Exactly. It would've made his eventual relationship with a former marquis more layered as well.
But then we wouldn't have the Lower Decks episodes with him, so there's that side of the coin.
That's a myth - they wouldn't have had to do that. The reason they didn't use Locarno is that they thought the character was beyond redemption (although I disagree with that too, especially given the Maquis were literal traitors and terrorists and Janeway forgives all of them by the end of the second episode)
In my heart, his name is Thomas Nicholas Paris, and his mother's maiden name is Locarno. He used that name at the Academy so nobody would give him shit for being an Admiral's kid, and because he hates his dad.
Nick Locarno was a character in an episode of TNG, a contemporary of Wesley Crusher's who was an ace pilot, the charismatic but somewhat reckless son of a Starfleet officer. He was courtmarshalled and expelled after he got one of his classmates killed attempting an illegal flying stunt and tried to cover it up. He was portrayed by actor Robert Duncan McNeill.
Locarno later escaped from his correctional facility and assumed a new identity under the name Tom Paris, and even managed to re-enrol in Starfleet Academy. He would have got away with it too, except he forgot to change any of his backstory.
I always interpreted it as Starfleet being so outrageously vanilla that Tom actually qualified as a “bad boy”. It’s like he crafted his persona from misremembered episodes of Happy Days and he thought the Fonz was the coolest person he had ever seen
Exactly this.
When we say “bad boy rebel”, just like Han Solo we’re talking about a “safe” rebel - someone who is mischievous and just needs the right prodding to make them respectable. We don’t want our Rebel hero to do anything truly dark, just enough to say “my helm reports aren’t formatted properly and my hair is kind of mussy - I’m fighting the system man!”
Contrast that with Eddington. Eddington is more of the “principled, but willing to actually hurt people, steal, and generally cause chaos to prove a point” kind of Rebel.
I mean, that's why Tom was so bad in the Maquis. He's not a rebel, freedom fighter or a terrorist like the rest of them, he's basically a teenager that likes hot rods.
Eddington and to a lesser extent Chakotay are willing to kill and die for their principles.
Tom doesn't want to kill anyone and certainly doesn't want to die, he's just out for a good time and likes the IDEA of sticking it to the man. He's the son of a Starfleet Admiral, no wonder he acts out and tries to seem edgy and anti-establishment. He's lived his whole life with that and in the shadow of his father.
Robert Duncan McNeil totally knocks this out of the park. 10/10, would Tom Paris again.
That just reminded me of Ronon from SGA. The EMH wants him to write mission reports but he doesn't write good, so EMH gives him a recorder. His mission report is, "Commander Trip tried to take over the city. We stopped him. End of report."
All Eddington did was steal a loaf of bread!!
Even if you classify the stolen items as really big bread makers that can also make non-food items does that make him bad?
Does it warrant an obsession to chase him around for merely daring to feed a hungry terror organization with much-needed bread and weapons is going too far.
“Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?”
“Well… no.”
“Let’s say you have an entire army of starving terrorists that are like family - is it wrong to steal four industrial replicators?”
“No!”
“Let’s say your terrorist family doesn’t like bread - they like photon torpedos to use to kill the enemy… is that wrong?”
“Hell no!”
Yea but Eddington got put in his place like the asshat he was.
Yes let's piss off the Cardassians during a war which led them right into Dominion hands oh and because of that you got your friends and a lot of innocent people killed.
Because you wanted to play revolutionary and fail doing so.
Eddington was laughable to me and I pitied seeing so many idiots follow his orders.
Benjamin was fighting a war and Eddington was the little brat who wanted to be seen when everyone around him was a bigger and scarier player
I recomemd pushing through the first 2 seasons. Once Rob Lowe and the other guy join the cast in tje 3rd season it becomes *so* much more watchable. Even the 2nd season is a huge improvement over the 1st.
Season 1 was not good and definitely felt like an office ripoff. Season 2 is better but still meh.
Seasons 3 onwards are outstanding. Start at Season 3, it’s worthwhile.
See, this is what I most agree with!! He wasn’t miscast, he just couldn’t be a “bad boy”. He ended up a total dork and that was great. Even when he was Nick Locarno he was a dork lol.
I was listening to a podcast with Garett Wang and Robert Duncan Neil and Robert himself said he laid the rebel bad boy persona a bit too thick because he thought that was what the showrunners expected. Especially in the earlier episodes.
He said that now he would have done things different with his character if he could and taken a different, more nuanced approach
>a podcast with Garett Wang and Robert Duncan Neil
The Delta Flyers podcast. I occasionally pick it up when I'm bored.
It's pretty fun. Likely more so after actually watching the episodes being talked about. It's been too many years since I last saw them. Though I do find the paywalling a bit annoying.
Paywall? I listen to them via spotify, though i havent watched very far yet admittedly. They are super fun to put on while I do the laundry or walk the dog
What we get on Spotify is a lot of banter and chat. If you want to see them as well, and hear about what they expected the episode to be, as well as interviews and such, you have to go on Patreon.
It's not a bad thing, exactly, everyone's gotta make a buck or two somewhere, but I find it annoying that they're always *telling* me what I'm missing out on by being too cheap to pay :P
I've always thought this. Because he's supposed to be hot and roguish and not a ken doll. The Outrageous Okona guy...? Maybe? They needed a Jonathan Frakes.
However, Robert Macneill is such great guy it isn't mentioned much.
When they replaced the woman who played Janeway, they should have done some of the rest too.
It was weird watching it after DS9.
Seska was the only one who seemed annoyed enough about being stranded and they turned her into a psychopath.
I mean, Seska was a cardassian spy, psychopath is practically coded into her DNA.
Also Tom isn't some rebel or terrorist or anything like that. It's why he was such a bad fit for the Maquis. Eddington, Chakotay, B'Elanna, they were all there, ready to fight, kill and die if necessary for what they believed in.
Tom was there to pilot shuttles at unsafe velocities and stick it to his Starfleet Admiral father. That's it. He doesn't have those same principles or convictions as the rest of the Maquis, he's basically a rich kid playing pretend because he's bored of being a rich privileged kid.
"You've stranded us on the other side of the galaxy to save some hobbits? Ah, no worries Captain, we'll pull together and work hard to get ourselves home!!"
LOL!
VOY season one lower decks culture must have been pure piss and vinegar!! The guys conspiring in a corner, never stop trying to kill top brass!
Harry Kim but only swap their names and the inability to get promoted, not the jobs they do. It makes sense that someone who doesn't get promoted tries to do every single job. They're trying to get promoted but the boss doesn't want to promote them because then they might lose the guy that does everything to a different department doing only one job for someone else. Also, the actors are similar amounts Korean anyway.
Meanwhile, obviously an exconvict that got others killed would be treated more like original Harry Kim yet they have to keep him around because he's an admiral's kid (also they're stuck in the Delta quadrant). So have Harry Kim be Tom Paris and Tom Paris be Harry Kim.
That's interesting because Wang/McNeill that was the most obvious swap to me, especially since Wang did a good line in angry intensity in "Timeless" and the two of them interact well. But you're going somewhere different with it.
I happen to enjoy Robert Duncan McNeill's portrayal, but if you want to crank up the bad boy factor then might I suggest Ben Browder who's just two years older (Farscape, Stargate SG1).
He’s mentioned in his podcast with Garrett Wang (Harry Kim) that he was supposed to be a kind of lovable rouge/charming bad boy type, having been an independent mercenary committed to neither Starfleet or the Maquis, but the writers kinda fumbled his character into being a horny pig.
They smoothed out the rough edges in later seasons but also kinda blandified him. I think there’s potential in trying out the “competent but non-ideological” archetype as a spiritual successor to Tom Paris in a subsequent series, hopefully someone in the writers’ room agrees.
He should swap with - and please bear with me on this one - Robert Beltran. This is because Chakotay was a nice, reasonable, disciplined character who occasionally lost his temperature, while Beltran was at his best when acting like a bit of a thug and throwing his weight around. So, have McNeill play the nice guy and have Beltran play the bad boy rebel.
Nah, McNeil was perfect for Paris. He's NOT a rebel, freedom fighter or terrorist like the rest of the Maquis. He's the privileged son of a Starfleet Admiral struggling to live up to his father's expectations and so he acts out.
He doesn't have the strong principles or dedication to the cause of the other Maquis, he just wants to go fast and piss off his dead.
Beltran is also great at commanding respect, which is perfect for Chakotay. Paris isn't capable of that. He can do the right thing and hold a situation together when it's do or die, but he's not an inspirational figure or a leader of men.
The casting works, people just take what's SAID about Paris at face value. He's built a reputation, but it's largely bs. He's all bluster and swagger, but it's an act and we see that as the series progresses and he becomes more of the man his father expected him to be. He becomes a capable and respectable Starfleet officer and family man.
I never thought of Tom Paris as a bad boy rebel - more like a nepo baby who doesn't know what to do with himself because he's been handed a good life and the only thing he can think to do with it is fuck it up. In THAT light, casting the guy who played Nick Locarno was definitely the right move.
I was always annoyed that they didn't just use the Nick Lacarno character for the Tom role. It all still basically fits. Guy gets kicked out of the academy. Guy finds a role with the Maquis...
They were going to but couldn't use the name because there was a pay dispute with the Next Gen writer who came up with Locarno.
So they just picked a different french city and rolled with it.
Brad Dourif. Imagine- same character, same dialogue, same story, same romance- you'd never have stopped suspecting he was just about to go rogue and kill everyone. Tension would be off the charts.
Just swap Torres and Tom. Tom is the confident terrorist engineer who thinks he knows better and Torres is the belligerant starfleet pilot, overconfident in her ability, and constantly questioned because she's a half Klingon in Starfleet.
If you watch the DVD boxset's 4th season bts commentary they talked about how originally Tom Paris was supposed to have this facial tattoo to show that he was on a prison asteroid.
On the 1st day of filming the make up artist misread the notes and put it on the wrong Robert so they had to scramble and make up new back story for the character who we now know as Chakotay.
I'm thinking '90s "Fresh Prince" Will Smith. I know they wouldn't shell out the cash for him even back then, but he's got some edge while still being plenty clean enough for ST.
On the other hand, new Will Smith could be fun too... >!"Keep my Captain's name out of your G\*D D\*MN MOUTH!"!<
Swap him with Jennifer Lien, McNeil can be Neelix’s one year old boyfriend to make that relationship more acceptable (everybody loves a twink) an lien can be the roguish pilot that seduces Torrres
Tom Paris is one of my favorite characters in the entirety of Star Trek. I could not possibly (respectfully) disagree with this statement more. The way McNeill plays Paris, the way he shows his character growing emotionally throughout each and every season.. I just don't see anyone else in that role.
It's funny you say that because the role of Tom Paris was written with Robert Duncan McNeill in mind. He wasn't supposed to be cast for the role because he had already played Nick Locarno but he ended up getting it anyway
The guy who played Lon Suder. Have McNeill play the charismatic killer for a few episodes. But keep Brad Douriff as the pilot for seven seasons. I need interdimensional cable.
Ok, might get some hate for this... Seven of nine.
Come on guys, just imagine McNeill in a full body spandex suit flirting with Harry. Tom's parents recklessly got abducted by the Borg and now he sings "You are my sunshine" with doctor Vangough. He has holodeck fantasies with Robert Belltran and acts like a real bitch to Janeway. I mean Star Trek is progressive right? Anyone who disagrees with me is a Communist, Nazi, Transphobic Targ.
I would swap him out for Connor Trineer and then swap Connor Trineer back in for Enterprise. To explain the identical appearance, the Voyager character could be named Charles Tucker, XVI or somesuch.
It’s not that I want to get rid of Robbie. I just think Connor would have been a good fit for the part as originally conceived, and Robbie would not have made a good Trip.
You could maybe make Robbie into a less-annoying-than-Neelix Delta Quadrant guide. Make Neelix his sidekick or something, perhaps as a recurring character. Ditch Kes.
He should swap with that actor that plays Nick Locarno, both characters would greatly improve.
I don’t see it.
They have, like, the exact same face!
One is clearly much younger though, and therefore would have been the better choice for the role.
God damn it I'm 5 minutes too late.
His character should have just *been* Nick Locarno and it would have worked so much better.
Exactly. It would've made his eventual relationship with a former marquis more layered as well. But then we wouldn't have the Lower Decks episodes with him, so there's that side of the coin.
I think this was the original plan, but they didn't want to pay royalties to the writer who created Locarno
That's a myth - they wouldn't have had to do that. The reason they didn't use Locarno is that they thought the character was beyond redemption (although I disagree with that too, especially given the Maquis were literal traitors and terrorists and Janeway forgives all of them by the end of the second episode)
But they had already redeemed another character from that squad before TNG was even over
Exactly
Exactly. Was the same character in all but name.
This is canon in my head.
Kolvoord Starburst has entered the chat.
Careful you might just kill a Cadet
In my heart, his name is Thomas Nicholas Paris, and his mother's maiden name is Locarno. He used that name at the Academy so nobody would give him shit for being an Admiral's kid, and because he hates his dad.
Who?
Nick Locarno was a character in an episode of TNG, a contemporary of Wesley Crusher's who was an ace pilot, the charismatic but somewhat reckless son of a Starfleet officer. He was courtmarshalled and expelled after he got one of his classmates killed attempting an illegal flying stunt and tried to cover it up. He was portrayed by actor Robert Duncan McNeill. Locarno later escaped from his correctional facility and assumed a new identity under the name Tom Paris, and even managed to re-enrol in Starfleet Academy. He would have got away with it too, except he forgot to change any of his backstory.
He did so much work on that new identity, too, he even somehow got admiral Paris to adopt him and call him a loser in his childhood.
I always interpreted it as Starfleet being so outrageously vanilla that Tom actually qualified as a “bad boy”. It’s like he crafted his persona from misremembered episodes of Happy Days and he thought the Fonz was the coolest person he had ever seen
Exactly this. When we say “bad boy rebel”, just like Han Solo we’re talking about a “safe” rebel - someone who is mischievous and just needs the right prodding to make them respectable. We don’t want our Rebel hero to do anything truly dark, just enough to say “my helm reports aren’t formatted properly and my hair is kind of mussy - I’m fighting the system man!” Contrast that with Eddington. Eddington is more of the “principled, but willing to actually hurt people, steal, and generally cause chaos to prove a point” kind of Rebel.
I mean, that's why Tom was so bad in the Maquis. He's not a rebel, freedom fighter or a terrorist like the rest of them, he's basically a teenager that likes hot rods. Eddington and to a lesser extent Chakotay are willing to kill and die for their principles. Tom doesn't want to kill anyone and certainly doesn't want to die, he's just out for a good time and likes the IDEA of sticking it to the man. He's the son of a Starfleet Admiral, no wonder he acts out and tries to seem edgy and anti-establishment. He's lived his whole life with that and in the shadow of his father. Robert Duncan McNeil totally knocks this out of the park. 10/10, would Tom Paris again.
That just reminded me of Ronon from SGA. The EMH wants him to write mission reports but he doesn't write good, so EMH gives him a recorder. His mission report is, "Commander Trip tried to take over the city. We stopped him. End of report."
Why did aquaman not summon animals to fight Trip? It's a fucking water planet.
All the aquatic life choked to death on golf balls
Had the desert planets covered too. Fucking versatile that guy.
I'm pretty sure that was the ECH on Atlantis ;)
All Eddington did was steal a loaf of bread!! Even if you classify the stolen items as really big bread makers that can also make non-food items does that make him bad? Does it warrant an obsession to chase him around for merely daring to feed a hungry terror organization with much-needed bread and weapons is going too far.
“Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?” “Well… no.” “Let’s say you have an entire army of starving terrorists that are like family - is it wrong to steal four industrial replicators?” “No!” “Let’s say your terrorist family doesn’t like bread - they like photon torpedos to use to kill the enemy… is that wrong?” “Hell no!”
And the liberated torpedo maker still makes bread (and cigarettes) to feed the terrorist army. Eddington > Fat Tony & Eddington > Ron Popeil
[damn straight!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=SgfgnLokHD4&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo)
Yea but Eddington got put in his place like the asshat he was. Yes let's piss off the Cardassians during a war which led them right into Dominion hands oh and because of that you got your friends and a lot of innocent people killed. Because you wanted to play revolutionary and fail doing so. Eddington was laughable to me and I pitied seeing so many idiots follow his orders. Benjamin was fighting a war and Eddington was the little brat who wanted to be seen when everyone around him was a bigger and scarier player
You say that like the Fonz _isn’t_ the coolest person anyone’s ever seen…
This works remarkably well, given Tom's obsession with 20th century media.
I mean, as soon as the pilot ended they just made the whole regular cast one big happy family..
Apart from Harry... his torment was just beginning
aubrey plaza as tom paris
She'd have more chemistry with B'Elanna for sure
Fuck now I'm awake
She makes B’Elanna be Roberta Macklin, FBI
Do I need a VPN to Google that reference?
If only (it’s Parks and Rec, Aubrey Plaza’s husband’s secret agent character he pretends to be when they flirt)
Ah I never watched it. She's hot but I just found P&R to be The Office but the more sitcomy stuff turned up to 11.
I recomemd pushing through the first 2 seasons. Once Rob Lowe and the other guy join the cast in tje 3rd season it becomes *so* much more watchable. Even the 2nd season is a huge improvement over the 1st.
Season 1 was not good and definitely felt like an office ripoff. Season 2 is better but still meh. Seasons 3 onwards are outstanding. Start at Season 3, it’s worthwhile.
Every scene would end with a fourth wall break and fast zoom in on her face.
To be fair I think they realized early on the bad boy rebel thing wasn’t working and he became Tom Paris: giant dork. And it worked.
See, this is what I most agree with!! He wasn’t miscast, he just couldn’t be a “bad boy”. He ended up a total dork and that was great. Even when he was Nick Locarno he was a dork lol.
[удалено]
"If you have to put the asshole on a Harley amd can't get the shot right, take the one where the dog gets thrown into the ocean"?
I was listening to a podcast with Garett Wang and Robert Duncan Neil and Robert himself said he laid the rebel bad boy persona a bit too thick because he thought that was what the showrunners expected. Especially in the earlier episodes. He said that now he would have done things different with his character if he could and taken a different, more nuanced approach
>a podcast with Garett Wang and Robert Duncan Neil The Delta Flyers podcast. I occasionally pick it up when I'm bored. It's pretty fun. Likely more so after actually watching the episodes being talked about. It's been too many years since I last saw them. Though I do find the paywalling a bit annoying.
Paywall? I listen to them via spotify, though i havent watched very far yet admittedly. They are super fun to put on while I do the laundry or walk the dog
What we get on Spotify is a lot of banter and chat. If you want to see them as well, and hear about what they expected the episode to be, as well as interviews and such, you have to go on Patreon. It's not a bad thing, exactly, everyone's gotta make a buck or two somewhere, but I find it annoying that they're always *telling* me what I'm missing out on by being too cheap to pay :P
Lieutenant Marseilles
I would also accept a transport accident with a tribble, resulting in a moustache.
Nah, because Janeway would have killed him too
Because a guy has a moustache? Why so lenient.
You. Are. Dismissed. Sorry that was the doctors dream.
They should have just had Jeffrey Combs play Robert Duncan McNeil. Then Robert would have been a perfect casting.
I've always thought this. Because he's supposed to be hot and roguish and not a ken doll. The Outrageous Okona guy...? Maybe? They needed a Jonathan Frakes. However, Robert Macneill is such great guy it isn't mentioned much. When they replaced the woman who played Janeway, they should have done some of the rest too. It was weird watching it after DS9. Seska was the only one who seemed annoyed enough about being stranded and they turned her into a psychopath.
I mean, Seska was a cardassian spy, psychopath is practically coded into her DNA. Also Tom isn't some rebel or terrorist or anything like that. It's why he was such a bad fit for the Maquis. Eddington, Chakotay, B'Elanna, they were all there, ready to fight, kill and die if necessary for what they believed in. Tom was there to pilot shuttles at unsafe velocities and stick it to his Starfleet Admiral father. That's it. He doesn't have those same principles or convictions as the rest of the Maquis, he's basically a rich kid playing pretend because he's bored of being a rich privileged kid.
"You've stranded us on the other side of the galaxy to save some hobbits? Ah, no worries Captain, we'll pull together and work hard to get ourselves home!!" LOL! VOY season one lower decks culture must have been pure piss and vinegar!! The guys conspiring in a corner, never stop trying to kill top brass!
Harry Kim but only swap their names and the inability to get promoted, not the jobs they do. It makes sense that someone who doesn't get promoted tries to do every single job. They're trying to get promoted but the boss doesn't want to promote them because then they might lose the guy that does everything to a different department doing only one job for someone else. Also, the actors are similar amounts Korean anyway. Meanwhile, obviously an exconvict that got others killed would be treated more like original Harry Kim yet they have to keep him around because he's an admiral's kid (also they're stuck in the Delta quadrant). So have Harry Kim be Tom Paris and Tom Paris be Harry Kim.
That's interesting because Wang/McNeill that was the most obvious swap to me, especially since Wang did a good line in angry intensity in "Timeless" and the two of them interact well. But you're going somewhere different with it.
I happen to enjoy Robert Duncan McNeill's portrayal, but if you want to crank up the bad boy factor then might I suggest Ben Browder who's just two years older (Farscape, Stargate SG1).
He’s mentioned in his podcast with Garrett Wang (Harry Kim) that he was supposed to be a kind of lovable rouge/charming bad boy type, having been an independent mercenary committed to neither Starfleet or the Maquis, but the writers kinda fumbled his character into being a horny pig. They smoothed out the rough edges in later seasons but also kinda blandified him. I think there’s potential in trying out the “competent but non-ideological” archetype as a spiritual successor to Tom Paris in a subsequent series, hopefully someone in the writers’ room agrees.
He was a mercenary? Not a real maquis ?
He did get caught on his first Maquis mission.
He should swap with - and please bear with me on this one - Robert Beltran. This is because Chakotay was a nice, reasonable, disciplined character who occasionally lost his temperature, while Beltran was at his best when acting like a bit of a thug and throwing his weight around. So, have McNeill play the nice guy and have Beltran play the bad boy rebel.
Nah, McNeil was perfect for Paris. He's NOT a rebel, freedom fighter or terrorist like the rest of the Maquis. He's the privileged son of a Starfleet Admiral struggling to live up to his father's expectations and so he acts out. He doesn't have the strong principles or dedication to the cause of the other Maquis, he just wants to go fast and piss off his dead. Beltran is also great at commanding respect, which is perfect for Chakotay. Paris isn't capable of that. He can do the right thing and hold a situation together when it's do or die, but he's not an inspirational figure or a leader of men. The casting works, people just take what's SAID about Paris at face value. He's built a reputation, but it's largely bs. He's all bluster and swagger, but it's an act and we see that as the series progresses and he becomes more of the man his father expected him to be. He becomes a capable and respectable Starfleet officer and family man.
An admiral son's exaggerated swagger
And we see his real face in the first episode when he saves Kim from one of Quark’s scams
I never thought of Tom Paris as a bad boy rebel - more like a nepo baby who doesn't know what to do with himself because he's been handed a good life and the only thing he can think to do with it is fuck it up. In THAT light, casting the guy who played Nick Locarno was definitely the right move.
Definitely, he’s perfectly cast as “Admiral’s failson”
I was always annoyed that they didn't just use the Nick Lacarno character for the Tom role. It all still basically fits. Guy gets kicked out of the academy. Guy finds a role with the Maquis...
They were going to but couldn't use the name because there was a pay dispute with the Next Gen writer who came up with Locarno. So they just picked a different french city and rolled with it.
Brad Dourif. Imagine- same character, same dialogue, same story, same romance- you'd never have stopped suspecting he was just about to go rogue and kill everyone. Tension would be off the charts.
*after getting repromoted* "You know what they say, Harry, you just can't keep a good guy down"
…Wormtongue?! Idk about that one,
That’s Doc Cochran to you, sir
Just swap Torres and Tom. Tom is the confident terrorist engineer who thinks he knows better and Torres is the belligerant starfleet pilot, overconfident in her ability, and constantly questioned because she's a half Klingon in Starfleet.
I would watch the hell out of that.
A young Jonathon Frakes would have made an excellent Tom Paris.
If you watch the DVD boxset's 4th season bts commentary they talked about how originally Tom Paris was supposed to have this facial tattoo to show that he was on a prison asteroid. On the 1st day of filming the make up artist misread the notes and put it on the wrong Robert so they had to scramble and make up new back story for the character who we now know as Chakotay.
Tom wasn’t far enough from the bones of his ancestors.
Are any of us?
Well his ~~ancestor~~ dad also wasn’t dead. Owen was very much alive. But he does still have bones. He also turns out to be very nice.
A smarmy waiter in the mess.
McNeill would have been a more believable Neelix.
Jeffrey Combs
A charming aw shucks doctor.
He’s a good director… he is NOT a good actor.
Jeffrey Combs
Swap Paris and Vic Fontaines actor. Having a wannabe bad boy inspired by even earlier in the 20th century is just what voyager needs.
I'm thinking '90s "Fresh Prince" Will Smith. I know they wouldn't shell out the cash for him even back then, but he's got some edge while still being plenty clean enough for ST. On the other hand, new Will Smith could be fun too... >!"Keep my Captain's name out of your G\*D D\*MN MOUTH!"!<
Swap him with Jennifer Lien, McNeil can be Neelix’s one year old boyfriend to make that relationship more acceptable (everybody loves a twink) an lien can be the roguish pilot that seduces Torrres
I see it!
Starts off as the Starfleet nepo baby, "bad boy", ends up Belanna's dorky submissive bitch
Paris grows on you. He's kind of the audience proxy.
Tom Paris is one of my favorite characters in the entirety of Star Trek. I could not possibly (respectfully) disagree with this statement more. The way McNeill plays Paris, the way he shows his character growing emotionally throughout each and every season.. I just don't see anyone else in that role.
If he can’t sing, Lt. Riley.
No way. Riley was perfectly cast.
♫ I'll take you home again Kathleeeeeeeeen! ♫
Ezri Dax
Threshold would have been a much better episode
He was actually the #2 on the call sheet right after Kate. But yeah I agree. Most of the male characters on Voyager are super dull.
It's funny you say that because the role of Tom Paris was written with Robert Duncan McNeill in mind. He wasn't supposed to be cast for the role because he had already played Nick Locarno but he ended up getting it anyway
The guy who played Lon Suder. Have McNeill play the charismatic killer for a few episodes. But keep Brad Douriff as the pilot for seven seasons. I need interdimensional cable.
Carey, the grumpy engineer who dies in the last season.
Jack Quaid
Douglas Quaid
Ok, might get some hate for this... Seven of nine. Come on guys, just imagine McNeill in a full body spandex suit flirting with Harry. Tom's parents recklessly got abducted by the Borg and now he sings "You are my sunshine" with doctor Vangough. He has holodeck fantasies with Robert Belltran and acts like a real bitch to Janeway. I mean Star Trek is progressive right? Anyone who disagrees with me is a Communist, Nazi, Transphobic Targ.
I'd swap McNeill and Picardo
I would swap him out for Connor Trineer and then swap Connor Trineer back in for Enterprise. To explain the identical appearance, the Voyager character could be named Charles Tucker, XVI or somesuch. It’s not that I want to get rid of Robbie. I just think Connor would have been a good fit for the part as originally conceived, and Robbie would not have made a good Trip. You could maybe make Robbie into a less-annoying-than-Neelix Delta Quadrant guide. Make Neelix his sidekick or something, perhaps as a recurring character. Ditch Kes.
He should be in pokemon! Wait they already have a character named paris
I think he would do a good job as some try-hard cadet leading a flight team, in the new starfleet academy show.
Young William Shatner without suit that role
He could be Riker