock has occassionally served this role too. How much did the death of his father contribute to these doubts that McCoy has?
In Friday's Child, we can see how much value he and Kirk place on a life that does not yet have a voice. It is the fact that Eleen is carrying a child that causes them to act and intervene in the treatment of Eleen by the other Capellans and by Eleen herself towards her child. This does create some humourous moments when McCoy is trying to make Eleen care for the child and acknowledge it as hers. In the end he is able to get through to Eleen, so much so that she berates her fellow Capellans in not attacking the Klingon agent. She is willing to sacrifice her life in order to protect her people and her child. Her actions cause a change in attitude for the Capellans. They do not do a complete 360 degree turn around, but their honourable ways are forever changed due to McCoy's insistence on caring for life.
It is in that episode that we gain an insight into the society and beliefs of McCoy, Kirk and Spock in relation to sanctity of life.
We do have to consider, when looking at this episode, what the society was like at the time that the writer was living in. This was the 1960's where abortion was still considered 'taboo'. The situation with Eleen is not about whether she as a woman with her right to life, has a right to terminate the child, but whether her willingness to follow her societies beliefs and deprive them of a new leader as a woman should not live if her husband has died. This episode was more about exploring our own past culture and those that insist that women are a lesser being and only worthwhile as a breeding tool. The fact that she had a child growing inside her and was almost at term is what prompts Kirk, Spock and McCoy to act against her wishes and that of the Prime Directive. The child was used for a 'shock' value for a 60's audience to get behind the crew ignoring their orders and doing what was considered morally 'right'.
Is there proof in TOS or in the Reboot canon that assisted death is accepted?
No, but there is no canon proof for it not being accepted either. Maybe we should look at reasons as to why it could be accepted.
Canon shows us that life expectancy has increased significantly in the future. We are living longer and organ replacement is a common medical procedure in order to prolong our lives. Medical advancement is considerable, but there is still a need for medical practicioners. There are still many incurable diseases. Both McCoy and his father suffered from apparent incurable diseases. If the ethics in relation to organ replacement, growing and storing your own organs, quite possibly via the use of stem cells is accepted, why not then that a person of sound mind be given the choice to not grow those organs? To ascertain their own time when they will shake the hand of death?
It can be used as a convenient excuse for writers to explain McCoy's state on the shuttle and him seeming to run from his past life. In order for us to relate to characters, we need to recognise or understand their motivations. This is why we often have characters respond in certain ways that we ourselves might. This is doing a disservice to those characters, we need to take a step back and consider carefully if we are putting too great an emphasis on 21st century morals in order to please an audience or if we have considered the past of that character and what would be more appropriate for them in the possible ramifications of the 23rd century created by Gene Roddenberry and the other writers of TOS. As I said earlier, we also have to consider the mindset that created these characters and situations. It was a different era from the one we now live in. David Gerrold, in his "The World of Star Trek," stated that Science Fiction was the 20th Century's version of the morality plays.
In summary,
Star Trek attracts me as a writer as it makes me think about the future, what our life could be like and to reflect on the past history of humankind and the cycles in attitudes that seem to occur. Sir Terry at the start of his lecture referenced GK Chesterton and what he teaches us about fantasy writing. It is not that it gives us an opportunity to make things up, it is that it gives us an opportunity to look at the normal world and us in a different way. I believe the best sci-fi relates to this. Instead of playing with magic, we play with science and other species, but they all, in the end, are about us as a species. Some people are attracted to this series purely for the shiny. That is fine and they have a great time admiring the pretty, but I love it for the way it makes me think. The best writing and the best stories should make us understand ourselves better. As such, shouldn't we give a character we admire and love, in Leonard H. McCoy, some real depth and consideration to his past and the world he lives in?
Because LJ is still being stupid, this has been crossposted over from my Dreamwidth account. You can log into OpenID to comment at the original entry at http://noo.dreamwidth.org/86426.html, where there are
. If you see a locked post here, feel free to friend me over on Dreamwidth.