I see this as clear evidence that Tom was in Starfleet when he was kicked out from Starfleet. I see no reason why one mistake from B'Elanna (or more correctly, a mistake from the writers) should be considered as more truth than the information on the startrek.com site together with the version in the book "Pathways". Let us give good old Tom the credit he deserves! He actually made it into Starfleet.
But startrek.com or Memory Alpha has no evidence value unless it provides the sources for its claims. There is no source for the graduation of Tom Paris. The reference sites are the ones making the mistakes when attempting to document the show - what is on screen is on screen, and is what counts as Star Trek, whether intentional or not. I'm pretty confident that the show would have featured an obscure computer display or two with such information at some point, though... Timo Salloniemi
But it was never confirmed that B'Elanna's comment was right either. I guess that she just got it all wrong.
This is one thing I always attributed to a continuity error by the writers. Getting mixed up about B'Elanna and Tom's histories. While B'Elanna didn't get expelled, she did leave the academy. In my view, Paris graduated. I'm unclear about whether the Caldik Prime incident happened while he was a Cadet or after he graduated. (But it's not a major thing, it happened and that's enough for me) I also think that Paris becoming a Senior officer quickly helps prove that he did actually graduate. Janeway was reluctant to put Torres in charge of Engineering, because she wasn't qualified on paper. She had never graduated from the Academy, and therefore had no claim to Chief Engineer in her eyes. Whereas Chakotay had graduated and had command experience, so she was comfortable making him First Officer. Paris became third officer quickly, without much discussion. He had proven himself in Caretaker, but still, he wouldn't have ended up so high in the command structure so quickly without actually having graduated.
If we assume the line about him being expelled is correct, the best way to rationalize it is that his dad pulled some strings to get him back in and then when he screwed up again after graduating they came down on him hard since he was on his second chance. It also might explain the sour relationship between him and his father. His dad stuck his neck out for him and Tom wasted the opportunity.
When there are little information in the series itself, I go for the information in the books. In this case "Pathways" written by Jeri Taylor where it's stated that Tom was involved in the accident while at the Academy. But he lied about the accident and did graduate to become an officer. Later on, when he was starting to have bad dreams and hallucinations, he confessed and was booted out of Stardleet after revealing his earler lies about the accident. OK, I'm not too happy with some of Jeri Taylor's writings either. There are severe contradictions in all her stories about the crew members and she has an annoying habit to sugar-coat all possible conflicts. But at least she was a member of the writing stuff for the series and should have some knowledge about the premise for the different characters. Therefore I assume that Tom did graduate from the Academy and was booted out after some time at the USS Exeter. As for the conflict between Tom and his father, Taylor gives no reason at all in her books other than some sort of "youth rebellion". Personally I do think that it was more than that and that something had happened which really did hurt Tom's feelings. The only thing which is clear is that he did dislike his fater long before the accident. My personal explanation is that Tom did find out that Admiral Paris had an affair with another woman and that Nick Locarno was the result of it. When Tom found out about Locarno's existence and how his father had helped Locarno get into the Academy, he was really annoyed. ( More explanations and theories on the Kes Website under "Voyager Mysteries-and how to solve them")
While people do make mistakes, certainly, the general course in Trek is that they don't. If a character's wrong about a point of fact that's normally a plot point. We have reliable narrators. I grant sometimes we just have to take characters as being wrong or lying. But I think that has to be a last resort, to make sense of otherwise hopeless messes like the Romulan Plot from ``Unification''.
Agreed. And it's simple logic, besides; "Starfleet Academy" is still Starfleet, so for Tom to be kicked OUT of Starfleet means that he must at one time have been IN it.
Oh, I think we can rather safely assume that villains are lying more often than not. It's what they do for a living, usually - either they pretend to be good guys to get the drop on the real good guys, or they routinely have to outmaneuver enemies as devious as themselves, and in both cases their lying to our heroes is almost habitual. It would be more realistic to assume that the heroes are lying all the time, of course: little white lies are how we narrate the course of our lives, and sometimes those accumulate to rather ridiculous cover-up attempts. Picard for example could end up lying a lot to remain a credible defender of the PD, or Paris might have to lie in every sentence to uphold the image of him as the carefree almost-Maquis charmer. But in this particular case, B'Elanna has no reason to lie, and even if she innocently errs, Tom has no reason not to counter her claims. Saying "Hey, they did let me graduate! I guess it's true what they say about 'military intelligence'..." would be in keeping with the image Paris is generally trying to project. Timo Saloniemi
I think that quote was probably inserted more for a comedic factor, because as far as I know, Tom wasn't expelled from the Academy, although he was dismissed from Starfleet.