10 Crazy Star Trek Fan Theories

There are two ways of looking at fan theories. On the one hand, they're awkwardly contrived, rose-tinted, usually nonsensical attempts at bridging several meaningless story elements that only really exist to excuse lazy writing inconsistencies or unresolved slices of weird fan-fiction. On the other hand, no they're not.

Fan Theories are half the fun of getting involved in movies, TV shows, games, books, or anything where the authors can craft their own reality. Real-life is pretty much terrible all the time so having a make-believe realm that you can discuss and theoriose over to your heart's content is about as close to legitimate self-care as you're going to get on your own sofa.

Besides, if you're going to plunge yourself down a proverbial rabbit hole, you might as well make it one that opens up into an entire universe of interconnected characters, stories, events, Federations, conspiracies, romances, and secrets. A lot has happened on-screen in Star Trek, and even more has happened off it, meaning that the potential for fan-concocted observations to blow entire narratives apart is, to borrow a phrase, highly logical...

It escaped the attention of precisely nobody, but Star Trek: Voyager's Robert Duncan McNeil also once cropped, fairly prominently, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. There he played a Starfleet Cadet named Nick Lacarno who, having just got one of his squadmates killed while flying, was orchestrating an elaborate cover-up he would later come clean about.

Lo and behold, when Tom Paris was introduced in Voyager, his Starfleet career had disintegrated after an incident he'd caused while flying had led to the deaths of his colleagues. He'd attempted to cover the incident up but, compelled to do the right thing, had come clean. Two incredibly similar characters, played by the very same actor, but the show insistent they were different people.

Despite rumours persisting (and dismissals always forthcoming) that the show had intended to have McNeil reprise the role only for disputes over writing credits to nix it, the issue's never been cleared up onscreen. Fans insist, however, that not wanting to live in the shadow of his Admiral father, Thomas Paris simply adopted the name Nicolas Locarno for his time in the Academy, but dropped it again when he was expelled.

I mean, think about it Thomas and Nicholas sound quite similar, both Paris and Lacarno are cities in Europe, and, look, it's quite litearlly the same person, so...