I always assumed it had more to do with him smuggling goods into federation colonies or some such. He's a very good pilot because he knows how to slip between the cracks of sensor fields and how to use unconventional maneuvers to throw off anyone chasing him. Sounds like the behaviour of a smuggler to me.
Also, I'm pretty sure the pitch for Tom Paris was basically "Han Solo but Star Trek".
lol yeah I never really understood why they tried to sell Neelix as this tough, no-nonsense scrapper when they hired this guy to play the role. Star Trek has some very questionable casting sometimes. Not that Neelix isn't great, but he definitely isn't a "tough guy".
On the other hand, if they made the character correctly, that guy being a real ass-kicking chaotic-good smuggler that faced armies and got our laughing would be awesome.
A myth. The episode with Locarno was by staff writers, wouldn’t have needed any extra fee to re-use the same character. Ro was already semi-regular character too, same deal.
I think Ron Moore, one of the staff writers for that season of TNG, mentioned this in a recent interview.
Ask the writers. (I guess they didn’t want actual blood on Paris’ hands, or decided it didn’t make sense for him to be back in the fleet, which is what Lower Decks have done with Locarno)
In interviews the producers of Voyager have said they felt Locarno’s actions in that episode made him “irredeemable”. (TNG Season 5 DVD-special feature, Memorable Missions Year Five: “The First Duty”)
According to Robert Duncan McNeal, Larcarno gave the impression of being a good guy who made a mistake when in reality deep down he was a bad guy, whereas Paris was the other way around.
Nah if he did he wouldnt have tried blowing up the oxygen extraction plants on that water bubble colony to protect their environment. The types to storm the federation capitol would have been the type to want people like paris thrown out of hover copters for being too woke
