Rodney McKay's History
Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay, better known as Rodney McKay, due to his dislike of his real first name, is a brilliant astrophysicist, and one of the leading experts on not only the Stargate and wormhole physics, but also Ancient and nanite technology in both the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies.
McKay was born in Canada on April 18, 1968. He said that when he was six years old, his father read him Moby Dick and ever since then, has recurring nightmares that he was eaten by a whale.
Not much is known about his mother, other than his claim that he had a vision of her while suffering from Second Childhood. He wanted to become a concert pianist, but when he was twelve, he was asked by his teacher to quit, since he was described as a fine clinical player, but had no sense of the art. McKay claimed to have won an award for his acting skills as a kid and could have made a career out of it, but chose not to. At some point in his childhood, he spent a few months in a scouting organization, the Fort McMurray Eager Beavers, until they asked him to leave, but he has kept the manual ever since. In grade six, McKay built a non-working nuclear warhead for the science fair. This prompted a visit from the Central Intelligence Agency.
When he was a child, school bullies made him eat his lunch with his underwear on his head. While visiting Atlantis in 2006, Rodney's sister Jean Miller told John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, and Ronon Dex this story, much to their amusement. Jeannie also told them that Rodney wet the bed during his childhood, which he strenuously denied.
Dr. McKay had extensive education, training and first-hand experience in the field of Astrophysics. McKay implied he has degrees in Physics and Mechanical Engineering, later stating he actually has two PhDs. He had a rival in Malcolm Tunney, another genius who was earning his doctorate at the same time. Though McKay claimed that he was smarter than Tunney, he always wanted to show off his success, especially to annoy him. He also once admitted to having "toked" Cannabis when he was in University and claimed he didn't feel any adverse effects, apart from itching and a desire to eat an entire loaf of white bread; on the other hand, he has said at times that he is [mortally] allergic to citrus. He has a younger sister named Jeannie Miller, who is also a talented scientist, but when she decided to start a family and de-prioritize her studies over her career, they had a massive argument and did not speak for four years before Rodney saw her again.
At some point, he began working for the Stargate Program. Despite being Canadian, he worked at Area 51 for the United States Air Force and was on their payroll. He became the foremost expert on the Stargate, second only to Major Samantha Carter. For instance, he knew that when Carter got the Stargate working with three supercomputers, they ignored 220 of the 400 feedback signals the Stargate can emit during any given dialing sequence. However, despite this knowledge, he was never particularly interested in pursuing it. Due to the secretive nature of his job, he had not published a theoretical paper to the public in an undisclosed number of years. He once claimed that one of his ideas was stolen by TV physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
In March 2002, when a mission ended with Teal'c failing to materialize through the Stargate on Earth, Colonel Frank Simmons hired McKay to help, and McKay gave the Pentagon a 48-hour deadline before they should give up the attempt and resume gate activity.
Arriving at the SGC, McKay was revealed to have been studying the Stargate Program at Area 51 for over a year and upon meeting Major Samantha Carter, became immediately infatuated with her. A conversation with her quickly turned sour when he began poking holes at the structure of the dialing computer, a device Carter had personally worked on and also created. Their relationship grew even more sour when Carter later realized that McKay was the one who had suggested the 48 hour deadline because he thought Teal'c was already dead, believing that the Stargate's data storage program had already degraded Teal'c's pattern so much that the Jaffa could never be restored. This triggered Carter's fury and led to her calling him a "jerk". McKay remarked, "I've always had a real weakness for dumb blondes." Carter told him to "Go suck a lemon." as an insult due to his allergy, however, he still considered her "Very sexy."
After the situation was resolved, with McKay's theories about Teal'c's pattern being proven incorrect, McKay was given an assignment in Russia to help with their Naquadah generator technology. McKay further protested against the operation, even going so far as to call Carter a certifiable whack-job and upon learning of his assignment, initially protested, stating that he was a civilian and didn't follow orders until Carter pointed out that he was still on the United States Air Force payroll. He eventually left to get ready, but not before complaining that the situation he'd been thrown into really sucked.
Nearly four months later, presumably in June 2002 and as a result of Anubis using the Stargate destroyer to target the SGC's Stargate which left the Stargate itself permanently open, McKay was recalled from Russia on the orders of the Pentagon and sent straight to the SCG which left Carter deeply annoyed. McKay came up with a solution to shut down the Stargate before Anubis used it to destroy the Earth with the Stargate destroyer. He suggested they use an EMP generator to shut down the gate, which ultimately was ineffective. Consequently, by opening the iris, the power build up was increased and the time to detonation was accelerated by 24 hours. In the end, the solution to the problem was to use the X-302 hyperspace fighter's hyperdrive to make a "short jump" (in relative terms, which still meant a really long way) with the gate strapped to the underside of the 302. This sent the Gate far enough away that the Earth wasn't affected by the gate's explosion. Carter later kissed McKay on the cheek, which he interpreted as meaning that Carter no longer hated him. What he did in the two years prior to his departure from the SGC and then eventually joining the Atlantis Expedition remains unknown.
In July 2004, McKay was one of the scientists involved in the technological study of the Ancient outpost in Antarctica. Through numerous efforts, including trying the chair himself twice and attempting to interface it with Human computers, he was able to determine (with reluctant assistance from Dr. Carson Beckett) that it could only be used by someone with the Ancient Technology Activation gene. After testing with numerous personnel, everyone was stunned when Major John Sheppard sat in the chair, demonstrating a natural ability far greater than anyone else thus far, presumably on a level with Brigadier General Jack O'Neill. McKay later assisted in setting up the outpost's ZPM to provide the power needed to connect the Earth's Stargate to Atlantis.
McKay later joined the Atlantis expedition to the Pegasus Galaxy. McKay was one of the key members to determine the various functions of the city. Along with that, he determined that the city's last working Zero Point Module was nearly depleted and began searching for a new planet. However, just as the ZPM was about to be completely depleted, the city rose up from the ocean floor, settling on the surface.
Wanting to use the Ancient technologies, McKay acted as the guinea pig for Dr. Beckett's first human trial of the Ancient Technology Activation gene therapy. The test proved successful and McKay attached a personal shield emitter to himself, testing it out by having Major John Sheppard shoot him and push him off a balcony. Although he was jubilant about surviving such occurrences with the shield on, he determined that he could not eat or drink with it. However, when Dr. Elizabeth Weir suggested that he could "trap" the "shadow" since he would be protected by the shield, it fell off. Sheppard was assigned in his place. A naquadah generator on a MALP was used in an attempt to get the creature to leave the city through the stargate. After the creature quickly depleted the MALP's power source and began feeding off the generator, McKay used the personal shield to protect himself long enough to throw the generator through the gate to M4X-337, leading the creature through the gate.
With the Atlantis Reconnaissance 1 or AR-1 having officially formed, McKay embarked on his first ever mission as a member of the expedition's main flagship team. They explored the Wraith homeworld but were forced to flee after being attacked by Wraith warriors and Sheppard having an Iratus bug attached to his neck. Unfortunately, the damaged Jumper got stuck in the Stargate with McKay working frantically to find a way to save everyone before the thirty-eight minute limit expired. With assistance of Atlantis personnel, he was able to retract the Jumper's drive pods before realizing that they had lost all forward momentum. He was then pushed through the Stargate by Lt. Ford before the rear hatch was blown in order to propel the Jumper through the gate.
While returning from a mission, McKay was left temporarily incapacitated after being struck by a Wraith stunner but made a full recovery. He later helped the team capture a Wraith which was eventually imprisoned in Atlantis's brig.
When the team landed on M7G-677, McKay did some exploring and discovered a ZPM. He later brought it back to Atlantis in the hope that he could use as a means of powering Atlantis's shield but ultimately returned it after discovering that it was useless. While on the planet, it was also shown that McKay was awful with young children, even going so far as to get into an argument with one which ended when Ford intervened, bringing the children to safety.
When Major John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan discovered a massive storm covering 20% of Lantea's surface that was also heading for Atlantis, McKay discovered a way to power Atlantis's shield by using lightning strikes from the same storm that seemed poised to destroy the city. When the city was temporarily evacuated, McKay, along with Dr. Weir, Sheppard and a couple of marines stayed behind to disable the grounding stations. Several Genii soldiers, led by Acastus Kolya stormed the city after the first contact with them went sour. They tried to retrieve supplies the Tau'ri promised (medical supplies and C-4). However, McKay managed to buy enough time so Sheppard could save the city and McKay managed to activate the city shield before being wiped out by a massive tsunami. He performed another act of bravery during this time by stepping between Weir and Kolya, who was about to shoot her, which Weir commented on but McKay uncharacteristically downplayed it.
When a team went to check out an energy signal in the solar system, McKay piloted the Puddle Jumper, but did it very erratically. After landing on the Light Bugs' Planet, McKay investigated the crashed Wraith supply ship with Sheppard and stayed with the partially fed-on Brendan Gall while Sheppard battled the Wraith survivor. McKay was conflicted as he wanted to go help Sheppard but was ordered to stay with Gall who admits that McKay had changed for the better since their arrival on Atlantis. Ultimately Gall committed suicide, allowing McKay to go help Sheppard. McKay arrived in time to shoot the Wraith, distracting it from the weaponless Sheppard and unloaded two clips into him to little effect before running out of bullets. As the Wraith tried to decide who to attack, another Puddle Jumper with Teyla and Ford arrived and destroyed the Wraith with a drone weapon after Sheppard used a power bar to attract light bugs to the Wraith, making it the biggest life-sign on the planet. McKay told Sheppard of Gall's fate and Sheppard promised to let McKay fly them home once he deactivated the shield the Wraith put around the Jumper.
When searching through Atlantis after the Lantean storm, some of his team members inadvertently released a nanite virus, which kills its victims after terrorizing them through hallucinations. McKay was infected with the disease, causing a hallucination of a ghost attacking him. However, he did not die since he had the ATA gene. He figured that an electromagnetic pulse would stop the attacks. After the EMP device failed to eradicate the threat, Major Sheppard detonated an overloaded Naquadah generator 20 miles over the city.
When Major John Sheppard invited Chaya Sar to Atlantis, McKay originally regarded her with hostility, especially when he realized Sheppard had certain intentions towards her. He later correctly deduced that Chaya Sar was actually an Ancient.
He and the team went to Dagan to search for a Zero Point Module, after an alternate Dr. Elizabeth Weir gave him five addresses with a guaranteed ZPM on them. Allina, one of the Daganians took a fondness for McKay, but was, at first oblivious to it, until the team told him. After Acastus Kolya returned to also acquire the ZPM, the team planned to stop them, and did. The team had acquired a ZPM, but since he told Allina, who was a member of the new Quindosim that the Atlantis expedition weren't the Lanteans they hoped and took the ZPM off them, stating that the ZPM would go into hiding on another world and that once the Ancients returned, she and her people would be greatly rewarded for their actions, the Brotherhood remaining obvious or unaware of the fact that the Ancients had long since left the galaxy. McKay tried his best to convince of the impending Wraith siege, but failed and returned to Atlantis where he and the others discovered that the Wraith were fast approaching the city and would be there in less than two weeks.
Before the Wraith siege of Atlantis McKay, with Dr. Peter Grodin and Lt. Lou Miller, went to reactivate the Lagrangian Point satellite in an effort to halt the three Hive ships. One Hive was destroyed before the satellite itself was destroyed. During the siege, the Daedalus arrived and beamed down the Zero Point Module Atlantis desperately needed to protect the city. In the process, he was cornered by Wraith guards. After a spontaneous show of courage, during which he accidentally ejected the magazine of his sidearm, Teyla Emmagan arrived to save him. The ZPM was then installed and the shield activated before the Wraith Darts made a kamikaze run on the city. He was later working with Dr. Radek Zelenka to cloak the city to make the Wraith believe the city had been destroyed.
He was on a mission on Thenora to search for any survivors during the Wraith culling there. However, there was none. He was later scooped up by a Wraith beam with Lt. Laura Cadman before the Wraith Dart was shot down. After discovering that there was only enough power to save one of them, they beamed out McKay, who fainted. After he regained consciousness, he discovered that Cadman's consciousness is inside his. He had to live with Cadman until Dr. Radek Zelenka's team found a solution. During that time, they found it hard to co-exist. Cadman agreed to help McKay through his first date with Dr. Katie Brown, which led to Cadman taking control of Rodney and leaving the date. He also found out that Dr. Carson Beckett was quite fond of Cadman. Eventually, the strain of having two separate minds in one body had caused a near fatal seizure and Zelenka's team wouldn't find a solution in time. However, McKay worked out how to save both of them by using the Stargate's crystals. Before they went through the procedure, Cadman took control of McKay's body one last time, using him to kiss Beckett, in case it wouldn't work.
He was in charge of Project Arcturus found on the Doranda outpost. He convinced Dr. Elizabeth Weir and Lt. Colonel John Sheppard that they should make another attempt after the first resulted in the death of an expedition member. However the second attempt resulted in the destruction of 5/6 of its solar system.
By the end of the year, he and the team was taken by Aiden Ford's Coalition to formulate a plan to destroy a Wraith Hive ship. McKay worked on fixing the Wraith Dart, but was left behind on the mission. McKay needed to escape to inform Dr. Elizabeth Weir of Ford's plan. However, in order to do that, he had to inject a considerable amount of the Wraith enzyme to knock out two guards, for his escape. He went through withdrawal and managed to completely recover. Dr. Carson Beckett thought that his own stubbornness helped him through. He later found out where Lt. Colonel John Sheppard and the team were and took part in the Battle of Edowin, where two Hive ships destroyed each other.
He was test flying a newly repaired Jumper 6 after it was shot down on Olesia when one of its engines failed, causing it to crash into Lantea's ocean. While trying to find a way out of the sinking craft, he had a hallucination of Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter, who told Rodney to use whatever power left for survival, because Dr. Radek Zelenka and Lt. Colonel John Sheppard were working on a way to rescue him. However, McKay ignored "Carter's" advice and attempted a different means to get out of the ocean. The hallucinatory "Carter" tried to delay McKay by being one of his fantasies, which in the end, didn't work. McKay then used up most of the Jumper's remaining power trying to raise it out of the water. However, the weak distress signal he was transmitting attracted the attention of a Flagisallus McKay later names Sam. The fish was the reason Zelenka and Sheppard managed to find and rescue him.
McKay once cited Atlantis's chain of command, stating that in the event that Dr. Elizabeth Weir and Lt. Colonel John Sheppard are unavailable, McKay would be in charge. However, since Weir and Sheppard were taken over by the consciousnesses of Phoebus and Thalan, and trying to kill each other, Colonel Steven Caldwell stepped in, as it was a military operation. McKay regarded that with hostility and did not agree with some of Caldwell's action. Despite this, after the end of the crisis, he had said that he did a good job, though McKay never said it to him directly.
When the team got trapped on Taranis due to lava from a supervolcano swallowing the Stargate, McKay worked on fixing the Orion with Norina Pero, a Taranian scientist. McKay ultimately was unable to fix the sublight engines in time, but was able to use auxiliary power for the shields and hyperdrive long enough to make a jump into orbit.
After a Wraith named Michael Kenmore escaped aware of the Iratus bug retrovirus, a Hive ship proposed an alliance to use the retrovirus against rival Wraith, so they would turn human and become an alternate food source. McKay managed to have acquired vast amounts of Wraith technology to help against the war with the Wraith. After one of the first trials failed, McKay looked at the damage the hive sustained and agreed to stay there with Ronon Dex. However, by the time the Expedition realized they were double crossed, McKay and Ronon were taken prisoner. As the two hives went on its way to Earth, Ronon and McKay escaped and tried to overload several systems, resulting in the destruction of the ship. However, due to a previous nuclear strike from the Daedalus during the Battle of the Void, there were not enough remaining systems to overload. Instead, they disabled the Hive's jamming code and escaped to the Daedalus with Sheppard and Michael. The Daedalus managed to disable the hive, but lost life-support at the same time and McKay worked on fixing it until he came up with the plan of capturing the Hive ship for the good air that it contained. When the retrovirus turned the crew into humans, McKay was in the team that beamed over to help kill the unaffected Queen. After bringing the hive back to Atlantis, McKay worked on creating a manual control for the ship's systems, but only managed to create enough of one to fire the weapons at a stationary target on a planet's surface: the camp on M8G-352. When a second Hive ship showed up, McKay kept firing at the camp until the team and Beckett was forced to abandon ship in a Puddle Jumper before the hive was destroyed. They were later picked up by the Daedalus.
When SG-1 came to Atlantis to implement a plan by using a Stargate next to a Pegasus black hole to dial to the Supergate in the Milky Way, to prevent more Ori warships from getting through, McKay initially thought the plan would not work, since it is very unlikely to jump a wormhole from a regular Stargate to an even bigger one. However, he helped Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter with the calculations on board the Odyssey to calibrate a nuclear warhead to force the mater stream on an existing connection between Pegasus and a normal gate setup beside the Supergate, to jump to the Supergate. Through trial and error (using two warheads rather than one, and destroying a pursuing Wraith Hive ship, the mission was successful. Also, McKay informed Carter of the "help" she gave him while he was trapped in the back of the sinking Puddle Jumper and was forced to confess she was "partially" naked.
When the team was captured by a village of people who were culled due to the Wraith tracking Ronon to the planet while he was a Runner, McKay managed to escape to Atlantis and warn them, but was shot in the ass with an arrow. McKay ended up too doped up on morphine to answer questions, but Sheppard and Teyla eventually returned after Ronon convinced the villagers to let them go. McKay managed to track Ronon to Sateda using the new tracking device the Wraith implanted in his back and joined the rescue mission despite barley being able to sit, defending his relationship with Ronon to Beckett. Upon arrival at the planet, McKay stayed in the Jumper with Beckett and was annoyed by Ronon wanting to go after all twenty-five Wraith coming after him to draw out the Wraith Leader. McKay and Beckett ended up getting into an argument over a gun and who got to go and help the rest of the team and by the time they realized there was more than one gun and they both could go, the fight was over. When Ronon was about to be fed upon by the Wraith Leader, McKay, unable to take watching it anymore, flew the cloaked Jumper down in front of the two and decloaked it before having Beckett kill the Wraith with a drone weapon. McKay flew the team to safety and proudly admitted it was his plan to kill the Wraith like that, he quickly blamed Beckett when he learned Ronon threatened to kill anyone who killed that Wraith before he did. McKay got annoyed when Ronon hugged Beckett in thanks, but was mollified by Ronon thanking everyone. McKay then flew the Jumper back to the Daedalus.
McKay's problems of attempting to resurrect Project Arcturus, eventually caused him to seek the help of his sister, Jeannie Miller, a fellow scientist whose intelligence matches his, but lacks the worst of his most aggravating personal qualities. She first thought of a way to bridge two universes, which would cause a benefit for the succession of the project. This ultimately failed as the other universe was threatened to be wiped out from existence, and in order to shut it down, meant the depletion of their Zero Point Module. Also, the McKay from that universe showed up and interacted better with the team and Jeannie than the real McKay did which annoyed him. When McKay collapsed the bridge, he helped his alternate self return home. Although there is obvious friction in the relationship with Jeannie, McKay manages to reconcile his differences with her thanks to Sheppard showing her the message he recorded for her before the siege and helping McKay realize how bad of a brother he was being. McKay also learned that despite their differences, his team preferred him to his alternate self.
He, along with Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter had figured out a way to go back and forth to Earth and Atlantis without the use of a Zero Point Module and waiting three weeks while sitting in the Daedalus, by building the McKay/Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge. The first trial worked, but found an Ancient ship named the Tria with Ancients, who later took back the city and told the Expedition to leave. McKay was transferred back to Area 51 for an undisclosed amount of time, until he learned the Asurans took control of Atlantis. McKay worked with Dr. Carson Beckett, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard and Dr. Elizabeth Weir, as well as Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex to help take back control of the city. He was able to destroy all the Asurans by turning Atlantis' shield into an anti-Replicator field.
After the successful retaking of Atlantis, he complained that two of the three Zero Point Modules were taken away for use of the Antarctic outpost and the Odyssey to defend against the Ori crusade in the Milky Way. He later discovered that the Flagisallus, presumably the same one who gave away Rodney's position under the ocean, visited Atlantis. McKay took a look through the binoculars, and called him Sam, after Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter. However, at the same time people started to hallucinate several worried Ancient scientists. He eventually learned that the Flagisallus used this to warn them of an impending coronal mass ejection. McKay reluctantly used Sheppard's plan to use a ZPM to strengthen the Daedalus shield to deflect the ejection, which was successful.
He came across an Ascension lab, which had augmented his body to a point where he was eventually capable to ascend. He had developed several new-found powers including Telekinesis, Telepathy, Healing powers, improved hearing, and increased intelligence. However, the mind altering was geared towards enabling ascension, and if he didn't figure a way to reverse the process, or ascend, he would die. McKay used Lt. Colonel John Sheppard's help to meditate, since he spent time with the People of the Cloister. When he found he couldn't stop his racing thoughts for long enough, he decided to better use his time working out a new form of advanced mathematics, improving the Daedalus shields and even plans on having a hyperdrive engine on a Puddle Jumper, which came in handy later on. McKay later found out that upon ascension, he could choose to unascend. However, upon further meditation, he found he still couldn't reach the required state for a human to ascend, and suffered a near fatal seizure. He eventually figured out a way to save himself through using his telepathy to tell Beckett how to reverse the effects of the device.
He managed to find time to see more of Dr. Katie Brown since their prior encounter with Lt. Laura Cadman. He also discovered that the civilization of M4D-058 was a real-life representation of an Ancient "computer game" McKay played in competition with Lt. Colonel John Sheppard. He also learned that the conflicts between Hallona and Geldar were real-life too. However, McKay found a way to fool them all and thereby avert a war.
McKay was deeply affected by the death of Dr. Carson Beckett, who was killed in an explosion. He felt somewhat responsible when he lied to avoid going fishing with Beckett. When he was hallucinating Beckett, Rodney told him that he considered him a best friend. McKay was one of his pallbearers and was the one to tell Beckett's mother that her son had died.
Following the team's success in stopping the Asuran attempts to take the city. The Asurans started building a fleet of warships to attack Earth. Colonel Abraham Ellis of the Apollo tasked McKay with finishing the Horizon weapons system, intending to wipe out the Asurans in a preemptive strike. After the delivery proved a success, the Asurans retaliated by sending a Stargate satellite to destroy Atlantis. McKay submerged the city, but that only bought them a little time. In the end, he and Lt. Colonel John Sheppard worked together to ensure that the city would take off to escape to another planet. However, within minutes of entering hyperspace, the stardrive shut down. The expedition had only 24 hours before power failed and the occupants of the city would be exposed to space. While working to patch up damaged power conduits, McKay collapsed the city's shield to cover only the central tower to conserve power. He also participated in an operation where they cleared a path for Atlantis while crossing an asteroid belt, and reactivated the nanites in Dr. Elizabeth Weir to save her life, against Sheppard's wishes. When it was discovered that power levels had dropped below the requirements to jump, he worked on finalizing modifications to a Puddle Jumper with a hyperdrive, and the team took Weir along to recover a Zero Point Module on Asuras to restore Atlantis's power. The mission was a success, but at the cost of Weir, who assisted in implementing a Wraith attack code in the Asuran central data core.
While exploring a planet McKay believed could house some technology, they inadvertently brought back an entity which infected its hosts with nightmares until it was capable of killing the hosts in their sleep. After killing Dr. Kate Heightmeyer, the entity finds its way into McKay. He suffered a nightmare where a giant white sperm whale (reminiscent of Moby Dick, which had terrified McKay as a child) was after him while rowing back to Atlantis. Fortunately, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, using a virtual reality pod, saved him, only to have the entity passed on to Sheppard. McKay was able to get into Sheppard's mind and help defeat the entity.
The expedition later fell victim to a mutated strain of Kirsan fever, causing them to lose their memories until they died. McKay attempted to work on altering the air conditioning system to spread the sap of the Enchuri plant. Unfortunately, McKay started losing his memories also. Fortunately, though Teyla Emmagan's help he was able to finalize the program.
Towards the end of the year, his sister Jean Miller was kidnapped by Henry Wallace, to perfect nanite coding. His efforts to rescue her resulted in his capture as well. Due to McKay's attempt to escape, Wallace had Jeannie injected with nanites. McKay and Jeannie were rescued by Lt. Colonel John Sheppard and McKay had to shut down the nanites in Jeannie's body before they cured her epilepsy, which would have killed her in the process. He enlisted the help of Todd to shut them down. When Todd collapsed from hunger, McKay, with virtually no hesitation, offered to be fed upon to give Todd the strength to save his sister. Sheppard, however, managed to find another solution.
After learning that there are over thirty Asuran ships in Pegasus, he and Todd continued working on recalling the Asurans back into their homeworld, without success. Even after Daedalus and Apollo were retrofitted with Asgard plasma beam weapons, he asked for a few hours to finish. However, it took him another week, and seven destroyed Asuran ships until he could finally admit that progress halted. He later had another idea; since all the Asuran ships were recalled to their homeworld to gather strength, he planned to construct a Replicator block capable of attracting all the nanites to a massive dense blob. He eventually constructed FRAN (Friendly Replicator Android) to send down to the planet, attract all the nanites and hopefully, they would overload the Zero Point Modules to destroy it. During the Battle of Asuras, McKay beamed down to the planet to overload the ZPMs while FRAN did her work. However, the mass destroyed the planet's power grid. In response, he dialed up the attraction, sinking the mass into the core, which caused the entire planet to be destroyed. After the events, he gladly deleted the planet from their database.
He planned to marry Dr. Katie Brown, since they had been together for two years. However, just as he was about to propose, the city went into a Quarantine lockdown, since the tweaking from the events of the Kirsan fever the year before. Later, he realized that he still wasn't ready after Katie found out about his plans. She misconstrued this as a means of breaking up with her, and was transferred at her request back to Earth.
Several weeks later, he, Colonel Samantha Carter and Dr. Jennifer Keller went to M5V-801 to talk some locals into moving out of their settlement, which was prone to several tremors daily, and had unclean air. However, en route, they fell into a Genii mining facility. Knowing they were trapped, he and the other two made several attempts to escape, though in the process, their combined weights seriously compromised the structural integrity of the building. Eventually, they managed to escape by roping down to a tunnel leading out of the mine, with moments to spare before the facility fell into the bottom of a deep underground pit. Afterwards, Keller asked him to get a drink though he didn't pick up on her meaning until she pointed it out to him.
After Teyla Emmagan was kidnapped by Michael Kenmore, he and his team worked hard in trying to find her. This included unwittingly rescuing Dr. Carson Beckett, who turned out to be a clone. He was with cloned Beckett until his cells deteriorated and had to be put into stasis until a cure was found for it. He often talked to him about events that had happened, in secret. Eventually, Teyla was rescued, and McKay was responsible for delivering her baby, albeit very reluctantly.
When an alternate reality version of the Daedalus mysteriously appeared in orbit over M35-117, McKay and the team investigated. After the ship transported itself to an alternate reality, McKay found the source, as well as an alternate version of their team, dead. He also noticed that another version of himself designed the alternate reality drive. He was eventually able to return the ship to their own reality by reversing the drive. He also brought back sublight engines to aid in winning a fight against an alien ship (that and a fleet of F-302 fighter-interceptors from the alternate Atlantis). Eventually, he and the team return to their own reality, where McKay began to work on ironing out the bugs and make his own alternate reality drive, though Lt. Colonel John Sheppard does not wish that to happen. He was later allowed to hold Torren John Emmagan, despite an earlier incident where he was injured during their last encounter.
During a mission on M44-5Y9, he was infected with an ailment known as Second Childhood, a disease that was quick at reverting McKay into a childlike state. He decided to do a recording every day, to see how things would progress. He started with his name, his position, where he was and reciting pi to 12 decimal places. On the first day, he was able to do so. However, by day 6, he started to forget everything. By day 10, he could only remember his name and barely remember Atlantis. By day 15, he began referring to himself as "mister" Rodney McKay. By day 18, he couldn't remember anything. At this point, he only had a few days left until death. Ronon Dex came up with a solution; the Shrine of Talus. However, Dr. Jennifer Keller was able to cure him, since the radiation emanating from the shrine had shrunk the parasite enough to be removed. His affection for Dr. Keller was also revealed during this time.
However, he learned that he needed to fight for Dr. Jennifer Keller's affection, when he found out Ronon Dex also wished to be with her. When he assisted Keller in vaccinating the people of M33-985, Keller was abducted by Kiryk. McKay assisted Ronon in finding her, and helped work out a way to escape, namely by repairing the damaged Transporter wrist device, which Kiryk used to buy the others time to escape the planet from a Wraith army. After the events, McKay and Ronon decided that instead of fighting for Keller's affection, they should let her decide.
When Dr. Daniel Jackson came to Atlantis, McKay reluctantly helped in finding Janus's secret lab. However, while researching the lab, an Ancient device activated, alerting the Vanir, a group of rogue Asgard to their location. They kidnapped McKay and Jackson, and forced them to activate the Attero device, a device capable of destroying Wraith ships entering hyperspace, but also destroyed active Stargates. They eventually managed to stun their captors and manually deactivate the device. They were later retrieved by the Atlantis expedition.
After Dr. Jennifer Keller told Ronon Dex she was interested in someone else, McKay started getting close to her, and eventually asked her to join him on Earth to attend a scientific presentation hosted by his nemesis, Malcolm Tunney. It was later revealed that Tunney had indirectly stolen Jeannie Miller's research on matter bridges through alternate realities, and use it to channel heat through to another Universe, thus solving global warming. However, while testing the bridge, it refused to close, causing the Kramer Innovations building, which was protected by a shield, to freeze, with everyone inside. While McKay and the other scientists tried to work out a solution, Keller attempted to call Stargate Command. However, she became trapped. After McKay was able to shut down the bridge, he ran to Keller's rescue, and revived her. Keller confessed her feeling towards him, and they have since started a romantic relationship together.
When Todd alerted Atlantis that the Wraith constructed a Super-hive, McKay and the team attempted to stop it before it became fully powered. However, the ship already proved to be too powerful, and disabled the Puddle Jumper and the Daedalus. While Lt. Colonel John Sheppard went to Earth to stop the ship when it arrived in the Solar system, McKay stayed in Atlantis, which flew to the outskirts of the Milky Way. When they attempted to dial Earth, they connected to the Stargate in the ship, which superseded Earth's Gate, McKay and a team went on board to destroy the ship. However, he witnessed Ronon Dex die (though he was later brought back to life). After he stopped Sheppard from detonating a nuclear warhead from his F-302 fighter-interceptor inside the ship. They later gated to the Alpha Site to remote detonate the weapon, which succeeded. He later returned to Atlantis, which by then, landed on the Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco.
After Atlantis returned to the Pegasus Galaxy, McKay was later captured during a raid by some Wraith who belonged to Queen Death and in the process, was converted into a Wraith by the use of a retrovirus. The retrovirus ultimately caused McKay to lose any memories of his past and had him believing that his true name was "Quicksilver" along with the assumption that he had always loyally served Death.
As a Wraith, McKay was able to penetrate Atlantis's computer system and disable the gate shield, allowing a Wraith strike team to steal the city's only remaining ZPM. However, with the subtle prompting of one of Guide's own clevermen, Quicksilver began to realize the lies in his background, eventually testing his theory that he was McKay by leaving an encoded message in his next cyber-attack on Atlantis with the name of the world where the Hive would feed next, reasoning that if he wasn't McKay his actions would never be spotted and if he was McKay he would gain a vital clue to the truth.
Although this resulted in John Sheppard being briefly captured by another Hive, McKay/Quicksilver was eventualy rescued in an assault on Queen Death's ship, departing in an escape pod with Keller and Ronon when the hive was set to self-destruct. After travelling to the planet's Stargate, McKay was returned to Atlantis, and began a complex 'treatment' of gene therapy and surgery to return him to some degree of humanity.
Eventually, Queen Death was defeated for good and Rodney was restored to normal although he was left with white hair and some telepathic abilities.
In 2010, McKay helped resolve the remaining issues with dialing the Destiny Stargate from another planet in the Milky Way. He was present on Langara when the plan to take the facility from the Langarans by force failed, as they surrounded the facility. He mentioned that he never actually thought about joining Destiny's crew. The mission failed and McKay was forced to abort the dialing sequence before it was completed, but all of the data during the dialing process until that point indicated that he was completely correct in his calculations and did indeed find a solution to safely dial Destiny.
