Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Lt. Barclay
1. He Was Almost Voyager's Doctor
Reg Barclay would eventually play an integral role in bringing the Voyager crew back to the Alpha Quadrant, but he almost had an even larger role in the Star Trek spin-off. When Voyager was in development, an outline suggested that the show's holographic doctor could actually be based on Reg Barclay, and could be played by Dwight Schultz.
In this version of Voyager, Barclay would have left the Enterprise in TNG season 7 to complete work on the Emergency Medical Hologram program. Sadly, Barclay never got his proper send-off in TNG's final season. It's unclear if this was due to actor availability or just the absence of a solid story with which to say goodbye to him. In the end, they decided to create a completely new character for Voyager, however, Barclay would eventually have links to the EMH. A Barclay hologram was a built-in failsafe for the Doctor in the episode "Projections", and the real Barclay requested the EMH's help later in the series.
In the episode Life Line, Barclay teams up with Voyager's Doctor to cure the EMH's creator Lewis Zimmerman of a terminal illness. Barclay's fraught friendship with Zimmerman is further built upon in Star Trek's expanded media, which suggests that he tested the EMH's social skills. Given Barclay's reclusive nature, it's hardly surprising that the bedside manner of Voyager's Doctor left a lot to be desired.