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

4. 20,000 Leagues Is A Lot Less In Light-Years

"I had no idea you were such an old salt," said Captain Janeway to her then still lieutenant in Thirty Days. Growing up, Tom Paris had been obsessed with stories about the ocean. His first love was always the sailing ships of the 19th century. He dreamt of joining the Federation Naval Patrol, but his father — Starfleet through and through — had other ideas. For Paris, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was swapped for 70,000 light years across the galaxy.

In Thirty Days, Tom's rebellious nature resurfaced, and his maritime passion got him into trouble. But, as he said to Janeway at the end, "at least this time, I broke the rules for a reason". That distinction was a welcome inclusion for the actor, Robert Duncan McNeill, who noted on The Delta Flyers podcast that he had been asking writers for years to "write stories where [Tom] is being rebellious for a cause," rather than for nothing or for selfish reasons.

Unusually, when Thirty Days came back from the edit, it was about 10 minutes short. According to McNeill, the brig scenes and epistolary framing device were then filmed around a month later, in order to fill the missing time. It has been suggested that McNeill also came up with the idea for the extra plot in the first place. If he did, then he made no mention of it on that episode of The Delta Flyers.