More specifically about Tom Paris.
You learn that Tom Paris had made some “mistake” in his past, and Janeway gave him another chance on Voyager.
I never knew what this mistake was, until I saw an episode of TNG. He was responsible for the death of a cadet at the Starfleet academy. he tried to cover it up and was reprimanded. (I thought it was pretty cool about the spinoff though!)
The thing I don’t understand is why he had a completely different name. Was this the same character who went on to Voyager? Whats with the name change?
At first I thought he had his name changed so people would not recognize him in the future, because of the ridicule he would receive. BUT, in the Voyager series, his Father; Admiral Paris makes a few appearances. I doubt he would change his name too.
Whats the deal?
P.S. could someone give me the link to that website with the big ass Star Trek Glossary? I know it was a small 4 letter addres… I’d like to read about the Voyager type ships. ;j
Same actor, different characters. I forget what it was that Tom Paris did to get himself in trouble, but it had nothing to do with what Vince LaCarno did.
"Tom Paris was initially a passionate and committed member of Starfleet, serving aboard the USS Exeter and living up to expectations as the son of a Starfleet Admiral. But disillusioned and disgraced after lying about a fatal accident that killed three fellow officers, Paris went AWOL, becoming a member of the renegade faction the Maquis.
Paris proved himself a failure as a mercenary, being arrested on his first mission and imprisoned at a New Zealand penal colony. Grudgingly drafted on to Voyager by Captain Janeway, who needed his expertise in locating members of the Maquis, the character of Paris - played by Robert Duncan McNeill - was a key part of the package of dramatic tension brought to the premise of Voyager." see this page
I don’t know which one you’re talking about, but I did a search and this one is specifically for voyager, so maybe it’ll work for you.
That’s someone’s joke, right? Paris is the biggest pushover in Star Trek history (which is saying a lot, really). And he’s the most one-dimensional character in Voyager (which, again, is saying a lot). Whatever script writer thought that Tom Paris would be “a key part of the package of dramatic tension” is seriously delusional, IMHO.
And all this coming from someone who actually liked Voyager.
Maybe they meant that he’s important in flying the ship so it wouldn’t crash into a star or asteroid or something, thus allowing the other dramatic tension to occur.
Actually, that in and of itself is a lot like what LaCarno did.
I completely forget the episode, but they were the Academy stunt pilots. They tried out an odd trick, which had been banned, for their show, because it was really dangerous. I think two of them got killed (PS: The Enterprise was involved in this because Wesley was also on the stunt crew) and LaCarno convinced the rest of the crew to lie about the incident. In the end, he was found out and took responsibility so as to spare the rest of the stunt crew.
I don’t know the site you are specifically talking about, but I found this SSD of Voyager . If you are into Star Fleet Battles, you will probably appreciate. And if you want more SSDs of Voyager ships (and others), here is the SSD master list.
There was dramatic tension on Voyager? It must have happened during the commercials.
It was unneccessarily confusing for McNeill to play different characters with vaguely similar backgrounds but, heck, they recycled Jeffrey Combs so much, he had a triangle on his forehead!
I’ve heard that the original idea was to have the Lacarno character on Voyager – that’s what there is so much similarity with Paris. However, using that character would have required them to keep paying the screenwriter who created him – the one who wrote TNG’s First Duty. So they had to change the name.
Supposedly the same thing happened with Enterprise’s T’Pol. The original idea was to use the character T’Pau from ST:TOS. But again, they didn’t want to have to keep paying the original creator of the character.
I vaguely remember hearing that the Paris character was based on the other character, but I don’t know why they would have changed it. Probably having a new character lets them be more flexible with his background, rather than always having him say “well, except that time with Wesley Crusher and Captain Picard, when I was …”
Yeah…WILL the scrubbing bubbles manage to save the bathtub? WILL Bathroom Duck in his Bathroom Duck Plane be able to clean the toliet without the Red Baron showing up (hawking his pizza, no doubt)? WILL they show the tampon commercial? WHY do they keep showing the Phone sex ads?
And it was Nick Locarno, although Vince sounds cool as well
I heard they thought the Locarno character was too much of a tainted character to use and they wanted someone like him but without a pre-setup as a bad dude lier so they could mold him into their own character.
Whenever I think of that TNG episode - a good one IMO - I get a picture of that steel-haired admiral loudly chiding “Mr. Locarno.” I love that actress.
Interesting angle about screenwriter credits. I always thought Ensign Ro would have been a perfect crossover character for Voyager, being a Makee (Maquis?) and all, and being a bit rough-edged for TNG, and wondered why they didn’t use her. Perhaps that’s part of it (or maybe the actress just had better things to do).
Also, the similarities between Locarno and Paris were intentional like everyone’s already said. I don’t know if it’s true that they wanted Locarno himself to be in the show but I do know that they cast the character of Paris with him in mind.
I remember reading somewhere that the casting directors kept saying "We want someone like Robert Duncan McNeil in ‘The First Duty’ " and when they couldn’t find anyone satisfactory, they got McNeil himself.
