Voyager’s Lt. Tom Paris almost had a gruesome storyline

Lt. Tom Paris was almost dealt a crushing blow

Various Star Trek series have had episodes that have made viewers wince. Who could ever forget “Conspiracy” from Star Trek: The Next Generation? An exploding head could definitely qualify as gruesome. Still, some fans don’t mind the yuck factor if it’s done for a good reason and not just glorified gore. Star Trek: Voyager’s Lt. Tom Paris came close to getting one of those storylines, but the staff writer who was listening to the pitch shuddered and insisted the fans wouldn’t want to see all of that blood and gore.

PItched by Dr. Harry Kloor, the first, simultaneous, double Ph.D. winner in US history, the story would have begun with aliens chasing Paris in the Delta Flyer. Though Paris manages to escape the danger, something goes wrong with the Flyer, and he is forced to crash land on an unknown planet. He fights to get out of the disabled shuttle, obviously in a lot of pain, and once out, he realizes his arm is almost completely ripped off. Okay, that would have been a bit gory, but more so than Conspiracy?

Fortunately for Tom, he’s landed on a friendly planet inhabited by a technologically advanced race, and they are able to reattach his arm using Borg technology. One of my biggest questions would have been how those friendly aliens managed to acquire that! Did they fight the Borg and win?

Tom Paris could have had many storylines from this one

At any rate, though this pitch was rejected, Dr. Kloor did manage to sell several of his less gory stories to Star Trek. Those included “Scientific Method,” where aliens experimented on the crew, “Real Life” where the EMH created his own family, and “Raven” which was Seven of Nine’s story from Annika Hansen to being a member of the collective.

Still, I would have liked to have seen the Tom Paris story as I wonder how Paris would have handled being connected to the Borg. Would they have been able to contact him because of the technology? So many storylines could have arisen out of this one episode.