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Seized Opportunities
Harry Kim was Voyager's closest thing to an everyman, though he was more closely tuned to the writers' idea of their core audience: nerdy, shy, young adult males. As such, it is no mistake that the everymen of the three latter Trek series have been engineers - Kim, O'Brien, and Trip. Given the number of times that the fans who have been interviewed in Trek documentaries have said that Trek is one of the reasons that they went into an engineering field, this choice should not be a surprise. Well, though it may have been driven by Machiavellian marketing motives, I'm prepared to say that it was a good choice.
It is easy to identify with Kim. I think the thing that I find most compelling about him is that he's kind of a dark mirror of Torres. If she's the light side of Dilbert, wherein he gets recognized for his ability, Kim is the Dilbert that gets constantly overlooked by management despite his skills. I find it very interesting that the aggressive, Klingon Dilbert, the one with a complicated past, she's the one who ultimately has the brighter story to tell. Meanwhile, Kim languishes in obscurity, passed up for promotion time and again.
The peak of the "Kim's ambition" thread came in Warhead. I think that story effectively moved his character forward into making some command decisions, only to find out how hard they are. Every story after that one continued to retread old ground, continually erasing progress he's already made - I'm thinking of Nightingale in particular - but that's a topic best reserved for the next section.
The building of his friendship with Paris is probably my favorite part of Caretaker. Though the friendship waxed and waned over the series, when it was used, it was used well. The characters acted differently in each other's presence, each one showing facets that didn't come out normally. When a story that focused on one of them didn't work, it usually didn't work because it forgot about how it would affect their relationship. The pair also worked well on the basis of representing the two opposing views of returning to Earth. Kim had everything to look forward to: a family, friends, and career advancement. Paris had nothing: he hated the one family member we'd ever hear about (his dad), and on Voyager his career was much more alive than it ever was on Earth. Though this aspect was not as explored as fully as I'd like, it was central to my enjoyment of Endgame.
Missed Opportunities
I liked the "dark Dilbert" theme of Kim, but it got very old. He remained a very simple, one-note character throughout the show. They did get some good episodes out of that theme, but there's a point at which there's just no more milk in that udder: give the man a promotion. The stories would practically write themselves if they'd done so, particularly given Kim's relationship with Paris, one of the few guys on the show to get promoted... let alone promoted multiple times. That's got to put a strain on the relationship. I know the writers wanted to avoid continuity, and I respect that, but if they're going to promote and demote Paris then the box has been opened already. Paris and Torres got married, and Kim couldn't get an extra pip on his collar.
Kim's exuberance became very strained by the end of the run too, largely because Kim simply didn't have much to be exuberant about. This aspect of his character wound up very much at odds with his dark Dilbert side, and the fact that, in an O'Brien way, bad things keep happening to Kim. O'Brien carried his hardships in a way that an older, experienced character can, but Kim kept bubbling back up with youthful vim and vigor that seemed to have no source.
There's a sub-theme for Kim as "the guy who is so inexperienced that he does annoying stuff for no reason." I bet you can tell based on my name of the theme exactly how I feel about it. Resolutions? Kim is the "I love Janeway" puppet who mutinies against Tuvok and nearly gets everyone killed. Alter Ego? He practically drives the episode into the ground with his adolescent angst. The Disease... well, that brings us to another annoying sub-theme:
"Kim has this weird relationship with sexual behavior." Man, where do I start on this one? Well, The Disease, Prime Factors, and Favorite Son all have strange, conflicting plots that involve Kim having or not having sex for odd reasons, but I think I'll focus mainly on his relationship with Seven. What the hell was that? I mean, he's obsessed with her, then she's all like "okay, cool", then he's terrified... the cynic in me wants to tie together the fact that Kim was marketed as an everyman to the young adult males, while Seven was an obvious sex-driven ratings grab towards the same demographic. Maybe the writers were trying to insult their demographic subtly, saying "Ha! She'd even be out of your league if you were a super competent young ops officer!" Frankly though, I'm going to follow the Hanlon's razor interpretation here: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I think perhaps the writers simply couldn't figure out what they wanted to do with the two, and eventually dropped it. They weren't a particularly compelling pair, so I can't say as I blame them.
Kim's relationship with Torres, which also started in Caretaker, was fascinating and ultimately underused. As the two sides of the Dilbert coin, as well as a potential bridge between the Maquis and Federation crew, I think they worked well together. When they did show up together, their strengths meshed nicely: Kim brought the optimism and the even temper, while Torres brought the experience and the aggression necessary to get things done. I suppose that their relationship was not quite different enough from his friendship with Tom, which may have been the reason it wasn't pursued, but I still count it as a let down.
The Actor
If you know something about Garrett Wang, you probably know that he was up for getting dropped from the cast at the end of season three. He wasn't in the end, and it may have had something to do with being named one of People Magazine's 50 most beautiful people. Whether Kes got dumped instead or if she was going to go no matter what is up for debate, but I'm ready to say that getting named as being attractive in some some magazine is no reason to keep a character. Either kill him because it will help the story or keep him because it will help the story. The story, to me, is paramount.
As for Wang's acting, I'll give him a rating of good enough. He didn't elevate his material (bad lines were still bad), but his good lines were still good. No episodes were made or broken on the basis of his acting ability alone, but I was quite happy with his performances in The Thaw, The Chute, and Ashes to Ashes.
Final Thoughts
Kim is one of two characters who have occupied both the #1 and #9 positions on my end of season lists, and unfortunately he bowed out in the #9 slot. He was a reasonably interesting character that just went nowhere. Kim's frustrations eventually became my frustrations with him as a character, and eventually I didn't want to see him on the TV screen anymore.
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