An anxious engineer who finds comfort on the holodeck.
Reginald Barclay is the nervous, awkward Starfleet engineer who first appears on the Enterprise-D in The Next Generation. Played by Dwight Schultz, he begins as a shy officer who retreats into elaborate holodeck fantasies and struggles to speak up around his colleagues.
His journey is one of the franchise's most affecting tales of growth. With Picard, Troi and Geordi La Forge offering patient support, Barclay gains confidence and eventually proves invaluable during a crisis. Later he is assigned to the Pathfinder project, where his determination to find a way to contact the lost starship Voyager leads to real contact across the vast distance, and he becomes a hero to the crew far from home.
Barclay is beloved because he is relatable. His anxieties, his ingenuity and his small triumphs show that courage does not always look like a captain's chair.