Tell me about the character of Tom Paris, what was he like to play?

Well, he changed a lot over the seven years. When they first brought the character on in the pilot, he was this rebel without a cause guy, he was the trouble maker, he was the one that had the troubled past and everything. That role is very attractive to an actor, because it means that there�s going to be a dark edge, and there�s going to be interesting things to play. Playing the bad guy�s always more fun - not always, but usually more fun than playing a good guy. So they brought him on as the trouble maker, the bad guy. But we realised in the first season that that was hard to play every week as a series regular, especially on Star Trek, where you want all your characters to be heroes, you want them to be action heroes.

So we worked for a few years, I think - it took us a few years to find that balance of how he could be independent and he could question authority, and he could get in trouble every now and then. He didn�t really care about getting in trouble as much as doing the right thing. As long as we made that the central part of the character - that he wanted to do the right thing, that he wanted to help people even if it meant breaking the rules. Whereas the Captain was more in a position of saying, �No, these are the rules and we can�t help them because these are the rules and it�s out of our control,� I�d say, �No, we�ve got to help these people and whatever it takes,� .