The Trouble With Harry

Garrett Wang, Voyager's Harry Kim, on Borgs, babes, and bad aliens.

by Pat Jankiewicz, Starburst (Special #42, Yearbook 1999/2000)

As Harry Kim, Garrett Wang is Star Trek: Voyager's wild-eyed rookie, the likeable young Starfleet officer who always finds a way to help thwart an alien invasion, rampaging monster or galactic virus despite his inexperience. In person, the hip actor has a wry sense of humour and a unique view how life in the Delta Quadrant has changed his alter ego.

"I think Harry started out being the youngest guy on the show, the most inexperienced - he's got the knowledge, but no experience," explains Wang. "From that stand- point, people watching the show see Kim as the eyes of the ship. They watch through Kim, he's the Everyman, the one anybody can understand. The first season is all about him going, 'Wow, gasp, look!' He's going through all this crazy stuff for the first time, so he's freaking out. People relate with that."

Harry Kim's bizarre experiences bring him into contact with a variety of alien races, and the actor takes delight in dealing with some of Voyager's aliens. "I'm glad the Borg are finally on the show," he declares. "Being in the Delta Quadrant, I knew it was a matter of time before they appeared. I also like the Vidians, and that hunter species the Hirogen are interesting guys."

Wang would like to boldly go up against some better-looking aliens. 'I actually asked the people in make-up to give me some moulding clay. I'm moulding my own alien that I want them to use in an episode... I have some ideas of what would look cool. "We have had some aliens on the show that I have absolutely laughed at," he confesses. "There were some aliens that I looked at and thought, 'What happened to the budget for this episode?!'

"I would say the worst alien we've had - not because of prosthetics - was when we came upon these aliens who said, 'In order for you to go through our Space, you must be submitted to 17 different checkpoints.' These alien guys - the two actors they hired, one was from the Royal Shakespeare Company with a refined, 'Thurston Howell the Third' accent and the other guy they hired was from Brooklyn."

Dropping into a great British accent for a moment, Wang recreates the scene. 'The first alien says,'You will be subjected to 17 different checkpoints' and the Brooklyn alien goes, 'And if youse don't come with what ya do, we's gonna have to inspect yer ship!' They also put these head dresses on them with a guard rail that made it look like a baseball umpire's mask! They just looked ridiculous, l was upset seeing these guys. It happens every now and then, where an alien comes on and you go, 'Oh please!' But there are also times where they make awesome aliens, you just marvel and say 'Man, what a great job!' A lot of it has to do with time constraints. These make-up guys have to create something quickly and on budget. If a lot of the budget is put forth towards the location, they won't have a lot to make up 17 different aliens."

The series' more bizarre aliens present a particular challenge to the cast. "Species 9472 was computer generated. Fighting a creature you can't see is difficult. The art department came in with a cardboard cut-out and said 'This is the alien and he's moving.'"

Special effects are an everyday problem for the cast. 'In the beginning, the hardest part was working with things that aren't there. They're telling you to look at the screen and say, 'Now this big nebula is expanding' or you're supposed to see ships firing on each other or a black hole appearing and you have to sit there and envision it in your mind and make it real for yourself because you're staring at a blank screen. It was the most difficult thing in the beginning and it still is; you have to keep focused at work.

"For me, the hardest part of doing Voyager is the hours. You work very long hours," Wang reveals. "I would say we put in more hours than any other show on TV, because it's such a technical process; everything has to be precise. They want it perfect on our show; if one hair is out of place or you're not looking correctly at the view screen, blue screen, green screen, we have to do it again... Everything has to be right on the money. We keep doing it until we get it right and end up being there quite late most of the time.

"We work constantly and don't know when we're gonna have time off; we don't know our schedule until the week before, so the time commitment is the toughest thing," he sighs. "It used to be the language, the dialogue and technobabble, but that's like breathing now, easy for most of us."

The actor is proud to have mastered technobabble. "The key to.doing difficult Sci-Fi dialogue is to not emphasize it, to just throw it away very quickly," Wang states. "Say it as if it's a normal, everyday occurrence. If you put any emphasis on technical language, then it doesn't sound real."

Wang has a love/ hate relationship with another feature of his everyday routine - his Federation jurnpsuit. "If they made them a little more comfortable, it would be really cool,' he jokes, "but it's a wool blend, so its very hot in the summer. And it's not a very forgiving suit - if you put on a couple pounds, it'll show! If you try to jump, run or move, it pulls you in all the wrong places."

Fortunately, he doesn't get to wear his uniform outside the studio. "Our suits do not leave the set. They cost about $1,000 to produce each one and they don't let you leave the lot with them! Friends always ask me, 'When you go to Star Trek conventions, do you have to wear your Federation suit? 'l say, 'No, you think I take it home every night and dry-clean it myself?!' They don't let us take anything off the set - suits or phasers!"

Wang might not be allowed to take his costume home, but he was able to bring a little of his life to the character, in the form of a geographical shift. "They originally said Harry was from New Mexico, but I changed it for the benefit of my girlfriend, because she's from South Carolina," he laughs. "On the show, I said 'I was born in South Carolina'. That made her happy - and I went down to the University of South Carolina and spoke to the Star Trek class there. They have Star Trek 101 that talks about the ethics of the show."

Wang has undergone many experiences and transformations on the show, including infection by Species 9472. "That wasn't difficult at all, I just had to lay still and not move around too much. It was all optical, not make-up FX. I've had different types of virus and mutations on the show," the actor shrugs. "I enjoy my time in the make-up chair. My favourite was when they aged me to 95 years old, full prosthetics, three hours in the chair. I loved it! When you put on a mask like that, it changes your whole persona!"

However, Wang was less pleased than you might expect with the episode "Favorite Son," where a fresh side to Kim's personality is revealed by alien babes who abduct the ensign. "I didn't like it because the main story idea was that 'Harry Kim is indeed an alien, with recessive alien genes' and they changed that so it was just a virus he caught from these alien women to lure him over there. You have the writer with one idea and the studio deciding they wanted something else, so all of a sudden, you had a clash over ideas and they didn't go one way or another. To me, it became an episode about mush. I wasn't into shooting it because I couldn't do anything with it. I played it the best I could, that's the bottom line. I should have separated myself from this struggle going on over the script and just did it, but I let it affect me a little bit."

Though "Favorite Son" ironically proved to be one of Wang's least favourite episodes, there are others he remembers with pride. "The first one, 'Caretaker,' is definitely one of them," he declares. "I loved it because we all got together and had a chance to get to know each other. It was fun, like shooting a feature film Thirty-one days of production on location. For myself, I also like 'The Chute' [where Kim and Paris end up in an alien prison whose location in an orbiting Space station makes it escape-proof]. That was a good episode for me because I got to be the hero and save Tom Paris for once.

"There are a lot of episodes I like; I can't name every one but personally I think the ideal episode is one that uses everybody in the cast. A great episode gives the entire crew equal time; like 'Deadlock' from the second season, when the ship splits in two. The Vidians come in and attack while Harry Kim gets sucked into Space. A perfect episode has balance. I don't like the episodes that are focused on only one person, those aren't my favourites at all,' Wang says firmly.

Currently, much of Kim's time on Voyager is spent in a burgeoning friendship with the buxom Borg Seven Of Nine. "She's an interesting character and Jeri Ryan is a great person," he notes. "I was the first person to really talk with her when she came around on the set, and I showed her the ropes, more or less, on how our operation ran. I told her about conventions and doing appearances, so I guess I have an affinity towards her because I felt a little like her mentor. Of course, she's blossomed into this hugely popular character, which is great for the show because it helps in the ratings. Jeri is a witty, intelligent person."

As for the characters' interesting but platonic relationship, "What else can I say? People are always asking me 'When are you guys, Harry Kim and Seven Of Nine, gonna get it together?' The minute Seven's charac- ter becomes more human than Borg, when she's 70% human and 30% Borg and she develops a little more respect for Harry Kim, than maybe something will happen," the actor grins. "Right now, there's still too much Borg in her for any real relationship."

In the meantime, Wang is interested in his character's relationship with the rest of the cast, and would like to see more scenes of the Voyager crew actually acting like a crew. "You want to see the characters grow and the only way they can grow is by interacting with each other. When you have an episode that only focuses on one person, you end up neglecting all these other characters," he states. "They're all wonderful actors who can accomplish quite a bit and can do whatever you ask them to. I feel 'You're already paying us, now have us work!'

"I don't think anyone on the show has been overexposed, but I think what ultimately happens is when one character gets 'hot' - people like that character - writers and people selling story ideas to Voyager will only give story ideas with that character in mind, so there's an unequal balance of shows focused on one character way too much."

He feels one thing missing on their Final Frontier has been a sense of humour. "Ultimately, that's what Trek fans love about the original show - the humour, from Spock and McCoy. That stuff keeps it going, you can't have everything serious all the time," Wang explains. "I kept saying to the writers 'Why don't you throw some comedy our way? It's not like we can't do comedy!' Now Kim is slowly getting comedic stuff, we all seem to be getting funny lines. We need it because everybody has a sense of humour, especially the people I work with.

"They're a funny group of people, every single one," he praises. "We have a ball on the set, Kate's hilarious off camera. You're seeing a little more of that now, the humour is being doled out by different people. Each episode should be injected with some humour, it should be distributed evenly, not just to one character."

He has great fondness for his Captain. "Kate Mulgrew is wonderful; it's a pleasure to work with her. Of the stuff between her and Harry on the show, I really like the scene where I was struck by Species 9472 and Janeway comes in to Sick Bay to say, 'Hang in there, Harry'. I'm lying on the Biobed and a tear comes out. That was real," he smiles. "My favourite times with Kate have been off-camera, just kidding around and joking with her."

The actor is also pleased about his budding film career. "I'm waiting for my film, One Hundred Percent, to get picked up by a distributor. The director is a USC film grad named Eric Koyanagi and the entire cast is Asian American actors. It's got me, Dustin Nguyen from 21 jump Street, Tamlyn Tomita [Burning Zone] and -Lindsay Price from Beverly Hills 90210. It's a hip Asian American flick that tries to break some stereotypes. I filmed the movie on Christmas break in the third season, going straight from shooting Voyager to One Hundred Percent, so it was a tough grind. It was worth it, though - it's a good movie."

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