YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E19 "The First Duty"

• Canon Fodder:
  • According to The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, the incident that got the Kolvoord Starburst banned at the Academy occurred while Kirk was a cadet. He was even leading his own squadron that witnessed the explosion and got caught in the blast, nearly being killed themselves.
  • In one of the Expanded Universe Novels set after this episode, Wesley, after a very bad day, vents to his room-mate. Wesley wouldn't — and knows he couldn't — say this to anyone but his friend, but the accident in this episode was, in fact, actually caused by Joshua Albert's pilot error, (though if not for the dangerous and illegal maneuver, it wouldn't have mattered) and Joshua would have survived like the rest of Nova Squadron if he had simply stayed calm instead of panicking.
• Epileptic Trees: Due to the near identical nature of their backstories and the fact that they are both played by Robert Duncan McNeill, some fans believe that Nicholas Locarno is really Tom Paris, having gone to the Academy under a pseudonym rather than appear to have been admitted due to Admiral Paris' influence. This was ultimately Jossed by Locarno's appearance in Star Trek: Lower Decks.
• Moral Event Horizon: Part of the reason Nick Locarno was replaced with Tom Paris for Star Trek: Voyager is because the writers, and Robert Duncan McNeill, felt Locarno had crossed this. It's not hard to see where they're coming from; Locarno pressured the rest of Nova Squadron into performing a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that was banned by Starfleet Academy because the last squad to try it were all killed, and then after a practice session went pear-shaped and got one of them killed, decided to pressure his surviving squadmates into a Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit. Although he does take responsibility eventually, it's only because Wesley spilled the beans after Picard confronted him over the cover-up, and he goes on to blame the Academy faculty for the tragedy on the basis that they didn't let Nova Squadron practice.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While Wesley still has his detractors, this is a story that could have only involved him and made full use of Wil Wheaton's acting talents.
• Take That, Scrappy!: The episode is one long piece of it—especially the famous chewing out in Picard's ready room—showing that Wesley is no longer in any way a Creator's Pet who can never do any wrong, and for whom the scripts will no longer bend over backwards to make look better.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Some viewers would have preferred that Locarno had received a redemption as a cast member on Star Trek: Voyager rather than creating Tom Paris as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute. Ronald D. Moore and Naren Shankar also hold this belief (given that they created the character, it's understandable), and argue that Paris also covered up his own culpability in an accident^note though it should be noted that when Paris came clean, he did it willingly, whereas Wesley forced Locarno's hand. However, Robert Duncan McNeill, who played both, feels the opposite.
    McNeill: I think Locarno was a bad guy who pretended to be a good guy. Deep down inside, he was rotten. In contrast, inside Tom was a good guy who pretended to be a bad guy. He sort of wanted everybody to think he didn't give a damn and that he was a lone wolf, but deep down he wasn't like that.
  • Although Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan clearly feels that Locarno was a wasted character (why else would he bring this one-shot character back?), he evidently shares McNeill's view that Voyager couldn't have properly redeemed the character. In Lower Decks, Locarno has become a mercenary pilot-for-hire operating on a seedy criminal world, and turns out to be the main antagonist of season 4. Notably, this was the context in which McNeill agreed to reprise the role.

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