Star Trek 3x8 "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

rating: *

Memory Alpha summary

Among the distinctive features of the series that the later franchise never quite managed to live up to are the episode titles, poetic and elaborate.  There was never more poetic or elaborate a title than this one.  Kind of instantly iconic.

But more importantly, "Touched the Sky" is a McCoy episode.  This happened surprisingly rarely, and that's too bad.  McCoy was one of the Big Three, of course, along with Kirk and Spock, and so never hurt for attention, but as far as stories built entirely around him, he was hardly their equal.  Similar to "City on the Edge of Forever," it's a story based on the good doctor developing a medical condition.  Being a doctor, it's too bad that "physician, heal thyself" would need to apply to him at all, but there you go.  It's really a matter of his basic humanity coming to the surface.  McCoy was always considered the most human of the characters, and of course Spock the most alien, with Kirk bridging the gap between them, so there's that.

Like Voyager's "Resolutions," McCoy finds safe haven, but that thrusts him into a whole, fairly typical drama.  Long story short, he helps a civilization heal itself, and is in return granted a cure for his own condition.

via Trek Core

There's a lost episode concerning McCoy's origins, which is addressed directly in Star Trek for the first time, and that would have been nice to see.  Maybe in the future his full story will be explored more fully.  In the meantime we have what we have, which is material like this, which is common for the series.

four quarter analysis
franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Majel Roddenberry