Dr. 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.
He has a sister, Jeannie, whom he was never really close to (Jeannie will appear on the series on season 3). 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.
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 consistent eating of
Energy Bar s. He also has
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 .
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("
48 Hours ").
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 ("
Redemption ").
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 a short period of time("
Letters From Pegasus ").
A year later, McKay was sent to
Antarctica , where a small
Ancient outpost was discovered by Brigadier General
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. Eventually, he became the lead Ancient expert on Atlantis and was assigned to a team consisting of Major
John Sheppard ,
Teyla Emmagan and
Aiden Ford ("
Rising ").
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.
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 ("
Letters From Pegasus ").
By his own admission, he has always envied Samantha Carter's aptitude for being more creative 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 didn't have the
ATA Gene naturally (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. 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 came 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 (
Hide And Seek ).
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 poised to destroy Atlantis ("
The Storm ").
McKay went with Sheppard, Ford, 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 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 ("
The Defiant One ").
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 ("
Hot Zone ").
After discovering the Wraith hiveships were on their way to Atlantis, he devised a means of opening the Atlantis gate to Earth using the inferior naqahdah power source 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 ("
Letters From Pegasus ").
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 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 where unable to rescue Grodin before the Wraith destroyed the satellite, killing him ("
The Siege, Part 1 ").
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 are waylaid by two Wraith, leaving McKay to deal with one himself. After a spontaneous show of courage on McKay's part, the remaining Wraith is eliminated—by Teyla, who escorts McKay the rest of the way. McKay's first attempt at powering the shield is a failure, but the second succeeds, in time to save Atlantis from a
Kamikaze attack. Later, he and Dr.
Zelenka implement 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 departs, fooled into believing Atlantis had been completely obliterated. ("
The Siege, Part 3 ").
While scouting a new planet, Dr. McKay and Lt.
Laura Cadman were captured by a Wraith dart. Col. Sheppard ordered the dart 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 ("
Duet ").
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 can make it work where the Ancients have 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 have abandoned the technology, but McKay refused to listen to him, assuring both Weir and Sheppard that he can do it. But, in the end, it overloaded, destroying of 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 can do it if he really wants to ("
Trinity ").
In "
The Lost Boys ," McKay revealed that he tried
Marijuana in college, with disastrous consequences. He did not elaborate.
There are two known alternate 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 ", that 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, trying to win the affection of Dr. Samantha Carter and exhibiting extreme sarcasm and arrogance. In a reference to the premiere episode of Atlantis, he succeeded in naming the puddle jumper a "gateship". This version of McKay was not allergic to lemon, describing lemon chicken as his favourite food--another reference to "48 Hours", in which lemon chicken is the point which leads McKay to reveal his allergy.
- McKay always refers to the Zero Point Module as a "Zed PM". This is in reference to his Canadian origin. Canadians (as well as the British ) 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 existence of a mensa chapter on atlantis.
