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

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.

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.

"I'm wondering by the way if Paris isn't getting too close to Han Solo," noted Michael Piller in a memo to Rick Berman and Jeri Taylor, dated 6 October 1993, as given in Star Trek: Voyager — A Vision of the Future. That was just the tip of the Hothian iceberg. The development process for Star Trek: Voyager had begun earlier that same year. Locarno was out. The struggle to define Tom Paris had begun.

For the first half of Voyager's pilot, Berman, Taylor, and Piller had already settled on the 'hero's journey' for Paris — "a quest for redemption, for rebirth in traditional Joseph Campbell terms". Piller soon realised that, for the second half, "new plot elements" would be needed. Paris had "to confront his demons and conquer them," but, at that stage, Piller couldn't quite figure out what those demons might be. He even considered throwing Paris in the brig, only to have him escape by fooling "the holographic doctor".

From Han Solo to Doug Ross, "the success that George Clooney had as the bad boy character on [ER] was really what we intended Paris to be on Voyager," added Piller in Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration. The writer/producer went on to admit that "nothing we tried worked very well". Ultimately, "it was just not the right chemistry for Star Trek". It still took a few years, perhaps even seven, to move the character away from his 'bad boy' image.

In the beginning, Tom Paris "[flew] at women at warp speed," including Lieutenant Stadi, Lidell Ren of the Banea, Kes, the Delaney sisters, and half of the rest of Voyager. Producers realised, however, that their 'Don Juan of the Delta Quadrant' was at odds with what Robert Duncan McNeill — a devoted family man — brought to the role. Paris' roguish, rebellious ways were slowly abandoned to make way for more of that "natural charm and personality".

"At some point Tom Paris became a blank slate," noted Brannon Braga in Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration. A fresh start then gave Braga the opportunity to develop a whole new side of the character via Paris' fascination with 20th — and later 19th — century history and Americana. From there, Braga added, the writers got "a portal to do some interesting little stories with him as a kind of self-reflexive, post-modern, science-fiction experiment".

Amongst the better meta was 'Captain Proton, Spaceman First Class'. Proton quickly became a fan favourite, in fact, spun off, like Arachnia, into his own (real world) novel, Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth. Robert Duncan McNeill even pitched an idea for a return of the Voyager cast in the form of an "on the holodeck only" set of serialised Captain Proton shorts. And as for Fair Haven, 'Tommy boy' might want to have a closer look at those history books!

"I believe the phrase you're looking for is low brow," said the Doctor sarcastically to Tom Paris in Author, Author. Few could dare dream of the sophistication of 'Photons Be Free' after all! Historicity aside, even Fair Haven was entertaining, until the inevitable malfunctions. The safety protocols should have their own set of safety protocols.

For Robert Duncan McNeill as Captain Proton, 'low brow' meant all the way down to a burned bottom. During filming of the 'jet pack scene' from Thirty Days, McNeill was strapped several feet in the air on a 'teeter-totter-rig,' with real sparklers flying out over his backside. Fireproof clothing was in name only. "It went from warm to 'oh my god, my cheeks are on fire'," McNeill noted on the Star Trek: Voyager DVD extra Time Capsule — Tom Paris.

Insult to injury, everyone on the ground's first reaction was to laugh, thinking it was a joke, or "Robbie being Robbie," according to Garrett Wang on The Delta Flyers podcast. Then the fire extinguishers came out!

You'd think McNeill would loathe his character's monochrome alter-ego after that. Quite the opposite! In Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration, McNeill noted that the "swashbuckling adventure silliness" of Captain Proton was "fundamental to who Tom wanted to be".

When filming began for Star Trek: Voyager, Robert Duncan McNeill was reportedly second on the call sheet, behind (of course) only Kate Mulgrew. "The rumour was they were going to make [Tom Paris] kind of like Janeway's boy toy or something," as Garrett Wang put it on the first episode of The Delta Flyers podcast.

Confirmed in Star Trek: Voyager — A Celebration, Paris was indeed intended to be "the series' romantic lead" — a possible "love interest for the captain". By season two, writers were concerned that Paris had been underused. In trying to rectify the situation, they gave him one of Star Trek's most notorious episodes — Threshold. Thankfully, Captain and "helm boy" never became anything close to a couple, despite a few offspring at infinite velocity.

"When I first read that script I couldn't believe they were going to shoot it," noted McNeill in Cinefantastique, Vol. 28, No. 4-5. Beyond the sheer ridiculousness of it all, McNeill realised that the journey to warp ten was really a journey of self-discovery for Paris. One's worth doesn't come from being everywhere in the universe all at once. "Happiness comes from within". Tell that to the salamander space babies you left behind!

"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.

No doubt the biggest romances in Star Trek are bromances — Kirk and Spock, Data and Geordi, O'Brien and Bashir, Malcolm and Mr Tucker, and, of course, Tom and Harry. Most of those larger-than-life friendships have extended into real life, too. As Robert Duncan McNeill told Gizmodo in 2010,

Garrett [Wang] and I worked the first scene of the show together, and we immediately bonded. He was a young actor, and in a few ways I was a few years older. I was taking Garrett under my wing in the same way that Tom was taking Harry under his wing.

It was also Harry who gave Tom the one-time nickname 'Turkey Platter'. Well, he couldn't let Maxwell Burke have all the food puns!

Of romances, Paris and BLT's was one of the most well-developed put to Trek — never linear, never smooth, but always returning twice as strong after any subspace turbulence along the road. We've largely covered the genesis of the pair's relationship in our article '10 Things You Didn't Know About B'Elanna Torres'.

Speaking frankly to Gizmodo once more, McNeill noted that, at first, he didn't think the Tom-B'Elanna romance was a "good idea". He was concerned that such a coupling might limit the characters, preventing them from "exploring different opportunities and different stories". In time, both he and Roxann Dawson relished the chance to explore a relationship that, in McNeill's words, "expanded [the] world of Voyager". Of course, that's not accounting for a sentient computer program of a ship found in a junkyard. Who the f**k is Alice?

It's always difficult to step out of anyone's shadow when you're in STAR-fleet. It's especially difficult when your dad's light is bouncing around the top brass. From the beginning, Admiral Owen Paris loomed large over Star Trek: Voyager, and most importantly, over son Tom.

Owen had been instructor at the Academy and commanded a young Kathryn Janeway on the Al-Batani. At first, for Tom, it seemed like everyone had a connection with his father but him. Feelings changed over the years, however. The Admiral headed up the project to get his son home. "Tell him, tell him I miss him. And I'm proud of him," were Owen's words over the distance in Pathfinder.

The Parises in Starfleet go a lot farther back than the father, too. In 2016, Simon Pegg, co-writer of Star Trek: Beyond, confirmed that Commodore Paris was a "nod to Tom Paris […] probably his grandmother". Beta canon has also extended the Paris family tree. For example, the 'Lost Era' novel Serpents Among the Ruins introduced Owen's own father, Commander Michael 'Iron Mike' Paris, Academy friend of Demora Sulu, and victim of the Tomed Incident… officially speaking.

The last we saw of Tom Paris in live action, he was walking into the turbolift on the way to meet his newborn baby. The last we saw of Tom Paris, full stop, he was beating seven levels of hell out of Brad Boimler because he thought he was a Kazon. "This is how we kick ass in the Delta Quadrant!"

In We'll Always Have Tom Paris, poor Boimler just wanted an autograph for his Tom Paris commemorative plate, the last of his "VOY" bridge crew collection. That itself was a nod to the real life 'Hamilton Collection,' which contains decades worth of Star Trek crockery, but no individual plates of the Voyager crew. If you always want Tom Paris to eat off, or just to hang on the wall, replica Boimler Tom Paris plates are available from Star Trek Unlimited.

It seems we almost had even more Tom Paris, too. On the Primitive Culture podcast in 2021, Robert Duncan McNeill revealed that he was asked to reprise the role for an episode of Star Trek: Picard's first season, and that Terry Matalas reiterated the request for season two. Unfortunately, McNeill was busy with other projects on both occasions.

There's still a chance for Paris to make an appearance alongside the Doctor in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Either way, we'll always have the porcelain. We'll always have the Turkey Platter.