[classictrek]

In an interview aired on the SciFi channel in 1997, DeForest Kelley talked about the character of Dr. McCoy and the life he’d chosen in space.

“The common thought was, of course, that he had a very unhappy marriage, divorced, with a daughter whose name was Joanna. But he’s a southerner, out of the south and I think he was such an unhappy guy that he joined the service and decided he would abandon what practice he had.”

While this is never stated outright in the series, it informs one of Kelley’s finest performances, in “For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky.” 

The groundwork for the episode had been laid in the Star Trek offices by D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold. Both of them had ideas for episodes featuring elements that had appeared in the third-season love story. 

Fontana had written a memo in March of 1967 stating that she was considering “a love story for McCoy which sees him resigning his commission, actually getting married, then tragedy bringing him full circle back to the Enterprise.”  In May of that year, she turned in a story outline entitled “Rachel” that followed that idea.

A few months before Fontana wrote her memo, David Gerrold had sent in a treatment entitled “Tomorrow is Yesterday” (not to be confused with the episode of the same name) about an interstellar ark that was rejected by Gene Coon for being “too big” for the TV series. 

When first-time writer Rik Vollaerts met with Fred Freibeger and pitched the story (which was then centered on Scotty), the executive producer responded to the idea with enthusiasm, seeing it as a synthesis between the various treatments he’d read.

Aware that they needed a good McCoy story for the third season, Freiberger shifted the love story to the good doctor. In an interview by Edward Gross that appears in Captain’s Logs, he said:

“I was trying to spread the material to the other actors. And I wanted to give DeForest Kelley something, because he was always just kind of hanging around without a lot to do. I wanted him to have something a little more solid.”

The idea that a middle-aged man can fall completely in love in just a matter of hours may seem a bit hokey to modern audiences, but Kelley’s abilities as an actor sell it completely. Like “The Empath,” “For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky” uses our favorite doctor to his fullest abilities and serves as a highlight on an underbudgeted and underbaked last season for Star Trek.