American actor (1923–2012) who played the shattered Commodore Matt Decker in The Doomsday Machine, and was otherwise known for My World and Welcome to It and Murder, She Wrote.
William Windom was an American actor, born in 1923, with a long career on stage and television. He won an Emmy for the comedy series My World and Welcome to It and later played Dr. Seth Hazlitt in Murder, She Wrote.
In Star Trek he guest stars in the second-season episode The Doomsday Machine (1967) as Commodore Matt Decker, commander of the USS Constellation. Decker has lost his entire crew to an automated planet killer and is found alone aboard his wrecked ship. Consumed by guilt, he takes over the Enterprise in a reckless attack and finally flies a shuttlecraft into the machine's maw.
Windom's portrait of a broken commander is widely counted among the finest guest performances of the series. He died in 2012.