American actor (1914–2001), star of My Favorite Martian, who played Boothby, the wise groundskeeper of Starfleet Academy, in The Next Generation and Voyager.
Ray Walston was an American actor, born in 1914. He won a Tony Award for Damn Yankees, became a household name in My Favorite Martian and late in life won two Emmys for Picket Fences.
In The Next Generation episode The First Duty (1992) he plays Boothby, the Academy gardener whose advice once set a young Jean-Luc Picard straight and who now helps Picard understand what is troubling Wesley Crusher's squadron.
Walston returned in two Voyager episodes, though never as the real man: in In the Flesh (1998) a member of Species 8472 has taken Boothby's form in a re-creation of Starfleet Headquarters, and in The Fight (1999) he is a figure in Chakotay's visions. He died in 2001.