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Battle of the Helmsmen will now commence. 8 pilots enter. 1 pilot leaves.
(startrek.website)
Highest upvoted helmsman in this thread will be declared best helmsman in the fleet.
Gotta go with Tom. Going from prison to full redemption, while at the same time growing into a loving father married to a hot badass half-Klingon is definitely life goals. Not to mention his affinity for history and classic cars.
Dude designed and built his own shuttle, then had a breakthrough in warp field theory that let him exceed warp 10. In addition to scraping through multiple battles with Borg and other fleets of enemies. How is he not the clear winner?
He broke warp 10 before he designed the Delta Flyer. Season 2 for warp 10 and season 5 for Delta Flyer.
He loses points for the time spent as a lizard, I think
Also that sweet transition from literally no attitude control straight into warp drive when they got shot by Species 8472. Dude’s got skills.
I was thinking of the same scene! He was great at getaways and evading.
It’s not official canon but since the actor appeared in TNG as a different cadet who engaged in risky shuttle maneuvers to show off, it’s assumed that Paris was generally the same.
Yeah the two characters have different names (Nick Lacarno vs Tom Paris), but I always assumed the TNG character was the inspiration for Paris.
Iirc he was supposed to be the same character, but then voyager would need to pay royalties to the tng writers every episode he was in
lol, that sounds about right. I’d be pissed if I were the writers. “Hey we used the same actor and the same back story, but we used a different character name so go fuck yourself.”
At least it cost the studio a nice bit of story continuity from its hugely popular TNG property. Im sure more trek fans would have been more gripped by voyager with that bit in there. It certainly has a bit more chemistry to me after learning it just now.
I would have preferred the writers got paid, but being cheap cost the stuido too.
Just as long as it's not time for his yearly mid-life crisis.
Yeah it's Paris and it's not even close. He was the first test pilot to break the trans-warp barrier. Smashin hot Klingon ass, and banged his captain when they were lizards. Mans a fuckin Starfleet legend.
I'd say Lt Mayweather as runner up. Dude was a freighter pilot and they basically tossed him in our very first combat spaceship that can hop around the galaxy. And was like "I dunno figure it out as we go" lmao.
Ortegas and Paris are definitely the most pilot like pilots character wise though. Both of them have fighter pilot personalities, excited to get into the action and do wild shit.