Reception and Cultural Impact
McCoy is someone to whom Kirk unburdens himself and is a foil to Spock. He is Kirk's "friend, personal bartender, confidant, counselor, and priest". Urban said McCoy has a "sense of irascibility with real passion for life and doing the right thing", and that "Spock's logic and McCoy's moral standing gave Kirk the benefit of having three brains instead of just one." Jennifer Porter and Darcee McLaren wrote that McCoy is an "unintentional" example of how "irrational prejudices and fixations, wishful thinking and emotional reasoning, denial and repression, and unresolved neurotic disturbances" compromise "scientific rationality" in Star Trek.
Kelley said that his greatest thrill at Star Trek conventions was the number of people who told him they entered the medical profession because of the McCoy character.
In regards to the 2009 film, The Guardian called Urban's performance of McCoy an "unqualified success", and The New York Times called the character "wild eyed and funny". Slate.com said Urban came closer than the other actors to impersonating a character's original depiction.
Read more about this topic: Leonard McCoy
Famous quotes containing the words reception, cultural and/or impact:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“Barbarisation may be defined as a cultural process whereby an attained condition of high value is gradually overrun and superseded by elements of lower quality.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)