Rodney McKay

Template:Stargate character Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay (a.k.a. Rodney McKay) is a fictional character in the science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis played by David Hewlett. He is a self-described genius who was introduced in the Stargate SG-1 episode "48 Hours".

McKay is a Canadian, although he works for the United States Air Force as an expert on astrophysics, naqahdah, Ancient technology and the Stargate system.

Biography

He has a sister, Jeannie Miller, whom he was never really close to. Jeannie (played by David Hewlett's real-life sister Kate Hewlett) has stated that his first name was actually Meredith, and calls him "Mer" for short; "Rodney" is apparently his middle name. Intelligence seems to be a family trait, as Jeanie is also an expert in theoretical physics. Additionally, he used to have a dog—which ran away while he was younger—and parents who blamed McKay for their problems.

As a child, he wanted to be a pianist. At age 12 he was told by a piano instructor that his playing was "clinical", and as a result gave up his musical studies, deciding that science would make the best use of his talents. McKay was a genius even when he was young, an example of his intelligence is that he built a model atomic bomb for his grade six science fair. Though it was not a functioning bomb, the FBI still took interest, and after a six hour long interview, he was hired for an unspecified intelligence job.

On Earth, he had an apartment, which he resided in while working for the USAF, and a cat.

His habits include napping in his underwear and eating energy bars. He also claims to have fatal allergic reactions to anything citrus, which he often likes to point out. An obsession with protecting his fair skin led him to creating his own personal mix of SPF 100 sunblock. McKay has a predilection for women with short blonde hair—particularly Samantha Carter.

McKay and the USAF

At the Area 51 facility, which is within the domain of Nellis Air Force Base, McKay became one of the premier experts on the Stargate outside of the Stargate Command. During this time, he discovered that Samantha Carter's dialing program ignored 220 of 400 signals given by the Stargate during a dialing sequence. It was also his assessment that the energy that stored Teal'c's pattern would have already succumbed to entropy in a 48 hour time period, hence the "deadline".

When McKay was proven wrong about how Teal'c's pattern was stored, he was reassigned to Russia where he would oversee the transfer and development of the naqahdah generator technology.

Sometime later, McKay was assigned to help the SGC when Anubis was attacking the Stargate itself by sending a harmonic energy pulse to overload the gate. After attempting to send a severe electromagnetic pulse through the gate, McKay and Carter ran out of options—until Jonas Quinn gave them the idea of getting the gate out of Cheyenne Mountain and sending it through hyperspace.

During his time with the USAF, he was on a team that perfected a means of digital data compression that allowed a large sum of data (such as mission reports, and high quality audio and video) to be transmitted in an extremely short period of time.

McKay and the Atlantis expedition

Season 1

Two years later, McKay was sent to Antarctica, where a small Ancient outpost was discovered by Colonel Jack O'Neill in "Lost City, Part 2". After the discovery of Atlantis's location in the Pegasus Galaxy, McKay was assigned to Dr. Elizabeth Weir's expedition to Atlantis, where he serves as chief scientific advisor. He became the expedition's leading expert on the Ancients, and was assigned to a team consisting of Major John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan and Lieutenant Aiden Ford.

Though he comes across as pompous and rude at times, he has proven himself to be courageous in the face of danger and a dedicated member of the expedition. He has also shown that he has a capacity for change, having evolved considerably throughout his time spent on Atlantis. A particular characteristic that others have noticed is his propensity to come up with his most brilliant ideas while under threat of death and/or impending doom.

Acerbic tongue aside, he is close to the people he works with, having referred to them as a surrogate family in a message to Jeannie.

By his own admission, he has always envied Samantha Carter's aptitude for being more creative, for having a 'sixth sense' when it comes to problem solving, but it seems that Rodney McKay's experience on Atlantis will eventually put the two scientists on equal footing.

McKay was born without the ATA gene (a lack which bothered him a lot), and volunteered to be the first human trial for Dr. Beckett's gene therapy. It was a success and now he has an artificial ATA gene of his own. The first thing he used it with was an invulnerability shield device they had found in a lab. He tested it by letting Major Sheppard shoot him in the leg and throw him off a balcony, (both of which did not harm him, thanks to the shield). Unfortunately, he discovered that he couldn't remove it—and could neither eat nor drink through it, creating the very real possibility that he would die from dehydration. Dr. Weir hypothesised that, unconsciously, Rodney was afraid and thus subconsciously prevented the shield from deactivating. After Jinto unknowingly let loose an energy creature, they found the device the Ancients trapped it in. Weir said Rodney should be the one trying to get it back in since the shield was protecting him. In that moment, the shield (expectedly) popped off. Afterwards, they tried to send the energy being through the Stargate to a barren world, using a naqahdah generator as a lure, but the creature sucked the energy out the MALP carrying it. McKay finally put the shield back on, walked into the energy being and threw the generator through the gate. The creature followed it out of Atlantis.

When Major Sheppard and Teyla discovered an enormous storm heading Atlantis' way, McKay discovered a way to power Atlantis' shield using lightning strikes from the same storm that seemed poised to destroy Atlantis.

McKay went with Sheppard, Dr. Brendan Gall and Dr. Abrams to investigate an Ancient weapon satellite Gall discovered in the Atlantis solar system, about 15 hours away from the city by Puddle Jumper. Once there, they discovered a very weak Wraith distress signal and McKay and Sheppard convinced Dr. Weir to let them investigate. Even if the signal was probably 10,000 years old, any scientific and military knowledge they might find may be useful.

Down in the planet, they found the ship mostly intact. Unluckily, there was a survivor, a 10,000-years-old Wraith that had survived by draining his own people, and was almost invulnerable. This "Super-Wraith" attacked Dr. Abrams and Dr. Gall when they were alone, draining Abrams to an empty husk and leaving Gall a very old and fragile man. When Major Sheppard went outside to confront the Wraith, he left McKay behind to take care of Gall. McKay was torn between staying with him and going to help Sheppard. Gall told him he had changed these last months and he no longer was the same man as before and he used the gun Rodney had given him to defend himself to kill himself, so Rodney could go and help Sheppard. Rodney managed to help Sheppard and give them both enough time so rescue could arrive.

While checking the city with a group of scientists and marines after the storm, several scientists started to fall dead without a known cause. They finally found out a lethal nanomachine had been let free after one Atlantean lab was damaged by the storm. McKay figured out a way to disable the nanomachine using an electromagnetic pulse. When the EMP machine in his lab didn't work, Major Sheppard got the idea of using an overloaded naqahdah generator instead to generate the pulse.

After discovering the Wraith hiveships were on their way to Atlantis, he devised a means of opening the Atlantis gate to Earth, by networking the expedition's naqahdah generators, for long enough to send back information in a highly compressed digital format to the SGC detailing the events leading up to the impending Wraith assault on Atlantis. Though running on very little sleep by this time given his attempts to come up with a solution to the impending Wraith invasion, he recorded a lengthy (and often rambling) video letter to people he cared about deeply, even if he didn't show it, such as Samantha Carter and Jeannie.

With the Wraith close, McKay went with Dr. Grodin and Lt. Miller to the Ancient's weapons array satellite discovered in The Defiant One. McKay was forced to use a space suit to reconfigure the satellite from the exterior. Unfortunately, the new configuration meant that Grodin got trapped inside the satellite while McKay and Miller where outside in the Puddle Jumper. They managed to destroy one of the hiveships with the satellite, but McKay and Miller were unable to rescue Grodin before the Wraith destroyed the satellite, killing him.

Season 2

After the timely arrival of the Daedalus, Col. Steven Caldwell beamed the ZPM down with two marines, to ensure the ZPM's safe arrival and installation. En route to the ZPM room, they were waylaid by two Wraith, leaving McKay to deal with one himself. After a spontaneous show of courage on McKay's part, the remaining Wraith was eliminated by Teyla, who escorted McKay the rest of the way. McKay's first attempt at powering the shield was a failure, but the second succeeded in time to save Atlantis from a kamikaze attack. Later, he and Dr. Zelenka implemented Major Sheppard's idea to hide the city so the Wraith would leave thinking it had been destroyed. By substituting a Puddle Jumper's cloak for Atlantis' shield and detonating a nuclear warhead above the city, the Wraith armada departed, fooled into believing Atlantis had been completely obliterated.

While scouting a new planet, Dr. McKay and Lt. Laura Cadman were captured by a Wraith dart. Col. Sheppard ordered the dart to be shot down, but McKay and Cadman were trapped inside the dart's teleportation device. Dr. Zelenka managed to extract only McKay, since there was not enough power to extract them both. By accident, Cadman's mind became trapped also inside McKay's body, and only he could hear her. After some embarrassing incidents, the Wraith transporter was finally repaired and Cadman was restored to her proper body, but not before sharing a passionate kiss with Dr. Beckett.

While looking for a race called the Dorandans they found in the Ancient database, McKay and his team found an experimental Ancient power generator, called Project Arcturus. McKay thought he could make it work where the Ancients had failed, even after one scientist died during a test. With Col. Sheppard's backing, they returned to the planet. Zelenka found out why the Ancients had abandoned the technology, but McKay refused to listen to him, assuring both Weir and Sheppard that he could do it. But, in the end, it overloaded, destroying 5/6th's of a solar system. McKay told Sheppard he hoped he could earn his trust back and Sheppard answered that it might take a while, but that he was sure Rodney could do it if he really wanted to.

McKay revealed that he "toked" marijuana in college once, with disastrous consequences. He did not elaborate.

Season 3

While attempting to resurrect Project Arcturus, McKay enlists the help of his sister, Jeanie, who happens to be just as smart as McKay. Though there is obvious friction in their relationship, McKay manages to reconcile his differences with his sister.

While testing the new "gate bridge" that he and Carter devised, live Ancients were found, who reclaimed Atlantis and asked the expedition to leave, allowing General Jack O'Neill and Richard Woolsey to remain as liaisons. McKay was reassigned to Area 51, but upon learning that the Asurans had taken Atlantis, McKay joined Sheppard, Weir, and Beckett in hijacking a puddle jumper, and picking up Ronon and Teyla on the way, succeeded in retaking the city. In 'Sunday', when Dr. Beckett is killed, McKay is very distressed and even calls Beckett his best friend to an apparition of him that appears. This Beckett, whether it be a hallucination or perhaps an ascended version of Beckett, (considering the fact that he'll be a recurring character next season and Daniel Jackson appeared to his friends like that when ascended) reciprocated this and comforted him somewhat.

Alternate timelines

There are four known alternate-timeline versions of McKay:

• In the episode "Before I Sleep", Rodney McKay stayed behind on the newly discovered Atlantis to attempt to open the bay doors of the Puddle Jumper bay. He drowned as the control room of Atlantis became submerged. The alternate-timeline Elizabeth Weir calls him "heroic" for giving his life on the chance that the city and the expedition might be saved.
• In Stargate SG-1's eighth season finale, "Moebius", the alternate McKay was the lead scientist on the project that dealt with experimenting on the modified "time-jumping" puddle jumper. In that reality, he bore a strong resemblance to the initial incarnation of the character in "48 Hours", wearing a T-shirt with "Mr. Fantastic" emblazoned across the chest, exhibiting extreme sarcasm and arrogance, and just like in his initial SG-1 appearance trying to win the affection of Dr. Samantha Carter through insults and sexual harassment. In a reference to the premiere episode of Atlantis, he succeeded in naming the Ancient ship a "gateship", to the confusion of Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill. From the audience's perspective this is the second time he has tried to name the ship Gateship One and been met with a lukewarm response; with an air of defeat he remarks: "Well, I thought it was clever". Interestingly, in the episode "The Return (Part 2)", the Asurans refer to the puddle jumper Sheppard and his team use to assault the city as "The Gateship". In another reference to Atlantis Rodney says about the Stargate "I'm certainly glad it's not me going through that thing!", whereas in Atlantis he very frequently travels through the Stargate. This version of McKay was not allergic to citrus, describing lemon chicken as his favourite food—another reference to "48 Hours", in which McKay describes lemon chicken as a deadly poison which would kill him with one bite.
• In the episode McKay and Mrs. Miller, an alternate Rodney McKay transported himself to our universe via matter bridge created by a resurrected Project Arcturus. Unlike the normal McKay, this alternate McKay is far more outgoing and social, able to quickly befriend most of the Atlantis staff; he says that the staff in his universe calls him "Rod". It's not made entirely clear whether he is at the same mental level as the normal McKay, however, and John Sheppard describes him as "annoying", clearly confused by the difference in behavior between the two McKays. He tells Atlantis that he was sent to warn them that the resurrected Project Arcturus was slowly destroying his universe. Once the Atlantis team agrees to close the matter bridge and shut down the project, he beams himself back to his own universe. It is unknown whether he survived the journey or not, though the normal universe Rodney held the bridge together a few extra seconds to give him a very good chance of surviving. Doing this, however, caused their ZPM to be completely depleted.
• In Stargate SG-1's tenth season episode, The Road Not Taken, the alternate Rodney McKay is a wealthy high-tech industrialist. His occupation involves - in his words - the "buying and selling of companies", with much of his income acquired through defense contracts. Major Lorne describes him as a "dot-com millionaire smart-ass", subsequently asking if he was also a "jerk" in another universe. Rodney was also married to - and later divorced from - Major Samantha Carter. At the end of the episode, he is reluctantly persuaded to join the SGC as Special Advisor to the President. This version of McKay wears glasses.

Personality

McKay is one of the most arrogant and condescending personalities present within the franchise as a whole, which is likely the result of him being the most intelligent scientist on the show (he frequently identifies as a Mensa member) and thus being singled out among his peers. He frequently verbally abuses his peers and often degrades those he is working with as stupid or idiotic.

Despite his irritating demeanor, however, almost everyone on the Atlantis expedition is either friends or in friendly relations with him. He's also apparently able to keep steady relationships although he is slightly socially awkward. John Sheppard shows full trust in him (usually) and his teammate Ronon Dex has admitted that he likes McKay for the simple fact that he is able to speak his mind so freely and simply. Although he enjoys deriding medicine as "voodoo" and fake science, he considers Carson Beckett to be his best friend.

Despite his shortcomings, McKay has shown acts of amazing heroism as early as the first few episodes of the show, ranging from taking the initiative to throw a naquadah generator through the stargate in order to destroy a dark creature against all odds (referred to by Sheppard as a "Hail Mary" on his part) to evacuating entire populations from planets about to be destroyed. He often provides comic relief in addition to his considerable technological expertise.

His only prominent relative is Jeannie Miller, his sister (played by Kate Hewlett who is in fact Hewlett's actual sister). Although the two had a tenuously sulking relationship before her recruitment upon the Atlantis expedition, they reconciled afterwards.

Trivia

• McKay always refers to the Zero Point Module as a "Zed PM". This is in reference to his Canadian origin. Canadians (as well as other Commonwealth nations and the Republic of Ireland) refer to the last letter of English language as "Zed" rather than "Zee" as used in American English.
• McKay is a member of Mensa, and he mentioned the existence of an (unofficial) Mensa chapter on Atlantis.
• McKay does not consider medical science to be a true science, once comparing it with voodoo.
• McKay has displayed some rather strange eating habits. In addition to eating rather large amounts of food, he enjoys veal, MREs, hospital food, and airplane food (although he regrets he can't get seconds), and religiously avoids anything with citrus. Due to his well known (and repeatedly stated) citrus allergy, Sheppard once presented Lt Colonel Cameron Mitchell with a lemon, before he worked with McKay for the first time, claiming that he always carries one around because "it's a comfort just to know it's there". .There is no evidence that Sheppard really does this. While playing what he thought was an Ancient game, McKay inadvertently forced the people of Geldar to despise anything made of citrus.
• McKay is allergic to bees.
• He claims he is hypoglycemic.
• McKay seems to have the interesting psychological quirk of creating hallucinations of people he knows in order to deal with harsh emotions, such as his apparent impending death where he visualised Samantha Carter.
• He once stated that Beckett was the closest thing he had to a best friend.

External links

• "Dr. Rodney McKay". Stargate Atlantis official site. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. © 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-03. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• "McKay, Rodney". The Stargate Omnipedia: Characters. GateWorld. Retrieved 2006-05-21.
• David Hewlett (I) at IMDb. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
• "Rodney McKay". StargateWiki. Retrieved 2006-05-21.