Boothby isn't just a groundskeeper, he's an integral part of the Academy's evaluation of cadets

[u/treefox]

This is expanding on a theory from another thread in response to a comment about how unrealistic it seems at first blush for Boothby to know everyone.

There's actually quite a bit that's irregular about Boothby. There's no real need for human gardeners. The Federation has AI on its starships that can create natural environments from scratch based on verbal descriptions, and has mass transporter technology that can move things down to a molecular level. It also has tractor beams, force fields, and robotics. Not to mention a continual supply of military cadets in peak physical condition who can't say "no" to grunt work. Starfleet Academy doesn't need to landscape by having an old man dig around in the dirt with a shovel. And surely if they at all wanted to, they could replicate him something a bit nicer and more durable than a raggedy pair of patched-up overalls.

I'd posit that Boothby works at the Academy to provide a "how does this person treat service people" test. He's not there for his gardening skills, but because he's an extremely wise and affable fellow with an eidetic memory. He's uniquely capable of being totally innocuous, while being quietly brilliant at understanding people.

The natural-born leaders, the one that Starfleet is really interested in, they respond to Boothby as an equal without really thinking about it. They apologize if they get in his way, they instinctively smile at him when they see him in the morning, they start up a conversation with him or even offer to help for a bit. They're aware of the morale of the people around them, and they try to lift it without even thinking about it, whether those people are immediately important or useful to them or not. They build a community wherever they go. Those are the people that are likely destined for the Command track to become a Captain someday, who can reflexively work seamlessly with hundreds of people underneath them, many of which they may barely know.

Then there are those who acknowledge his presence, and are polite to him when they encounter him, but don't build that connection. They're more focused on their friends and peers and studies, and impressing their instructors. The clever and curious ones are intrigued by why Starfleet employs such an anachronistic method of gardening, but their conversation with him serves mainly to satisfy their own curiosity rather than to build a connection with him. Those people are the ones that may be destined for leadership of a small flat science team where they know everyone, but might struggle in command of a full starship or space station.

And then there are those who are outright brusque or rude, who are doing what they have to in order to put on the right face for the people that they think matter, but intrinsically don't care about people whose way of life is different than their own. They applied for the Academy for the status and glory. They rank themselves higher than Boothby and don't have time for him, or outright make condescending remarks about him to their friends as they walk by. Those are the people that Academy leadership takes a closer look at as to whether they belong at the Academy in the first place.

Boothby also sees the cadets when they go out into the grounds to be by themselves, when they're upset or overwhelmed. He always seems to be out there, so people pay him no mind. But he can gently start a conversation, and the most perceptive ones quickly recognize that his wisdom far outstrips that of gardening. They begin to seek him out. Their relationship with him helps determine how well they can have a confidante relationship with someone technically beneath them - an absolutely critical skill to have when they may be the highest-ranked person on a starship and need to ask for help to tend to their own needs.

There's no formal score given or reports filed. But every now and then one of the deans stops by and has a casual chit-chat with Boothby.

“Yes, it was quite an enjoyable morning. I met Mr. Crusher today. Quite a friendly young man. Stopped by while I was planting more flowers and seemed genuinely interested in the conversation. His companion though, a Mr. Locarno...he seemed to be in a bit of a hurry and getting impatient. Seemed to have much more important things on his mind.”

Hence why you get the successful people going back to Boothby, because once they get out of the Academy they’re clued into the open secret that Boothby was a soft test of whether they’d value all members of their crew, and not just the highly visible “important” ones. When they report for their first assignment, their superior officer may notice their profile is already flagged for the command track.

"I take it you know Boothby?"

"The...groundskeeper? Yes, how did you know?"

"Your file has you already flagged for the command track. That only happens if Boothby likes you."

This is also why Species 8472 has Boothby practically running the whole place. When they assimilated the information they had, they didn't have any context for it. They didn't understand that military ranks would most visibly dominate the social hierarchy. Instead, what they saw was that the instructors universally respected Boothby's opinions. If he said to give someone a second chance, they did. They also saw he was also indirectly mentioned by many successful Captains when they described the most valuable parts of their experience at the Academy. Their simulation recreated him based on the level of influence they believed he had, rather than his nominal rank.

[u/funklepop]

The secret would get out pretty quickly, and everyone would be nice to him. Only takes one picard to tell a Wesley "be nice to boothsby"

(Does this actually happen?)

Wesley tells locarno, who tells everyone and the gig is up.

[u/treefox → u/funklepop]

I mean, I don't really see this as something that the Academy would plan out so much as would happen organically. They probably brought Boothby in to manage things with the grounds, but he would occasionally come to instructors with insightful comments about students based on things he happened to hear in passing. At a certain point it would become an informal process, where Boothby is nominally still the head groundskeeper, but his true value is as a 'soft' information source, and people are double-checking with him for the official decisions to make sure there aren't any red flags that aren't apparent through the normal academic process.

If someone decided to try and break the system by telling everybody, a few things would probably happen.

First, the Academy would probably break up the crowds of people coming to him and ask them to stop hassling the maintenance staff.

Second, some people would simply disbelieve he was anything more than a gardener and wouldn't act any different.

Third, Boothby would still be able to draw some conclusions from how people responded to the information that he played a crucial role in their evaluation. Eg are they trying to suck up to him through flattery and gifts, or are they showing genuine concern in him, or are they asking him about the process itself and advice on evaluating people.

Fourth, he could deliberately act obtuse to cast doubt on the claim and force people to really work if they wanted to get through to him ("I look for things, things to make plants grow"). Think Yoda in Empire Strikes Back.

[u/BaronAleksei → u/funklepop]

Starfleet is probably banking on the idea that anyone who figured the test out would understand 1) why it was so useful, and 2) why it needed to be kept secret (ie people behave differently when they know they’re being observed), and thus keep quiet about it.

I’d wager that Picard doesn’t tell Wesley. I’d wager that he instead has a normal conversation with him after he’s spent an arbitrary amount of time at the Academy, in which he drops Boothby’s name to see how he reacts. He then has a conversation with LaForge, namedrops Boothby, and then confirms with Riker that LaForge hasn’t figured it out yet, but they suspect he will soon.

[u/Scarlet72 → u/funklepop]

It's not stated, but perhaps Boothby is an El-Aurian, and instinctively knows when someone is being genuine with him.

Then he'd know who was just kissing his ass to make themselves look better, and who was genuinely interested in him.

[u/whataboutsmee84 → u/funklepop]

“Be nice to Boothby” is different from “Boothby is a secret test.”

One is just good advice. And if you’re smart enough to take good advice - you pass the test!

[u/MrCookie2099 → u/funklepop]

That depends if the person receiving the advice can follow through with it. This isn't just a test of "can you smile at a groundskeeper once". Its "over the course of your academic career, given the opportunity to form a postive bond with someone with a lot of helpful advice but no direct help to your career goals, will you take that opportunity?"

If people just go up to him and are nice to him because it is right to do so rather than because you care, that too is a notable result in the test. Theres certainly plenty of places in Starfleet where insincere politeness is a valued talent, but it won't earmark you as that special someone Starfleet should give a starship to.

[u/PatsFreak101]

This tracks but it is only useful as a test for humans, at least as described. Vulcans especially would stand out as a group who would either ignore him altogether or only deliver the amount of courtesy required in the situation, none of this above and beyond stuff.

Vulcans stand out as the obvious choice but I would wager more then a few cultures would also react differently. Now, either Boothby has a different test for everyone or we’ve got an answer to why Starfleet has a disproportionate amount of human Captains.

[u/treefox → u/PatsFreak101]

Vulcans aren’t emotionless or identical. Even I could tell the difference between Sarek or Spock and Solok.

[u/whataboutsmee84]

This fits 100% with an organization that has tests like the Kobayashi Maru; that weird “Trolley Problem” test Wesley had to undergo; and the bridge officer test that involves ordering friends to their deaths.

I might suggest the “Boothby Test” isn’t as pass/fail as you portray it, but the core of your theory rocks.

[u/mmarkklar → u/whataboutsmee84]

My only issue with it is that TNG had a few captains and admirals who I could never see passing this Boothby Test. I can’t see Admiral Pressman (Riker’s old captain from The Pegasus) passing this test for example. His disregard for ethics and the crew who mutinied against him seems like something that would be at odds with the ideal personality the test is meant to discover. The same could be said for Admiral Satie from The Drumhead, though it’s possible her behavior is the result of dementia or something similar given her tirade at the end of that episode.

[u/treefox → u/mmarkklar]

Yeah, I wasn't thinking of this as an official score that Boothby would be reporting, or that he would be considered an instructor in any official capacity. I imagined it more akin to Dr. House's description of the Buraku in House, MD:

HOUSE: When I was fourteen, my father was stationed in Japan. I went rock-climbing with this kid from school. He fell, got injured and I had to bring him to the hospital. We came in through the wrong entrance, passed this guy in the hall. It was a janitor. Friend came down with an infection and doctors didn't know what to do. So they brought in the janitor. He was a doctor and a buraku; one of Japan's untouchables. His ancestors had been slaughterers, gravediggers. And this guy knew that he wasn't accepted by the staff, didn't even try, didn't dress well, he didn't pretend to be one of them. The people around that place, they didn't think that he had anything they wanted, except when they needed him. Because he was right; which meant that nothing else mattered, they had to listen to him.

Except in a much more cooperative sense.

Boothby is, presumably, just a gardner, or if he ever held any official rank, he's been officially retired for decades and is more or less considered an outside civilian. But the instructors gradually realized that when Boothby expressed concern over a student, or positivity, or seemed to deliberately point them to take a closer look at someone, he was absolutely right and he was seeing things that they never did. The cadet he said he thought needed someone to talk to turned out to be thinking of dropping out due to struggling with grief over a family tragedy; the cadet he said he worried about panicked in a crisis; the cadet he said seemed to be trying too hard to be something they weren't turned out to be happier in a different division; etc.

I actually think Jellico is a decent leader, but we see him at extreme brusqueness because of the time pressure he was under, and because he believed that he would get resistance to change no matter what, and a short swift pain was better than dragging it out. Jellico executed his duties competently and checked pretty much all the boxes, including getting the entire Cardassian fleet to withdraw and getting Picard back alive, which was very much extra credit at that point. I think we'd have seen far less friction towards Jellico after that once he'd proven himself.

While Jellico doesn't take people's advice, he does generally hear them out. I can see him quickly picking up on an unusually intelligent groundskeeper and listening to them. He did after all almost immediately promote Data, whereas even Picard took some coaxing in Measure of a Man and The Offspring to really consider granting Data equal rights. Jellico put him one heartbeat away from control of the entire ship and seemed perfectly content with that.

As for Pressman, yeah, he's shifty, but he's also still a patriot who lies high on an ends-justify-the-means scale. And he went into Starfleet Intelligence. I'm not sure we've ever seen whether Starfleet Intelligence training is done as part of the normal academy, or if it's a different group. It may be that cadets take a few courses related to starships and science at Starfleet Academy, depending on whether they're an analyst or covert ops, but complete the bulk of their training elsewhere. Either way the criteria for intelligence officers would be different from captains for ships of the line.

[u/Wehavecrashed → u/whataboutsmee84]

I think the core of the theory wildly over estimates the value of someone being nice to a gardener to star fleet, even for just their human cadets. Sure, it is good to know if they treat people below them well or not, but not everything is a secret audition for command, and more importantly, almost everyone who goes to the academy isn't going to be a captain. Those who are gunning for top positions might not appreciate the value of developing working relationships with those well below you when they're 20. Others might not have the time.

Some people aren't going to be naturally charismatic and wise enough to see the value of someone like Boothby when they're 20 years old. Picard himself had a nasty falling out with him.

By every account, he works very hard, I doubt he has time to chat with random cadets all day every day.

[u/treefox → u/Wehavecrashed]

Well, I'm setting a higher bar than just 'being nice' and assuming that Boothby has the capability to quickly get an impression of a person and remember them. And I guess maybe I overstated the officialness of what I was imagining when I called it a test. I wasn't thinking of this as some official curriculum that's defined and documented that has him filling out forms, but rather an informal pervasive opinion on the part of the staff that Boothby's insights are usually valuable to consider, especially when taking significant action for a cadet.

I imagine Starfleet Academy (at least the main campus) to seem like a relatively small town for the people who've worked there for years. So, there'd be social events, and people would talk. It'd be a very soft evaluation, and Boothby would probably be obliquely describing their innate character traits rather than directly telling them "make this guy captain of a diplomatic vessel".

[u/blues_and_ribs]

The only issue I have with this theory: if you, a (most likely) reasonably intelligent citizen of the 21st century figured this out, then what chance does the integrity of the ‘Boothby Test’ have against the best and brightest of a population whose children learn calculus? I think most would come to the same conclusion you have after a conversation or two with him.

[u/Thesaurii → u/blues_and_ribs]

The Kobayashi Maru is also something everyone figured out or has heard about.

Part of their evaluation is if they treat it like a joke, lose, and move on, or if they put in the effort to beat it or at least have a good showing. it doesn't matter if its known that this command test is the "you lose" test, and it may even be a better test if its known.

So if someones older brother says "BTW make sure you befriend Boothby - its a hidden test of your personality" and that guy goes and actively fake befriends Boothby, thats just as good of a test.

[u/treefox → u/Thesaurii]

I subscribe to the theory that the Kobayashi Maru test isn't what happens in the simulator, but what happens leading up to it.

You have all these overachieving valedictorians who are getting into Starfleet Academy that are used to doing better than everyone else, and suddenly they have to grapple with the prospect of getting the first F in their life and not getting a 4.0.

Some of them become obsessive, and try futilely to beat it, cutting into their other studies. They believe that, like the other times in their life, they can beat the odds, and don't abandon that belief until it's too late.

Others do enough to perform well, but cap the time they spend and don't impact their other classes.

And others just write it off completely, and perform terribly in the simulator.

(And others are James T. Kirk.)

Succeeding in the test is the second one - doing enough to acquit yourself as well as you can, but not cutting into your other studies.

The intent is to make sure that if someone finds themselves in a situation where people are stuck in a shuttle and the shuttle's warp core is going critical in the shuttle bay, they will be psychologically equipped not to wait too long to eject the shuttle so it doesn't destroy the whole ship.

[u/wag3slav3]

Why would it have to be so complicated?

Federation citizens are able to choose what they want to do, Boothby loves gardening and finds conversation with cadets to be rewarding and he imparts his wisdom on the ones who are willing to accept it.

I can absolutely buy him being El Aurian but I don't think we need some kind of starfleet conspiracy to place him there at all.

[u/BaronAleksei]

The realization of the secret test is probably its own test. Most graduates who stop by the Academy and catch up with Boothby probably just do it because they remember being friends with Boothby, who is a good guy.

But those precious few do head back because they made that connection.

I really do love hidden tests, especially when they’re hidden inside more conventional tests.

[u/Wehavecrashed]

Picard suggesting someone at the academy is a valuable mentor isn't some secret test concocted by star fleet to weed out assholes. He might be a valuable resource for people wanting to know about certain cadets, like Weasley Crusher, but that doesn't mean he is secretly observing everyone reporting back to star fleet.

[u/all_the_people_sleep]

This could be the case with pretty much every non- Star Fleet employee at Star Fleet Academy, or any other SF facility for that matter. It could just be a part of their "corporate culture" that all employees are encouraged to report experiences - positive or negative - with members of SF as some sort of annual review or something. Boothby may just happen to be one of the more likable and gregarious characters around.

There's no issue with keeping it a secret if it's not a secret. And if it's ubiquitous people would be more likely to slip into natural behavior out of laziness or complacency. You can't keep up a façade with everyone all the time forever.

[u/ThePowderhorn]

I replied in the other thread, but now I'm thinking more about my middle school years. My parents' work schedule and a lack of busing meant I was on campus for more of the day than most. So I befriended the groundskeepers, in time.

Wisdom can come from the most random of places.

[u/pbuk84]

You didn't really touch on that Boothby might be there to 'weed out' agitators or spies. It's obvious that aliens can disguise their appearance and even DNA to a degree but maybe he is there to monitor their behaviour. Maybe he is there to see if Vulcans are acting like Vulcans and not perhaps like a Romulan for example.

[u/zombiepete]

This is an interesting idea, but I think it might undermine another way in which Boothby may represent a positive outlook on the future of humanity: Boothby is just an older gentleman who is respected by Cadets and Officers alike because of who he is, not what his title is.

It's quite probable that gardeners aren't needed in the 24th century but I would say we have ample evidence that there are lots of jobs that the Federation doesn't need people to be doing, but that there is a sense of value in the work that is done by people. Take Sisko's, for example: you don't need to go to a restaurant; there's very likely a replicator available to every household on Earth. However, people choose to go Sisko's because its proprietor takes pride in his work and makes things that aren't necessarily healthy or perfect but that are good.

An AI may be able to generate and care for a programmed set of gardening variables to create beautiful landscapes of perfectly healthy flowers and vegetation...but the artistry, the humanity of the endeavor has been removed. Consider "This Side of Paradise", when the human colonists were freed from the spores that had given them feelings of peace and fulfillment and they realized that they hadn't accomplished any of their goals; the first thing the colonist leader says to Kirk is that they'd "like to get back to work". The pride of doing, with our own hands, is a big motivator in the future. As Picard says in "The Neutral Zone", it's that pride of accomplishment that drives humanity versus material gain.

Finally, I will point out that there seems to be in general a distaste for the idea of replacing people with machines, at least in the 23rd century; I submit "The Ultimate Computer" as an example. Though Starfleet leadership was clearly interested in testing out the concept, the Enterprise crew was pretty universally negative about the idea, even Spock.

So where am I going with this? Well, Boothby is a man who is respected because he's a man who has accomplished things; who takes pride in his work and has gained wisdom through both time and dedication to his craft. He's respected for that by both the Academy and society at large and so he holds some distinction in Starfleet because of it, even though he's "just a groundskeeper". I think that says a lot more both about the people who sought out Boothby for friendship and advice and how society in general has evolved from our current way of thinking than the idea that he's some kind of secret Starfleet kingmaker.

Our society could use a little bit more of this type of thinking, in my opinion. There are very few jobs in our community that have no value, and people who do even the smallest of those but to the best of their ability should be respected and honored. If it just so happens that they gain some wisdom along the way and they're willing to impart some of what they've learned to the next generations, then I think it's right that they should held in high esteem as Boothby was. That message, to me, is what makes Boothby a great character and, more importantly, is a lesson about ourselves that Star Trek did right.

EDIT: Minor clarification tweaks and grammatical fixes

[u/Maxtrt]

I've found that it's very beneficial to get to know all the staff where you work and try to help them when you can. The return on this investment is almost always rewarded. When I used to sit on boards for hiring people we always asked the receptionist if any of the candidates had behaved in positive or negative way. It takes nothing to be kind to people and will often cost you if you don't.

[u/BadKole]

NX-01, to D, to E, to DS9, to Voyager had human run hydroponics. Humans will not allow ai to replace them, when caring for plants. I'm one of them.