I wanted to see External tank stations http://www.astronautix.com/s/stsexternaltankstation.html Space Station Prometheus from LOIS & CLARK was similar IIRC. Can't find the image.
Also they wanted Ro Laren as the second-in-command of Deep Space Nine but Michelle Forbes didn't want to commit, so they created Kira Nerys instead (ironically the books were able to bring Ro in for their post-finale relaunch series - starting as Security Chief going onto First Officer then eventually Captain)
I don't know if this is in there anywhere, but whatever John Billingsley was given for his audition, he came away with the belief that Phlox was "birdlike". His first attempt at reading for the part was his interpretation of that. An alien-bird-doctor.
It's interesting that the studio would let a writer keep the rights to a character that they introduced into the show. Kor
Then it's too bad that the makeup dept. decided to make him look like a less-intimidating Cardassian. He was initially described as an "exotic-looking alien." Sorry Michael Westmore, but you failed in that department.
I don't know if there is another version of ENT Bible, but the version I have with 13 pages tells nothing about birds. Only a half page about Phlox and he can be anything. Yeah, most exotic character with oblique sense of humor. Conclusion: Mr. Billingsley is a great artist with a very colorful fantasy!
There's a John Billingsley interview on Youtube where he does the birdlike mannerisms he used for his audition it's a really fun interview. It's worth watching.
It's the same on Doctor Who, the Daleks are owned by the estate of the original writer, they need to pay royalties every time they're on screen.
That was in the '60's. I was under the impression that whatever the scriptwriters write for modern Star Trek series automatically become the property of the studio, not the writers themselves, including any characters they create. Apparently I was wrong?
The official reason for Tom Paris was that the other character was felt by the creators to be not redeemable enough; that they really liked the character and wanted to use him, and the actor, but wanted to leeway of a new, albiet very similar character. The Birdphloxx-
That's just silly. Anybody can be 'redeemed' after spending time in a penal colony. Tom certainly was, so why not Nick?
I don’t think VGR writers wanted to go in that direction. Locarno isn’t portrayed as a permanent disappointment with a heart, but rather as a leader whose ambition becomes his undoing. If Jeri Taylor and others were really intent on pursuing that but couldn’t because then it would’ve been Locarno for all practical purposes (“Hey, you’re very obviously using my character, renamed!”), wouldn’t they have come up with a different character, backstory and actor?
And that goes back to my question of who owns the character. if the writer of "The First Duty" owns the Nick Locarno character, and Tom Paris is almost a clone of that character right down to the actor who played him, wouldn't the writer of TFD have a plagiarism case against the producers of VOY?
Perhaps at the very start of production, but Paris as we know him now is merely a character with the same actor and one incident of similar nature in his Starfleet backstory. Substantially they’re totally different people.
Would a writer or Maurice or Harvey weigh in on Writers' Guild rules, as far as rights of writers who invent a character or concept? Copyright-wise, if it's a work-for-hire, the employer would fully own the rights to use. But if the guild agreement at the time included some royalty provision to the writer, that would make sense for these and other cases I've heard of here, where a writer gets paid for later use of a character/concept.
Characterisations get tweaked all the time when guest stars become ongoing characters. Nick Locarno/Tom Paris going from an overly ambitious leader to a loser with a heart of gold is less of a change than say, Zefram Cochrane being turned into an alcoholic for Star Trek: First Contact or any number of non-Trek shows where characterisations are similarly tweaked for spin-off shows. I had a look through my copy of A Vision of the Future but there's little comment on Tom Paris' origins except that McNeil impressed everyone with his part in "The First Duty". Apparently Dwight Schultz was considered as the Holographic Doctor, with Barclay having created him in his own image.