The Enterprise-D's specialist in twentieth-century history, who joins Picard in the Dixon Hill holodeck programme in The Big Goodbye and is shot when the safeguards fail.
Whalen is a member of the Enterprise-D crew and the ship's authority on Earth's twentieth century. In the first-season episode The Big Goodbye, Picard invites him, along with Data and Doctor Crusher, to share the newly installed Dixon Hill detective programme set in 1941 San Francisco.
A scan by the Jarada damages the holodeck while they are inside, removing its safety limits and sealing the doors. When the gangster Felix Leech opens fire, Whalen is hit, and the crew realise with a shock that the bullet wound is real.
Crusher keeps him alive in Hill's office while Picard stalls Cyrus Redblock. Once Wesley and La Forge get the doors open, Whalen is taken to sickbay.