WHY DOES NICK LOCARNO LOOK LIKE TOM PARIS? IF IT'S THE SAME ACTOR AND A SIMILAR PERSONALITY, WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST MAKE THE PARIS CHARACTER LOCARNO?
The Lowdown:
Back when they were putting together Voyager, The Powers That Be wrote in the character of Tom Paris, the braggadocio, roguish hotshot pilot with a heart of gold. In creating the character, they must've taken cues from the character of Nick Locarno (the braggadocio, charismatic, hotshot cadet pilot with a strong sense of team loyalty) from TNG's "The First Duty," because as they were casting the character, they were expressly looking for a "Nick Locarno/Robert Duncan McNeill" type.
So, the story goes, the casting people are having little luck at the auditions for "someone like Robbie McNeill" when someone has a brainstorm: "Hey, what's Robbie McNeill doing nowadays, anyway?" They give him a call, and the rest is history.
Given that the two characters were similar, and they were going to be played by the same actor, some thought *was* given to make the characters the one and the same Nick Locarno. But TPTB felt that Nick Locarno, even with his "code of honor," was too "unredeemable" a character to use--after all, the guy caused the death of a fellow cadet and tried to cover it up. So they decided to keep the two characters distinct and separate despite the similarities and despite being played by the same actor. In fact, Tom Paris' character was deliberately distinguished from Locarno: while both characters were involved in scandals and cover-ups involving the deaths of teammates, in Locarno's case, he instigated the cover-up, while Paris was the guy with the conscience who decided to confess the wrongdoings (like Wesley in "The First Duty").