# Which book did Bones leave? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 3, 2010, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378 "2010-11-03T23:08:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lanzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/74df32/32.png) [@Lanzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lanzy)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2010, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/1 "2010-11-03T23:08:20Z")
In an episode of the Original Star Trek Bones left a book (I think) on the planet of gangsters, what book was it? and what was Kirk afraid they would do with it? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2010, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/2 "2010-11-03T23:22:18Z")
Bones did not leave a book. The original survey mission left a book about the gangs of Chicago. Bones may have left his communicator (I think), which Kirk was afraid would be reverse engineered by the gangsters. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2010, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/3 "2010-11-03T23:28:16Z")
McCoy left his communicator in Oxmyx’s office, not a book. Kirk was “concerned” they might want piece of the UFP’s action after discovering its secrets. The final scene: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIiAtCD-gIM&t=7m19s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIiAtCD-gIM&t=7m19s) ---
**Author:** ![SirRay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@SirRay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirRay)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/4 "2010-11-04T00:28:53Z")
While it’s been established that McCoy left his communicator, he did leave not the ‘Book’, which was [‘Chicago Mobs of the Twenties’](http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Chicago_Mobs_of_the_Twenties)(New York 1992 - which was the future back in 1968) and left by the Horizon Survey team… ---
**Author:** ![Duke\_of\_Rat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/5 "2010-11-04T14:35:11Z")
Why not just buzz the communicator, locate it, and beam it up? Is this not logical? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/6 "2010-11-04T16:25:11Z")
They were out of range by the time he realized it was missing. ---
**Author:** ![Lanzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/74df32/32.png) [@Lanzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lanzy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/7 "2010-11-05T16:45:35Z")
wow did I remember it wrong, thanks everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/8 "2010-11-05T17:30:57Z")
And they couldn’t possible turn around and go get it. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/9 "2010-11-05T17:45:18Z")
The producers of Deep Space Nine originally intended to do a sequel of this episode for Star Trek’s 30th anniversary. It would have involved the _Defiant_ visiting Sigma Iotia II to find that the Iotians had developed their society around 23rd century Starfleet, due to reverse-engineering Bones’s communicator. Plans for this were canceled when the producers met by chance with Charlie Brill, who had played the disguised Klingon spy Arne Darvin in “The Trouble With Tribbles.” The episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” was produced instead. > **[A Piece of the Action (Star Trek: The Original Series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Piece_of_the_Action_%28Star_Trek%29)** > > "A Piece of the Action" is the seventeenth episode of the second season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek. Written by David P. Harmon and Gene L. Coon, and directed by James Komack, it was first broadcast on January 12, 1968. > The Enterprise visits a planet with an Earth-like 1920s gangster culture, with Runyonesque dialog and costumes. > This was the last Star Trek script credited to Gene L. Coon. Its repeat on August 30, 1968, was the last episode to air in the 8:30 p... ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/10 "2010-11-05T17:47:29Z")
They coulda done both. They _shoulda_ done both… ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/11 "2010-11-05T23:07:05Z")
Peter David did follow it up in one of DC’s movie era TOS comic series. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I think it amounted to the guy from the planet being called to testify at a trial about Kirk always breaking the prime directive, or something like that, and all that comes of it is he tosses Bones the communicator saying something like “hey you forgot this”. Pretty anti-climactic. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-book-did-bones-leave/559378/12 "2010-11-05T23:30:43Z")
Just to be geekily specific, it wasn’t the communicator as such, but the “transtator” technology within, presumably some futuristicky equivalent of the transistor judging from how ubiquitous it apparently was. Of course, I rather doubt it’d be possible for a society with 1930s technology to reverse-engineer something far more advanced than a transistor, no matter how “bright” it is. Heck, even the primitive medium-scale integrated circuits of 1967 (when the episode was filmed) would’ve posed a real challenge to someone from the 1930s. Related, a pair of hand phasers were confiscated by the Ekosians (i.e. “the Nazi planet”) in “Patterns of Force” for examination and there was no indication they were recovered. The Ekosians, using tech copied or stolen from their Zeon neighbors were much further along, arguably even more so than us, with their ability to launch armed and manned interplanetary spaceships. They’d be able to exploit the advanced tech much sooner, more readily and more extensively, I figure.