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

9. 'A Robert Duncan McNeill Type'

The casting process for Tom Paris has to be one of the strangest in the history of Star Trek. Nick Locarno would have meant Robert Duncan McNeill, but no Locarno meant producers thought they needed a new actor. According to Star Trek: Voyager — A Vision of the Future, around six scripts for Voyager's first season were written "with little or no knowledge of who would play the part".

Incredibly, the casting notice sent out for Paris then called for a 'Robert Duncan McNeill type'. This came as quite a surprise to the actual McNeill. "I'm right here," as he rightly put it on The Shuttlepod Show in 2023. McNeill was eventually asked to audition, but, unwilling to abandon a play he was doing in New York at the time, took the risky decision of asking producers to wait for a week or so. They agreed.

Funnily enough, precisely the type they were looking for was precisely the type they were looking for. Thankfully, McNeill was cast after just the one audition. Before his agent rang about the Voyager role, he was considering leaving the business entirely. The rest is now a good, if odd, story, plus more than seven years as the character, alongside a fine directorial career.