Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Tom Paris

10. Not Another Nick Locarno

Boimler couldn't see it, but there was, of course, a striking physical resemblance between Nick Locarno and Tom Paris. In Pathfinder, even Admiral Paris couldn't tell the two apart in a photo. Contrary to a few fan theories, we know Locarno and Paris are not the same person, but as characters, they still share more than just the same face. By all accounts, this was never a legal rights issue over the name either.

In the earliest stages of development for Star Trek: Voyager, producers did have the 'edgy' Locarno in mind. Jeri Taylor's story notes for Voyager from August 1993 mention Locarno directly. Nova Squadron's manipulator-in-chief never made it to the Delta Quadrant, however, because he was ultimately deemed to be irredeemable. As Robert Duncan McNeill put it in Star Trek Communicator, May-June, 1997,

Locarno seemed like a nice guy, but deep down he was a bad guy. Tom Paris is an opposite premise in a way. Deep down he's a good guy.

Both Locarno and Paris' backstory remained strikingly similar, nonetheless. The former was expelled from the Academy for covering up the death of a fellow cadet. The latter graduated, but was later kicked out of Starfleet. In canon, Paris "falsified reports" to cover up his own pilot error in an accident at Caldik Prime which cost the lives of three fellow officers.

That differs slightly from the original reason given in the Star Trek: Voyager Series Bible. In that, Paris lied to place the blame on a dead pilot following "an accident during a war games demonstration".

Of course, the biggest difference between the two characters is that Nick is now a planet.