LIEUTENANT (JUNIOR GRADE) THOMAS EUGENE PARIS (Robert Duncan McNeill), in Star Trek: Voyager, served as chief pilot aboard USS Voyager NCC-74656 on her forced seven-year cruise in the Delta Quadrant.Tom Paris comes from a long line of distinguished Starfleet officers. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, he has difficulty with the high expectations if his father, an admiral. Growing up, Paris was praised by friends and teachers, but his father remained somewhat tough and remote, once telling the boy that crying was a sign of weakness. Despite the pressures that his celebrated family brought, Paris graduated from Starfleet Academy in four years, though he risked failing at least one course during his time as a student.Despite his family legacy or perhaps because of it, Paris buckled under pressure during his service in Starfleet and tried to cover-up an error that led the deaths of three officers. He confession, which came at the point he was about to be exonerated, resulted in his discharge. After leaving Starfleet he turned to the Maquis for fulfillment as a fighter pilot, but was captured by Starfleet on his first mission and this time was sentenced to the Federation Penal Settlement near Auckland, New Zealand, wearing an alarm anklet.Paris got a second chance in 2371 when he was temporarily released from the rehab colony by Captain Janeway, who needed him to scout her new starship through the Badlands. That temporary release became permanent when The Caretaker snatched Voyager out of the Badlands to a destination 75,000 light years distant. To no great surprise, he found Captain Janeway's Maquis quarry also in the Delta Quadrant. So he found himself reunited with some old Maquis frenemies, including Chakotay, a native Latin American who commanded the Maquis vessel.In the ensuing seven years, he adjusted well to being a Starfleet officer as well, and to taking orders from Chakotay again after the latter became first officer of Voyager. In fact, before the cruise ended, he won the heart of a Klingon-Human hybrid woman named B'Ellana Torres. Captain Janeway officiated at their wedding. But many things happened in-between, and after that. He hit the low point in his career when he broke both discipline and the Prime Directive in an adventure in the water world. For that, Janeway confined him to the brig for thirty days and busted him back to the rank of ensign. (He would earn back his open-circle pip within a year.)But perhaps the high point, other than his earning back his promotion, happened when he played out a ruse with Chakotay to smoke out the traitor Michael Jonas. Over the course of several adventures, Paris gave a thoroughly convincing imitation of a screw-up. On the occasion of the Vidiian female visiting the ship, Tuvok confined Paris to the brig for a day for insubordination. Then Paris joined a Talaxian space caravan, knowing First Maj Culluh of the Kazon Nistrum sect would intercept that caravan and capture Paris. Paris escaped--and learned the full particulars of Jonas' treachery and, more to the point, his identity. Which he duly transmitted to Voyager while flying a desperate flight from Culluh. He was probably floored to learn that Neelix, whom he thought of more in terms of comic relief than otherwise, would fight Jonas to the death in the engine room to put paid to his treason.Paris has a natural aptitude for piloting, regardless of the size of the craft. He not only flies craft; he builds them. In Star Trek: Voyager: Extreme Risk (#5.3), he designed and built the Delta Flyer, a powerful runabout that flew missions inside gas giants and once even sailed as a submarine. He added some rather old-fashioned controls that had more in common with circa 1937 Earth space opera than with Starfleet standards of engineering. When Master-at-arms Tuvok called him on it, he frankly admitted--or avowed--that he was building, quite simply, a hot rod. (In fact, Tom and his team had to race against the clock to build it ahead of an alien enemy!)He is also adept at holo-engineering. Paris has an affinity for antique Earth ground vehicles and Terran American history and culture, especially of the 20th century, and has enjoyed sailing in true life and in holo-programs.Note: in an alternate and ultimately abandoned time-line, Lt. Paris remains on board long enough to get a second solid pip (that of a full Lieutenant) and then find himself once more entitled to wear the ring pip in addition: the rank insigne of a Lieutenant Commander. Upon the sad death of B'Elanna Torres during the Year of Hell, Commander Paris marries Kes. Their daughter, Linnis, becomes a physician under the tutelage of The Doctor, now named after Vincent Van Gogh. Linnis marries Tom's younger friend, the former Ensign--now Lieutenant Junior Grade--Harry Kim and has a son named Andrew.However: in the eventual time-line, Tom Paris survives the Year of Hell--aboard a time-ship under the command of a captain on an insane quest to obliterate every influence that threatened the Krenem Empire. At the end of that adventure, Voyager rams the time-ship and causes a temporal incursion that ultimately makes any war against the Krenem unnecessary. Show less «