10 Star Trek Fan Theories That Became Fact
2. Tom Just Changed His Name To Nick
Robert Duncan McNeill is most famous in Star Trek for playing Thomas Eugene Paris in Star Trek: Voyager. However, it was not his first appearance, as he also played Cadet Nick Locarno in The Next Generation, a young man who is expelled from the Academy after he attempts to cover up the death of another classmate.
Once it was announced that McNeill would be playing a brash young officer who had troubles with the law for Voyager, fans quickly assumed that they would be seeing Locarno step onto the bridge of the new ship. However, using the character of Locarno would have required royalties to be paid to the writer of The First Duty for every single episode that featured him, even though that writer has since disputed this theory. Therefore, Locarno was given a quick and thin rewrite, named Paris, and then they were good to go.
Ronald D. Moore was opposed to the idea of changing the name. The reason given was that Locarno's actions during his Academy years made him irredeemable to an audience, though Moore felt that Paris had committed enough crimes to run the risk of this as well.
The prevailing theory suggests that he was Tom Paris all along, who had been accepted into the academy with the help of his father, Admiral Owen Paris. He changed his name to Nick Locarno to avoid the appearance of favouritism, which ended up as a bit of a blessing when the name he chose became a toxic one. Having been expelled from the academy, he drifted through life before meeting with the Maquis under his birth name again. The rest is Starfleet history.