Ensign Adventure

An Ensign's Method

Garrett Wang loses himself in Voyager's human element.

By Ian Spelling, Sci-Fi TV (#4, April 1999)

"I..." Garrett Wang says, then stops. "Well..." he begins, then pauses again.

In his very lived-in trailer on the Paramount Pictures lot, while waiting for an upcoming Star Trek: Voyager scene to begin shooting, the actor struggles to convey how he has grown as an actor during his five-year stint as Ensign Harry Kim.

"It's really tough to answer that one," the talkative and decidedly candid Wang finally acknowledges. "I've grown as an actor in that I can do blue screens better than anyone else. Anybody who's a regular on Voyager, DS9, Babylon 5 or any SF show for that matter, can do blue screen better than any other actor, that's for sure. I was just watching an HBO special on the making of Contact, and they asked Jodie Foster, 'What was the most difficult thing for you about making the movie?' She said, 'Oh, working with the blue screen.' And when you see the movie [clips] where they actually used blue screen, she's very tentative, she's not comfortable with it at all. And I'm looking at her, going, 'Novice! Beginner!'

"So, technically, I've become a better, more proficient actor when it comes to working with things that aren't there. In terms of my acting abilities, period? I would like to say that I'm a better actor now, but, honestly, Star Trek doesn't allow their human actors the range that they do those playing aliens, half-aliens, androids and EMHs. I work within the parameters I've been given. Unfortunately, that doesn't stretch you as an actor until there's an episode that revolves around you. If it's a Kim episode, especially an evil Kim type of episode, then I can maybe do some growing as an actor."

Wang saw little opportunity to flex his acting muscles last season. Of course, the simple reason was that there was so little Kim to be seen. Sure, Harry appeared in every episode, but there were precious few moments of genuine character development for him. In "Revulsion," for example, he and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) exchanged some amusing sexually charged banter, but it rarely carried over to subsequent shows. "I guess the highlight of the fourth year, in terms of an episode with a high concentration of Kim, was 'Demon.' It was the one in which Kim and Paris [Robert Duncan McNeill] got duplicated by this metallic life form. That turned out OK, though on paper it looked terrible. That kind of thing happens; you get a script that's a good read and on film it doesn't have the impact it should because the director or someone else screws it up. Then you get scripts that aren't great reads, but the director or the actors somehow make it come together.

"Other than 'Demon,' though, there really wasn't much of Kim last season at all. That mostly had to do with the fact that we had to introduce this new character. Voyager is an ensemble show, and I'm just one of the actors. The decision was made to focus heavily on Seven of Nine, and there was nothing that I could say. All I could do was support the decision of the powers-that-be and do my job. I didn't say a thing. I didn't say, 'I need more screen time.' I just shut up, came into work and did what was asked of me as best I could. I had a lot of time off, and that was fine. What was interesting was that they did end up using me. They were short on time for about 10 episodes, meaning the episodes ran short, so scenes were added, and almost all of them were bits for Kim. Without those scenes, many episodes would have been one-line shows for Kim.

"It was a little frustrating, I'm not going to lie about that. Nine people is a huge ensemble. It's hard to give everybody something to do on a consistent basis. I've deduced that six is the right number of people for a show. And that's for any ensemble TV show, not just an SF show. If that's the case, then one to three people will basically be ignored in any given Voyager episode. Kim and Neelix [Ethan Phillips] were definitely ignored last year, and if Paris hadn't had the storyline with Torres [Roxann Dawson], he probably would have had nothing to do. Like I said, though, I just tried to do my job, to do the best work I could in my two-minute bits. And you know what? At the end of the the season, all the show's powers-that-be said, 'Great job! You did some really good work.' Wang stock was as high as it had ever been, which was pretty ironic. I tried to be a team player, and it just made things run smoother."

And what of season five, whiich is now more than half over?

"There's a far better balance this season. Balance is the key word with an ensemble show. Maybe as a payback for last season they gave me 'Timeless,' the 100th episode of the series," says Wang. The LeVar Burton-directed hour featured Kim, Chakotay (Robert Beltran) and the Doctor (Robert Picardo) reversing history to prevent an accident that killed Voyager's remaining crew 15 years earlier. "Believe me, the writers, Brannon Braga, all of these guys, they knew what was going on around here. They knew who got neglected in season four. 'Timeless' was nice. It's supposedly the best episode yet in history of Voyager. It's supposed to be our 'City On the Edge of Forever.' Reading it, I was very impressed. It read like butter. Shooting it was fine, though I would have liked something for the older version of Kim, maybe a scar or something to separate him from the younger Kim. My hair was the topic of much discusion. I wanted it to be really long, like I hadn't gotten a haircut in years. I have pictures of me with this caveman wig I wore for hair and makeup tests." Wang finds several Polaroids, which he offers as proof. "But it went too far. We went somewhere between just dyeing my hair with grey streaks and that long wig to make me look older.

"Also, Brannon said to me initially that he pictured the older Kim as being like the Mel Gibson character in the original Lethal Weapon - a character who is really out there, really on the edge. Gibson's wife has died; Harry feels responsible for making a mistake that got his crewmates killed. When we shot it, there was definitely a focus and intensity to the older Kim but there wasn't that whacked-out, on-the-edge craziness Brannon and I had talked about. That might have been fun to play, but it worked well anyway. I liked working with LeVar. He knows the show, the actors and the characters. We have some first-time directors who just don't get it, and you'll notice that they only end up doing one show. So I was glad we had LeVar directing 'Timeless.'"

Wang was also a major factor in "Thirty Days." In this episode, Paris disobeys Captain Janeway's (Kate Mulgrew) direct orders and the instructions of the water planet's Prefect (Benjamin Livingston) in an ill-advised attempt to use the Delta Flyer to single-handedly resolve the planet's environmental containment problems. Wang also has more to do in "Latent Image," which found the Doctor's performance adversely affected by a life-anci-death decision he was forced to make. "There are some qood moments in both of those shows, and there's a lot more I would like to see," Wang notes. "I would like to see much more humor in the show, and in Harry Kim. Rick Berman has said, and he is right, that the actors playing humans have to underplay our roles in order for the [non-humans] to come off as real as possible. I understand that. But any time people are in a position where they're screwed, the humor level just goes higher and higher. As actors, when you hit the 15th hour of working, at that point, every- thing is funny. Everything. You just get delirious and laugh about everything.

"I liken that to the big picture for Voyager. The ship is in the Delta Quadrant and the crew is com- pletely screwed. We should definitely have more gallows humor. This should be the first Star Trek show where the characters can let loose a little bit - there are no admirals to check up on us. We can play hooky a little and let our true feelings and emotions come through a bit more, and add a little more color to the characters. That's one of the reasons why I don't want us to get home so quickly. Everybody's talking about us getting back to the Alpha Quadrant, but I'm used to the Delta Quadrant now. It lets us meet new aliens and overcome different kinds of threats. If we go home, the show will be all about us being court martialed and then, maybe, about us going back out together. I would rather we stayed out in the Delta Quadrant

"Anyway, getting back to seeing more colors in the characters, in Harry. I mean, who is Harry Kim? What are his beliefs? What are his ideals? What are his fears? We haven't seen that much of those things. I would also like to see more interaction between Harry and other characters that we don't see him with as often. I went in and asked the writers if I could have more scenes with Chakotay and the Doctor. 'Timeless' ended up as Chakotay, the Doctor and me. So that was nice, and I would love to see more of it."

Garrett Wang must now head back to work. Smiling as he zips up his uniform, the actor appears to be a happy guy. "All in all, I'm still having a good time," he says. "There's still interest on my part. It's still a challenge to play the role, to do this kind of a show. The next challenge will be to go up to Rick's office and ask him for permission to start observing directors, so that I can go in there and direct. It would be really nice to get behind the camera and direct a show before this is finished. What I'm hoping to push for - and this is Garrett in fantasyland - is the opportunity to direct a script that I write. Hopefully, that will happen next year, and that would really be a learning experience."

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