Star Trek: Why Voyager Avoided Reviving A TNG Character

Star Trek: Voyager’s Tom Paris was based on Nick Locarno from Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the producers of Voyager decided against just reusing Locarno for a good reason. Tom Paris, played by Robert Duncan McNeill, started out as a former Starfleet officer kicked out because of a lie he told about his part in an accident that resulted in the deaths of three fellow officers. In Voyager’s pilot episode, Tom was recruited by Captain Janeway, and when Voyager was subsequently thrown into the Delta Quadrant and stranded there, the Captain granted Tom a field commission to Lieutenant. Tom’s transformation from a washed-up reprobate to a model Starfleet officer, husband, and father over the course of Voyager’s seven seasons is one of the more satisfying character arcs of the show.

Before Robert Duncan McNeill played Tom Paris, however, he started his career in the Star Trek franchise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, playing the character of Nick Locarno in the season 5 episode “The First Duty.” In the episode, Locarno was a Starfleet Academy Cadet and the head of an elite flight team called Nova Squadron which Wesley Crusher was also a part of. The plot of “The First Duty” revolved around Locarno’s attempt to lead a cover-up to conceal his and the team’s involvement in an accident that killed a member of the squadron. Captain Jean-Luc Picard prevailed on Wesley Crusher to tell the truth about what happened, leading to all four remaining cadets almost being expelled before Locarno assumed full responsibility for the incident and was the only one sentenced to expulsion.

Locarno’s story served as the idea for Tom Paris’ backstory on Star Trek: Voyager, and Voyager’s producers had always planned on bringing Robert Duncan McNeill back to play Tom. With so many similarities between the two characters, however, it might seem odd that the producers didn’t just decide to bring Locarno back for a more expanded role. Although this might have been easier, producer Jeri Taylor has stated that she and her fellow producers thought that Locarno’s actions in “The First Duty” ultimately made him irredeemable as a character and that they were more interested in a story of redemption rather than including an ultimately unsympathetic character as part of Star Trek: Voyager’s main cast.

Robert Duncan McNeill has expanded on this idea as well, stating that despite appearances, Locarno and Paris were actually quite the opposite of each other. Locarno seemed like a good person on the surface, but deep down was not, while Star Trek: Voyager showed that Tom Paris was a good man who had just made some mistakes along the way. The fact that the producers decided to have Tom confess to his part in his accident willingly, instead of being forced to do the right thing as Locarno had, is a telling distinction between the two.

There was some pushback on the idea that Locarno could not be redeemed, especially from the original screenwriters for “The First Duty,” Ronald D. Moore and Naren Shankar. The two men thought that the idea that Locarno was irredeemable but Tom was not was hypocritical and that the two characters were a lot more similar than they were being made out to be. Although the hypocrisy pointed out by Moore and Shankar is perhaps a valid point, fans will never know if Locarno could have redeemed himself on Star Trek: Voyager.

However, it could be argued that Tom Paris as a character is himself a redemption for Locarno. The fact that the producers modeled him so closely after Locarno and even tapped the same actor to play him says a lot about their interest in Locarno’s character, and it is almost easy to imagine Locarno having turned into someone like Tom later in life. Star Trek: Voyager ultimately did expand on Locarno’s story, albeit through the lens of a different character who ended up having more potential than Locarno did.

About The Author

Dana Hanson
(110 Articles Published)

Dana Hanson is a trainer and freelance writer for Screen Rant, covering stories about Star Trek for the Movie/TV feature writing team. She attended Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, graduating in 2019 with a degree in Media Arts production and a concentration in Writing for TV and film. She has previous experience working with an online and print publication as a freelance editor and has been passionate about both writing and Star Trek for years. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.

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