You’re right! I saw a picture before and could have sworn he had pointy ears. Yeah, the Tom Paris thing always bugged me.
Yeah, I was confused on both counts the first time I saw Voyager because I could have sworn it was two characters I had seen before only to find out they were not a few seasons in.
Oddly the rip off character ended up being one of the best on the show after Holo Doc and 7 of 9, how often can you say that?
Of course what caused real confusion back in the 90s was that Robert Picardo’s character was credited on screen as just “The Doctor” and when you add in all the time travel plots Voyager used it mean that some times SCi-Fi fans wouldn’t know if you were talking about the character from Voyager or Doctor Who and that led to everyone calling him Holo Doc. I guess all the good characters on that show were fated to confuse people from day one, was that their goal? Well we are talking about a show co-created by Rick Berman, a man who once fired a composer for quote “Being too good at his job”, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised 😃