TOM PARIS
"Goodbye, Delta Quadrant."
- Tom Paris
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Thomas Eugene Paris was a Human Starfleet officer who returned home from the Delta Quadrant in 2378 after serving for seven years as flight controller of the Federation starship USS Voyager.
As the son of a senior Starfleet official, Admiral Owen Paris, Tom Paris often felt inadequate due to the pressure his father put on him to excel. He had a troubled relationship with his father who remained tough and remote, telling him for instance that crying was a sign of weakness.
As Tom had a love of the ocean and sailing, he wanted to join the Federation Naval Patrol. On the other hand, his father had other plans for him, and Tom abandoned this idea.
Tom discovered his love of piloting at the age of eight, when his father took him for a trip in an S-class shuttlecraft.
At the Academy, in the 2360s, Admiral Paris was the instructor of his course on Survival Strategies. Admiral Paris did not play favorites with his son as his student, giving Tom Paris a "B-minus", overall, in the course.
During his first year at the Academy, Paris fell in love for the first time with Susie Crabtree. She broke off the relationship and he almost failed Stellar Cartography, broke out in hives and couldn't get out of bed for a week as a result. He spent much of that year in a daze and even years later would think of her from time to time. He chose Marseilles, France as the site of his physical training second semester. He frequented a small bar known as Sandrine's, where he met a girl by the name of Ricky. Advanced Subspace Geometry was the only class at the Academy where he actually paid attention. He did hone his natural aptitude for piloting skills on craft large and small and proved adept at holo-engineering. He managed to graduate from Starfleet Academy after a stormy four years with a major in astrophysics.
While he considered most of his early family to be rather ordinary people, referring to them as "salt of the earth" and some "farmers" and "colonists", he held great respect for one of his ancestors, a pilot who flew the first orbital glider over the lower Martian plateau.
Tom Paris loved his bedroom back home, and often locked himself away in there to cry, play games and listen to music. Also noted, he lost his virginity there at the age of seventeen while his parents were away for the weekend.
Upon graduation Paris was assigned to the USS Exeter. Later, he was dismissed from Starfleet when he tried to cover up a piloting error on his behalf which led to the deaths of three fellow officers at Caldik Prime; the fact that he later told the truth didn't make up for it. He once joked that "The ghosts of those three dead officers came to me in the middle of the night and taught me the true meaning of Christmas" when asked why he told the truth.
After being expelled from Starfleet, he joined the Maquis, but was captured on his first mission. Paris was serving time in a Federation Penal Settlement in Auckland, New Zealand when he received a visit from Captain Kathryn Janeway. She gave him the opportunity to redeem himself by participating on a mission to track down the Maquis who were hiding in the Badlands. After a short hesitation, he decided to take this opportunity.
Paris received a cool reception on Voyager due to the accident at Caldik Prime, especially from first officer Cavit as well as the ship's doctor. He struck a friendship with Harry Kim, who had just graduated from the academy. When Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's Array, he helped rescue B'Elanna Torres and Kim who had been sent to an underground Ocampa city. He saved Chakotay's life during the rescue. He was promoted to flight controller, with his Starfleet rank of Lieutenant junior grade reinstated. He was assigned the additional job of medic for The Doctor when an assessment for medical replacements was brought forth, as Paris had two semesters of biochemistry at the Academy. After his training program began, the Doctor recognized medical aptitude in Kes, and personally recruited her. While his training ostensibly continued under Janeway's orders, the Doctor expressed a clear preference for Kes' services. She therefore came to be the Doctor's primary assistant. Paris once again went into heavy rotation on the sickbay duty roster after her departure.
During the last year of Voyager's journey, he was reinstated to the rank of Lieutenant junior grade prior to helping the Borg drones of Unimatrix Zero escape from the hive. Seven suggested Tom could help Icheb study astrometrics for the Starfleet Academy entrance exam, when she believed she would no longer be around. He married Torres during the first running of the Antarian Trans-stellar Rally, proposing as the shuttle came close to suffering a warp core breach. Its destruction was averted after the warp core was ejected into a class J nebula, containing the antimatter explosion. The two of them used the Delta Flyer for their honeymoon.
Tom Paris had a variety of interests, but many of them focused on 20th century North American culture, specifically the latter half of the century – old sci-fi movies, pulp sci-fi, "muscle cars" and automobiles in general, and similar pursuits. He created his own holoprogram called Grease Monkey in which he could tinker with old cars. He liked 20th century snacks (in that period better known as "junk food") such as hot dogs, popcorn, and pizza. He was interested in 19th century sailing vessels and seemed to have some interest in Irish culture, as was evidenced by his creation of the Fair Haven holoprogram. He also possessed considerable knowledge of the early Mars projects from the first missions of the 1970s
to the first colony.
He was fond of playing practical jokes, particularly on Tuvok. For example, he reprogrammed a holographic Vulcan monastery that Tuvok used in a variety of ways (including dressing one of the central figures in sleepwear, and changing the chants to Ferengi chants about profit). In the holographic village of Fair Haven, when the character Maggie was about to kiss Harry, Tom turned Maggie into a Holstein-Friesian cow. He also reprogrammed all the systems Tuvok interacted with to say "live long and prosper" whenever he used them.
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From: Memory Alpha
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