Rodney McKay

Role in Stargate

Character biography

Meredith Rodney McKay was born in 1968. He has a sister named Jeannie Miller (played by David Hewlett's sister Kate Hewlett), who is similar in intellect. McKay feels that his parents blamed him for their problems. McKay originally turned to science after his piano teacher told him he was a "fine clinical player" but had no sense of the art. During his youth, McKay joined a Scouting Troop, Lodge 14 of the Fort McMurray Eager Beavers. He built an atomic bomb for his grade six science fair exhibit, prompting a visit from the Central Intelligence Agency. Among his four diplomas, McKay implied he has degrees in physics and mechanical engineering, and stated he actually has two Ph.D.s. He also revealed he has extensive education in astrophysics.

Prior to his first appearance in Stargate SG-1, McKay was stationed at the Area 51 facility where he became one of the premier experts on the Stargate network outside of Stargate Command. In "48 Hours", he is assigned to help Major Carter recover Teal'c from being trapped in the Stargate, but McKay's theories are proven wrong. He is subsequently reassigned to Russia where he oversees the transfer and development of the naqahdah generator technology. McKay is again assigned to help the SGC in "Redemption" when Anubis tries to overload the SGC's Stargate with a harmonic energy pulse. McKay later makes a sincere apology to Carter for being wrong.

With the discovery of Atlantis' location in the Pegasus Galaxy, McKay is assigned to Dr. Elizabeth Weir's expedition to Atlantis, serving as chief scientific adviser. He leaves his apartment and a cat on Earth, and becomes the expedition's leading expert on the Ancients, and is assigned to an exploration team consisting of Major John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan and Lieutenant Aiden Ford. Born without the ATA gene, McKay volunteers to be the first human subject for Dr. Beckett's gene therapy and becomes the carrier of an artificial ATA gene of his own.

When the Atlantis expedition is trying to send a message to Earth, McKay records, in his message, a wish that he might get along better with his sister.

McKay loses Sheppard's trust in "Trinity" after he refuses to listen to Dr. Radek Zelenka and assures both Weir and Sheppard that he can make a piece of Ancient technology ("Project Arcturus") work on an alien planet, but the device explodes and destroys 5/6ths of the surrounding star system. Sheppard tells McKay that it might take a while to earn his trust back, but that he was sure Rodney could do it if he really wanted to. In the episode "The Long Goodbye" McKay claims that he is in charge should both Weir and Sheppard be unavailable or incapacitated, but Col. Steven Caldwell takes command of Atlantis to Weir's later satisfaction.

Personality

Dr. McKay is considered one of the most arrogant and condescending personalities found in the Stargate franchise. He once identified himself as a Mensa member and believes himself to be the smartest person in the city, as mentioned in a conversation between Drs. Weir and Carson in "Hide and Seek". What makes it worse for his fellow team members is that, while he does not possess the wisdom of many of the other characters, he excels in terms of raw intelligence. Despite his irritating demeanor, many members of the Atlantis expedition are on friendly terms with him, and McKay is able to keep steady relationships. An alternate version of himself, Rod McKay who is more relaxed and laid-back (also played by David Hewlett) admitted that he likes McKay for the simple fact that he is able to speak his mind so freely and simply. Expedition commander Dr. Elizabeth Weir states in "Tao of Rodney" that she and the members of Rodney's team love him. Although McKay enjoys deriding medicine as voodoo and fake science, he considered Dr. Carson Beckett to be "the closest thing to a best friend" he ever had. He is close to the people he works with, having referred to them as a surrogate family in a message to his sister Jeannie.

McKay is a hypochondriac, claiming at various times to suffer from hypoglycemia, restless leg syndrome, allergy to bee stings and citrus fruit, none of which have ever been confirmed. Ironically, when the team were exposed to a Wraith device that caused all but Teyla to suffer from paranoid hallucinations, McKay was relatively unaffected despite spending significant time next to the device in question. He enjoys veal, MREs, hospital food, and airline food. He studied medical science at one time, but stopped because too much information on the human body made him start diagnosing himself with many phantom diseases. McKay comes up with his most brilliant ideas while faced with the threat of death, to the point that, when Colonel Cameron Mitchell was working with McKay on an important assignment, Sheppard showed Mitchell a lemon, suggesting it would ensure McKay had the right incentive.

Despite his shortcomings, McKay has performed acts of genuine courage, overcoming his own fears to, for instance hand-carry, and then throw, a naquadah generator through the Stargate in order to lure a creature of floating energy out of the city (Although it should be said he was wearing an impenetrable personal force field at the time), or evacuate entire populations from planets about to be destroyed. In "The Defiant One", he is torn between staying with a dying man or going to help the outmatched Sheppard, with the other man observing McKay's personal growth for feeling like that and only ending when the other man shot himself so that McKay could help Sheppard without feeling guilty. He often provides comic relief in addition to his considerable technological expertise, and his ability to find solutions in situations of imminent death have been used against him several times to motivate him. His ability and habit of speaking quickly is used to great comedic effect many times in the series, particularly when explaining just how "screwed" they all are. His relationship with Dr. Keller is also used for comedic effect, as no one believes that they are dating, not even Colonel Sheppard.

Mentions outside Stargate

Following from his appearance in "Brain Storm" along with Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, Rodney McKay is later mentioned by Bill Nye in the episode "Let It Go" of the third season of Blindspot.

Conceptual history

David Hewlett portrayed McKay in "48 Hours" and "Redemption" in the sister show Stargate SG-1. McKay's citrus allergy was the producers' in-joke about a SG-1 crew member who insisted he was violently allergic to citrus and thus refused going out to lunch with others, not knowing the local restaurant regularly served him salad containing citrus without anything happening. When the new Stargate Atlantis production crew came up with the casting, they originally created Dr. Benjamin Ingram, an African-Canadian scientist. Hewlett auditioned for the character, despite not being African-Canadian. It was decided that McKay would replace Ingram as a main character for the series. Hewlett was contacted and arrived at the set the day after filming for the Stargate Atlantis pilot episode had started.

Producer Joseph Mallozzi described McKay as "an insufferable ass [in "48 Hours"] who, over the course of the franchise's run, ended up redeeming himself in surprising fashion." According to Mallozzi, McKay "takes another giant step toward redemption [in "Redemption"] – a process that would be completed by the time he assumed a lead position in the Atlantis expedition" and that "He's snarky, smug, and annoying as hell but – damn – he is good at what he does. And what he does is use his smarts to save the day."