REG BARCLAY AND ROMANCE |
REG BARCLAY AND ROMANCE |
Reginald Barclay is an unattached bachelor. Throughout almost all his career he has struggled to deal with a lack of self-confidence, shyness and feeling awkward in social situations. When he arrives aboard Captain Jean-Luc Picard's command, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, Barclay has no friends. La Forge discusses him with Guinan (she serves drinks in Ten Forward):
Guinan: "Yes, I know him. He comes in. He stands at the bar. He doesn't say much. He orders a warm milk. ... He doesn't talk much."
La Forge: "Does he have any friends?"
Guinan: "Not that I've seen."
La Forge: "...Barclay, well, he's always late, the man's nervous, nobody wants to be around this guy."
Guinan: "If I felt that nobody wanted to be around me, I'd probably be late and nervous too."
 hologram Deanna Troi finds Barclay irresistible
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Barclay's diffidence in social situations includes a shyness towards women. However, as seen in [TNG: Hollow Pursuits], stardate 43807.4, in his fantasies, which he plays out on the holodeck, Barclay is a confident and dashing action hero who is well-liked and attractive to Deanna Troi. In one of his programs he seduces a hologram of her and then he activates Barclay program 15 in which her hologram is cast as an erotic Goddess of Empathy. With the real Deanna Troi, however, when La Forge orders him to visit her for a counselling session, Barclay is more than unusually nervous. |  above and below: hologram Deanna Troi as the Goddess of Empathy  |
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When Deanna Troi discovers her manifestation as the Goddess of Empathy she is horrified, though Riker and La Forge are amused. Troi tells the Goddess of Empathy to "muzzle it". |  |
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When Troi, Riker and La Forge fetch Barclay out of the holodeck she makes it plain that he and she will discuss the matter of the Goddess of Empathy! Fortunately, the incident does not mar what becomes a close friendship between Barclay and Troi, even though it is largely based on the roles of patient and counsellor/therapist. |
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In 2367, stardate 44704.2, in [TNG: The Nth Degree], Barclay's intelligence and thereby his self-confidence are artificially boosted by the alien race called the Cytherians. He confides to La Forge: "I've finally become the person I always wanted to be." He has the courage to ask Deanna Troi for a date but she declines.* |
In 2376, immediately after his success at the Pathfinder lab in establishing first contact with USS Voyager, as depicted in [#130 Pathfinder], Barclay dates Hope who is the sister-in-law of his immediate superior at Project Pathfinder, Commander Pete Harkins. She loves cats, which is fortunate because Barclay owns a white cat called Neelix and named after the Neelix aboard USS Voyager. Barclay admits to Deanna Troi about Harkins: "Well, not everyone would want his sister-in-law to date someone with my history."
By 2377, as described in [#152 Inside Man], Barclay is romantically involved with Leosa whom he believes is a teacher. In her he finds a good listener and talks to her for hours about his work which, at the time, is the creation of a hologram of himself to send to USS Voyager. However, one day she vanishes and when he goes to her apartment there is nothing there! After two apparently failed attempts to transmit the Barclay hologram to Voyager in one of the monthy datastreams, Admiral Paris, head of Project Pathfinder, decides to revert to sending ordinary datastreams. But Barclay probes for the reason why the Barclay hologram failed to arrive and his persistence makes Harkins order him to go on leave. Instead of letting the matter (and himself) rest as ordered, he visits Deanna Troi. She encourages him to investigate a possibly related mystery - that of Leosa's sudden abandonment of him and subsequent disappearance, for she senses some guilt on Barclay's part that Leosa and his talking about his work are connected. When Starfleet track down Leosa, Deanna Troi manages to elicit an admission that she worked with three Ferengi called Nunk, Gegis and Yeggie, and deliberately cultivated Barclay in order to learn about the hologram. In reality Leosa is a dabo girl who works for Nunk. While being interrogated by Admiral Paris, Leosa cruelly says that she left Barclay because he was boring. Shortly afterwards she cruelly tells the wounded and betrayed Barclay that not everything between them was a lie - just the part where she pretended affection for him. When Barclay asks her what a broken heart is worth these days, she replies that she will gain a percentage of the profits from the (Borg) nanoprobes.
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| Leosa - pretty, deceitful, conniving, cruel and mercenary | |
At that moment Starfleet believe only that the Ferengi stole the hologram. In reality, Nunk reprogrammed the Barclay hologram to persuade Voyager's crew to enter a lethal geodesic fold which the three Ferengi, aboard their ship, will open. Voyager's crew believe the geodesic fold is the gateway back to the Alpha Quadrant, whereas in fact the lethal geodesic radiation will kill the crew, and allow the Ferengi to capture Seven of Nine's dead body and the valuable Borg nanoprobes it contains. Thanks to the hint about the nanoprobes unintentionally given by Leosa, Barclay deduces the Ferengi's entire plan, nanoprobes and all, and realises that Voyager is in deadly danger. Unable to warn Voyager, Barclay masquerades as his hologram and persuades the Ferengi to close the geodesic fold. Afterwards, when Riker joins Troi on holiday, they arrange a get-together and invite a lady whom Troi feels sure Barclay will like - a teacher, a real one.
No indication of romantic involvement for Barclay is seen in the next stories to feature him, namely [#166 Author, Author] and [#171 and #172 Endgame]. This does not mean that Barclay lacks a love life, but it is assumed that he remains a bachelor. However, his increasing self-confidence, his successful Starfleet career and the valuable possession of good friends, means that even when not dating he no longer feels emotionally handicapped.
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