MAY 13, 2021 - Star Trek: The Next Generation guest star Norman Lloyd, who played Captain Picard’s mentor Professor Galen in the sixth-season episode “The Chase,” has died. Lloyd, whose career spanned over eight decades and brought him alongside Hollywood legends like Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, was 106 years old when he passed away Tuesday in Los Angeles, as confirmed by his son Michael to the Associated Press.

Lloyd’s TNG guest role as famed Federation archeologist Galen was brief but memorable, giving insight into Jean-Luc Picard and his time at Starfleet Academy. In the reference book Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, episode director Jonathan Frakes said of Lloyd, “He was a wonderful storyteller and a brilliant actor. We were so lucky to have this guy on our show.”

Lloyd had a long and fascinating career, detailed in a retrospective by the British newspaper The Guardian. Beginning in the theater at age 17, Lloyd was a charter member of Orson Welles’ famed Mercury Theatre group in the 1930s. His on-screen career began on television in 1939, and three years later he began a long friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, playing a villain in the classic Hitchcock film, Saboteur. His promising career was sidelined during the famous McCarthy Hollywood witch hunts, after which Hitchcock helped him find work as a producer and director. Lloyd’s acting career was revived in the 1970s, and in 1982 he returned to television for what is probably his best-known role, Dr. Auschlander on the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, which ran for six years. Afterwards his acting career took him to big-screen roles in films like Dead Poet’s Society, and guest-starring roles in shows such as Star Trek and Murder, She Wrote. His most recent appearance, at the age of 101, was in the 2015 comedy Trainwreck.

Please join us at Daily Star Trek News in offering condolences to Norman Lloyd’s family.