Leonard McCoy payment for his appearance. In the "" episode "", McCoy mentions he has a daughter, Joanna. Although Chekov's friend Irina in the original series episode "The Way to Eden" was originally written as McCoy's daughter, it was changed before the episode was shot. In the 2009 "Star Trek" film, which takes place in an "alternate, parallel" reality, McCoy and Kirk become friends at Starfleet Academy, which McCoy joins after a divorce that he says "left [him] nothing but [his] bones." This line, improvised by Urban, explains how McCoy earned the nickname "Bones". McCoy later helps get Kirk posted aboard the
Star Trek: The Original Series Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), the first African-American woman to hold such an important role in an American television series; the captain's yeoman, Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), who departed midway through the first season; and Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), head nurse and assistant to McCoy. Walter Koenig joined the cast as Ensign Pavel Chekov in the series' second season. In February 1966, "Star Trek" was nearly cancelled by Desilu Productions, before airing the first episode. Desilu had gone from making just one half-hour show ("The Lucy Show"), to deficit financing a portion of two expensive hour-long shows, "" and "Star