TV URBAN LEGEND: Tom Paris on Star Trek: Voyager was originally a previously established Star Trek: The Next Generation character.

In the world of television, the most common way to do a new series that is tied into an older hit series is to spin off a character from the original series into the new one. Amusingly, sometimes this doesn't exactly work out for the character being spun off if the new series is a failure. The funny thing for Star Trek is that both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager were intended to spin off established characters (and DS9 DID spin off Colm Meaney's Miles O'Brien to the new show, along with his wife), but in the end, both series ended up using replacement characters for the characters they were going to spin off, but while in one of the instances, it came down to the actor not wanting to commit to a new series (Michael Forbes not wanting to take her Ensign Ro Laren from Next Generation to Deep Space Nine, so instead Nana Visitor originated as replacement character, Major Kira Nerys), in this instance, the actor of the first character ended up still playing the SECOND character! Read on to see how Robert Duncan McNeill was almost an original cast member of Star Trek: Voyager...and then was replaced...by Robert Duncan McNeill as an original cast member of Star Trek: Voyager.

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WHO WAS NICHOLAS LOCARNO?

In the Season 5 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The First Duty," Jean-Luc Picard is attending the Starfleet Academy where he will be giving the commencement address. However, soon after he arrives, he learns of a tragic accident involving five cadets during a flight maneuver. One of the cadets was Wesley Crusher, son of the Enterprise's Chief Medical Officer, Beverley Crusher, and a former mainstay on the Enterprise. As it turned out, Cadet Nick Locarno pushed the other four cadets to try a dangerous (and banned) maneuver so that he could graduate as a "living legend" at the Academy. When one of the cadets died, Locarno convinced the others to lie and cover up that they were doing a banned maneuver.

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In the end, Wesley couldn't keep the secret, so Locarno fell on his sword and took the blame for the whole squadron. He was expelled from the Academy and Wesley and the others were all held back a year.

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WHY WAS TOM PARIS INVENTED INSTEAD?

The concept of Star Trek: Voyager is that the USS Voyager was hunting down a Maquis ship. The Maquis were a group of former Starfleet officers who felt that Starfleet wasn't doing enough to stop the Cardassians after the Federation and the Cardassian Empire signed a peace treaty that left a number of colonized worlds now under the thumb of the Cardassians, so the Maquis was formed to protect those colonists and to continue to attack the Cardassians even after the Federation nominally had a truce with them. The Voyager and the Maquis' ship were then both tossed into a whole other Quadrant by a strange burst of energy, and in the process, both crews lost a number of lives, so the only way to keep going was for the crews of both ships to merge into one temporary crew aboard the Voyager as they tried to travel back home. Tom Paris was a member of the Maquis who had been released from prison to lead the Voyager to the Maquis ship (where another member of the Voyager crew had been working undercover as a member of the Maquis crew). He now became an officer on the combined crew and eventually proved himself as a Starfleet officer.

Originally, Paris was going to be Locarno on the series, having joined the Maquis following his expulsion.. Voyager producer Jeri Taylor recalled in Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration (by Ben Robinson and Mark Wright), "We had liked the idea of a character like Tom Paris ever since we had done "First Duty" and had Locarno. We didn't make Locarno the con officer, because he was somewhat darker and more damaged. We felt Locarno couldn't be redeemed and we wanted to be on a journey of redemption." Initially, though, Locarno WAS going to be the character (he was even in the original notes for the show before an official story bible was devised for Voyager). When the show decided to move on from using Locarno, they noted that McNeill would be a good choice to bring in to play the replacement character, and he was, of course, cast in the role of Paris.

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McNeill agreed with the idea that Paris was different from Locarno, noting in Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration, "I think Locarno was a bad guy who pretended to be a good guy. Deep down inside, he was rotten. In contrast, inside Tom was a good guy who pretended to be a bad guy. He sort of wanted everybody to think he didn't give a damn and that he was a lone wolf, but deep down he wasn't like that."

Other writers, including Ronald D. Moore, never agreed with the idea that Locarno was "irredeemable," especially because of the Season 7 episode of Next Generation, "Lower Decks," which featured another member of Locarno's squadron, Sito Jaxa, as a crew member on the Enterprise, where we learn that Picard had her placed on the Enterprise at his direction as he wanted to see if she could redeem herself. She later volunteers for a dangerous mission and is tragically killed. In any event, Moore's stance was that it doesn't make any sense to have a member of Locarno's squadron "redeemed" on an episode of Next Generation and then also take the position that Locarno, himself, was beyond redemption.

Interestingly, while the producers initially were interested in bringing McNeill on for the new character based on his old character, they didn't just hire him outright, choosing to instead audition for the role, and McNeill just won the role, which, of course, makes sense considering he was trying out for a character based on his own character.

The legend is...

STATUS: True

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