Harry Kim
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
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| Gender: | Male |
| Species: | Human |
| Status: | Active (2378) |
| Born: | 2349 |
| Father: | John Kim |
| Mother: | Mary Kim |
| Martial Status: | Single |
| Played by: | Garrett Wang |
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Harry S.L. Kim was a Human Starfleet officer who was best known for serving as operations manager aboard the starship USS Voyager during the seven years it was lost in the Delta Quadrant.
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[edit] Starfleet Academy
Kim attended Starfleet Academy from 2366 to 2370. (VOY: "Non Sequitur") During his last year at the Academy, he had a roommate named James Mooney MacAllister, who studied excessively, even at night. This forced Kim to wear an eye mask to help sleep, reminding him of his mother's womb, of which he still retained memories. He retained the practice of wearing the mask at night throughout his Voyager assignment. McAllister helped Kim in his fourth year Quantum Chemistry class. Though, he reportedly "aced" the quantum theory portion of the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. (VOY: "The Cloud", "Imperfection")
During his academy years, he became close friends with Lyndsay Ballard, who lived across the hall in the student dorm. He even changed his class schedule so he would be in the same classes as Ballard. She taught him to ice skate, despite his dislike for cold weather. He never mentioned to her that he had a crush on her, not until he met her again in 2376. (VOY: "Ashes to Ashes")
Kim was editor of the school newspaper his senior year. As editor, he monitored subspace transmissions, where he got reports from some of the first activity by the Maquis against the Cardassians after the signing of the Treaty of 2370. Without advising his professor, Kim wrote an editorial on the potentially controversial topic and the cadets became polarized on the issue. They debated the pros and cons of the subject and through his article, gained an insight into the entire history of the Maquis political rebellion. (VOY: "Investigations")
He was also a talented Parrises squares player, and was Academy champion three times. (VOY: "Tsunkatse")
Harry graduated from the Academy as valedictorian of his class, having earned Interstellar Honors, on stardate 47918. He requested duty aboard the USS Voyager on stardate 47923 and was given his first field assignment as a bridge officer aboard Voyager early the following year. (VOY: "Non Sequitur", "The Disease")
[edit] Aboard Voyager
[edit] 2371
As Ensign Kim had an especially promising career in engineering and analytical operations, he was assigned as operations manager aboard the Voyager, and would second as a science officer. He was very nervous about his first assignment, to the extent that he did not know how to address Captain Kathryn Janeway. Tom Paris, who was the polar opposite of Kim, took him under his wing; Janeway observed that he was somewhat naive and his loss of family and home was a raw wound.
During Voyager's maiden voyage, the ship was transported to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's array, along with a Maquis ship. After both crews were subjected to various medical tests, they were returned to their respective ships. Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres, a Maquis, were not. They were transferred to an underground Ocampan medical facility by the Caretaker. It was at this time that Torres would refer to Kim as "Starfleet," a nickname she would frequently use during their Voyager commissions. Kim and Torres persuaded an Ocampan nurse to show them a route that could lead to the surface. They were eventually rescued by Voyager. (VOY: "Caretaker")
Captain Janeway noted in her Delta Quadrant Addendum that his genius nearly got the Voyager crew through a micro-wormhole if not for a time technicality. Tom Paris proposed petitioning the Federation Astronomical Committee to officially designate the wormhole Harry discovered as the "Harry Kim wormhole." (VOY: "Eye of the Needle")
On an away mission to an asteroid, Kim found an alien burial ground. When the team was beamed up, Kim was switched with one of the bodies in the burial capsules, and a dead alien was beamed aboard Voyager. He found himself on the Vhnori homeworld. The Vhnori believed he was from the afterlife. When he told them he was from a place where there were just dead bodies, he shook their belief in the afterlife. He persuaded Hatil Garan, a Vhnori, who was going to submit to euthanasia to ease his family's burden in caring for him, to change his mind about dying. He took Garan's place and was returned to the asteroid, and rescued by Voyager. (VOY: "Emanations")
When Voyager visited the Sikarians, Kim met a woman named Eudana, who was using an instrument which Harry mistook for being musical in nature, but when she said it measured weather patterns, he correctly deduced that nonlinear resonances in the atmosphere allowed the device to function. She then asked if he was a scientist, to which he responded that was sort of right. She wanted to be alone with him and took him to a planet thousands of light years away. Her people could fold space and travel great distances in a short time. This technology could have reduced the length of Voyager's return home. The Sikarians, however, would not give up the technology due to their laws. (VOY: "Prime Factors")
During a holoprogram, Kim was captured by an energy being who had assumed one of the characters in the program. The Doctor rescued him. (VOY: "Heroes and Demons")
[edit] 2372
In the attack by the Botha, who could cause hallucinations, Kim believed he saw his girlfriend Libby. (VOY: "Persistence of Vision")
Voyager was accidentally duplicated by a spatial scission phenomenon. Each ship was unaware of the others' existence, and both tried to stabilize their rapidly-draining antimatter supply with a series of proton bursts. One of the two ships, slightly phased apart from the other, fired protons first, heavily damaging the other in the process; the damage also caused the infant Naomi Wildman to die in her failed delivery operation. The Harry Kim from the damaged Voyager was killed after being blown through a hull breach. When the undamaged ship was forced to self-destruct after being overrun by Vidiian forces, that ship's Harry Kim took the infant Naomi Wildman and transferred to the other ship. (VOY: "Deadlock")
- This episode marks the death of the "original" Harry Kim, who is replaced by a duplicate. The "real" Kim's body is apparently left to float around in Delta Quadrant space.
At one point, Kim entered an artificial reality stasis created by the Kohl. They had created it to survive a natural disaster. When he entered, in his subconscious state he was confronted by The Clown. The Clown was fear personified, and survived by being linked to humanoid sensory functions. He had already killed some of the Kohl in stasis by literally frightening them to death. Kim could not wake up and became a prisoner of the entity. He was rescued by Janeway when she tricked The Clown into releasing the prisoners in exchange for her. She substituted her hologram for herself. (VOY: "The Thaw")
[edit] 2373
In 2373, Kim and Paris were falsely arrested and were incarcerated in an Akritirian prison ship, where they suffered great physical and mental abuse. Even though Janeway found the real terrorist who had actually committed the crime, the Akritirians refused to release them. Kim attended to Paris's wounds when he was stabbed by an inmate. With no medical assistance available, Kim made a deal with another inmate for some supplies to clean up his crewmate and friend. Later, Kim almost killed Paris when he found a delirious Paris taking apart the tool that Kim had used to neutralize the force field surrounding the prison. He regained his composure just in time – Voyager attacked the prison and freed them both. (VOY: "The Chute")
In early 2373, Kim was assigned to enhance the astrometrics lab aboard Voyager, which had not been upgraded since the ship left spacedock. He fell in love with a holodeck character, who was actually an alien remotely manipulating the character. He became very jealous of Tuvok when the holodeck character became infatuated with Tuvok. The alien was a lonely operator assigned to a deep space array near a nebula. (VOY: "Alter Ego")
Later that year Kim began to exhibit the appearance of alien markings on his face. When Voyager visited a planet inhabited by the Taresians, they explained that Kim was conceived on their world, but his embryo was implanted in an Earth woman, to bring an infusion of new genetic material back to their race. At first Kim decided to stay on his "true homeworld", but later Kim realized that Taresian men are killed on their wedding night after the women extract enough genetic material to conceive children. In fact he was not Taresian but infected with a retro virus to produce the Taresian DNA. The crew was able to disrupt a force field around the planet and beam up Kim and leave the area. (VOY: "Favorite Son")
At the end of the year, Voyager arrived in Borg space. They found a passage that seemed devoid of any Borg. After a fleet of cubes had passed Voyager, ignoring it, Kim determined that the fleet had been destroyed. Upon investigating the debris, he was attacked by Species 8472 and wounded. His body was invaded by alien cells that were destroying his own cells. He was cured when the Doctor used Borg nanoprobes to cure him. (VOY: "Scorpion", "Scorpion, Part II")
[edit] 2374
Kim and the Doctor were two of the members of the crew not put into the Hirogen holoprogram hunts after the Hirogen captured Voyager. Kim was forced to continue to expand and upgrade the hunting holoprograms. He worked on a way to disable the neural blockers used by the Hirogens, so the crew could remember who they were. He was successful and helped rescue the crew by disabling the holoprograms. (VOY: "The Killing Game", "The Killing Game, Part II")
On exploring a demon planet, his DNA was used by silver blood aliens to duplicate him, so they could experience consciousness. (VOY: "Demon")
[edit] 2375
In 2375, Kim helped build a technologically-advanced shuttle called the Delta Flyer. That same year, Kim encountered the Malon. They attempted to steal an advanced probe belonging to Voyager. Kim, along with Paris, Seven of Nine and Torres, used the shuttle to retrieve the probe and fight off the Malon. (VOY: "Extreme Risk")
He became involved with a Varro female named Derran Tal who was a rebel planning on separating the Varro generation ship. This affair brought him in conflict with Captain Janeway who disapproved of the relationship. He defied Janeway and continued to see Derran. Kim developed a biological bond that the Varro called the shared heart. The Doctor developed an antidote for the condition. After the Varro ship left and he and Darren parted, Kim refused to take medicine for his lovesick condition, because the pain would remind him of the happiness he felt. (VOY: "The Disease")
About nine months after the events on the demon planet, Kim's silver blood duplicate and the rest of Voyager's duplicate crew, experienced severe cellular degradation, initially believing they were the real crew and operating the real starship. Kim spearheaded the drive to return to the demon planet when Chakotay became too sick to function, ultimately convincing the dying duplicate Janeway. As acting captain after Janeway died, Kim tried to hold together a quickly-disintegrating ship, until it could return to the Demon Planet and safety. In the duplicate Voyager's last minutes, the desperate crew detected glimpses of the real Voyager through degraded sensors, and Kim sent a final plea for help – tragically warranting only a vague distress call entry in Janeway's captain's log. (VOY: "Course: Oblivion")
He and Paris discovered that their favorite holoprogram, The Adventures of Captain Proton, had mistakenly been taken seriously by an alien race. They believed that they were about to be attacked. They had to defeat the program's villain, Doctor Chaotica, to stop the alien attack on Voyager. (VOY: "Bride of Chaotica!")
After receiving a distress call on the night shift, acting captain Kim diverted Voyager to the site. After confidence-boosting approval from Chakotay on "doing the right thing", senior command crew granted Kim the opportunity to expand his leadership skills, by leading an away mission for assistance. They found an artificially-intelligent probe-like machine, which crashed on the planet. At the Doctor's insistence that they beam the device aboard for repairs – after some debate, Kim prudently added security measures to the investigation, and transfered it to sickbay due to the probe's bio-neural components. Torres discovered the device was actually a weapon of mass destruction, and the warhead then hijacked the Doctor's program, trapping Torres and Kim in sickbay with The Doctor's control abilities. Using persistent diplomacy, technical analysis and citing the Doctor's growth as an AI, Kim was instrumental in showing and reasoning with the warhead that its launch was a mistake, and that the weapon's intentions and stubborn denial of rescinded orders could cause it to fail its mission to protect its originating people, by inciting an accidental second war. The weapon failed to convince its newly-arrived identical warp-capable warheads about the rescinded orders – these new weapons then threatened Voyager's destruction if the damaged warhead was not re-integrated into their fleet for final blind destruction of their enemies. Kim's sadness was soothed, when despite the potential loss of its new-found enlightenment, the weapon found a new way to protect its people: destroying its brethren while traveling in subspace. (VOY: "Warhead")
Kim often found time to relax on the holodeck. He and Paris created a new holoprogram called Fair Haven. He dated one of the characters, Maggie O'Halloran, who Paris turned into a cow as a prank. When the other characters in the program saw it they believed that Kim and Paris were evil spirits and attempted to send them back to the otherworld. The characters had become self-aware due to a hologram failure. (VOY: "Fair Haven", "Spirit Folk")
Later, he became reunited with a crewmate who he had romantic feelings for. Ensign Lyndsay Ballard had been killed in an away mission, only to be discovered by the Kobali who resurrected her. They reanimated her by altering her DNA and transformed her into a Kobali. The Doctor used medical techniques to begin the transformation of her back to Human form. Her Kobali father boarded Voyager and asked her to come back; when she refused, his ships opened fire on Voyager. Kim tried to persuade her to stay, but she had been transformed into a Kobali and wished to save Voyager from future attacks so she left. (VOY: "Ashes to Ashes")
As a member of an away team Kim retained memories of a massacre which took place many years ago. The memorial was put in his neural pathways by a synaptic generator left as a monument on the planet he visited. Kim suffered terrible guilt because the memories of the soldier, who had killed two civilians, was transposed on him.(VOY: "Memorial")
Kim, along with Paris, Chakotay, and Neelix, were on the Delta Flyer, when a Borg cube tractored the shuttle inside the cube. The cube was piloted by Borg children who were left along after a virus had killed the adults. Kim was injured, but recovered and attempted to destroy the cube's generator. He and the others were rescued by Seven of Nine who persuaded the children to let them go. (VOY: "Collective")
He was stranded on a pre-industrial planet with Torres. He was able to restore the shuttle, when Torres was able to secure minerals and metals for stories she gave to the local playwright. He and Torres returned to Voyager. (VOY: "Muse")
[edit] 2377
In the last year of Voyager's journey home, Kim helped defeat the Borg and destroy Unimatrix Zero. He entered a galactic space race, only to find out that the woman he had feelings for, Irina, was a terrorist trying to sabotage the race. He was part of an away team captured by a race that had its world poisoned by an early Earth probe. (VOY: "Unimatrix Zero", "Drive", "Friendship One")
Kim assumed his first command when he took over a Kraylor ship that was in conflict with another alien race. He believed that the ship was carrying medicine, but was really a ship carrying cloaked technology. (VOY: "Nightingale")
Kim returned to the Alpha Quadrant aboard Voyager after one last battle with the Borg. (VOY: "Endgame")
[edit] Alternate realities and timelines
In one alternate timeline created in 2371, Kim found himself back in San Francisco, assigned to the Starfleet Engineer Corps, living with Libby, who was at the time his fiancée. Kim was a starship design specialist who received the Cochrane Medal of Excellence for Outstanding Advances in Warp Theory and was responsible for designing the new tetryon plasma warp engines for the USS Yellowstone. His shuttle entered an alien time stream that changed his timeline. He was helped by Cosimo, one of the aliens, and the Tom Paris of that timeline, to return to Voyager. (VOY: "Non Sequitur")
In another timeline, Kim married Linnis Paris, the daughter of Tom Paris and Kes. The couple had a son named Andrew. (VOY: "Before and After")
In yet another timeline, Kim and Chakotay flew the Delta Flyer to Earth after Voyager was destroyed due to a mistake of Kim's, an erroneous phase correction to the slipstream threshold of the quantum slipstream drive he chiefly designed. Fifteen years later, as fugitives, they found Voyager and "fixed" history. With a Borg temporal transmitter that they stole from Starfleet they sent a message back in time to prevent the crash. Kim had blamed himself for what happened to Voyager, and as such was more aggressive to the Doctor (the only survivor of the crash due to him being a computer program). For example, he threatened to shut him down for good if he didn't help save Voyager, something the Doctor was reluctant to do since it meant altering the timeline. After Kim failed yet again to save Voyager, it was the Doctor who came up with the idea of trying to avoid the crash itself rather than trying to get Voyager home. Kim succeeded at the last possible second by using the Doctor's mobile emitter to power the transmitter and send a message to Voyager. (VOY: "Timeless")
In yet another timeline, Kim commanded the Nova class starship USS Rhode Island in the early 25th century. He was on a four-year mission, missing a number of events, including Chakotay's funeral. He was sent by The Doctor (he contacted Kim directly to keep the matter "in the family") to stop Vice Admiral Janeway from interfering with 33 years of history. However, she convinced him to assist her by holding off two Klingon ships. (VOY: "Endgame")
[edit] Personal life
Harry Kim was born in South Carolina in 2349. His personal interests included sports, art, and music. He may be religious (Christian), as a Crucifix is shown hanging on the wall of his quarters.
Kim's favorite sports were volleyball and Velocity. As a cadet at Starfleet Academy, Kim was involved in numerous athletic events as both the captain of the Velocity team and a three-time Academy champion of Parrises squares. Aboard Voyager, Kim was often seen enjoying a game of kal-toh with Tuvok, although he was unable to defeat the Vulcan officer during the seven years of Voyager's return trip to the Alpha Quadrant. (VOY: "Endgame")
Kim also played clarinet in the Juilliard Youth Symphony. When he served on the USS Voyager, he forgot his clarinet. He later replicated one with his replicator rations and went on to perform with a jazz combo of officers, "Harry Kim and the Kimtones." (VOY: "Virtuoso")
Kim had a girlfriend named Libby, whom he met, by accident, at a Ktarian music festival, where he was sitting in her seat. After the incident, it took Kim three weeks to work up the courage to ask her on a date. After Voyager became stranded in the Delta Quadrant, in 2371, Kim held on to his love for Libby and often woke up in the middle of the night calling her name, hoping for a response. (VOY: "Non Sequitur")
Despite his continued affection for Libby, Kim had many failed relationship attempts while aboard Voyager. He confessed to a long-held infatuation with Academy classmate Lyndsay Ballard, who died during an away mission and was then revived by an alien race known as the Kobali. (VOY: "Ashes to Ashes") Kim's other failed infatuations include crewmate Megan Delaney, (VOY: "Time and Again") a holographic character named Marayna, (VOY: "Alter Ego") and an alien terrorist named Irina. (VOY: "Drive")
In 2374, Kim became infatuated with Seven of Nine shortly after she was released from the Borg Collective. Seven, however, did not return the affection due to her incomplete understanding of Human culture. When she confronted Kim regarding his feelings for her, she attempted to initiate an intimate encounter with him, forcing an awkward Kim to defuse the situation. The result of their encounter, however, did set the foundation for developing a friendship. (VOY: "Revulsion")
In 2375, Kim became involved in a forbidden affair with a Varro engineer named Derran Tal. Harry fell deeply in love with Derran, in part because of a special bond created between the two called olan'vora, which he contracted following intimate relations with the Varro. (VOY: "The Disease")
[edit] Tom Paris
After Voyager became stranded in the Delta Quadrant, Kim became good friends with Tom Paris. Together they often spent much time together in the holodeck. During their time on Voyager, Kim became Paris' best friend.
Paris first met Harry Kim on board Deep Space 9 where a Ferengi bartender named Quark wanted to sell Kim some crystals. Quark was about to scam Kim, when Paris sunk the deal the Ferengi wanted to make and prevented Kim from paying too much for the crystals.
When Paris reported on board Voyager, Kim noticed the cold behavior between some of the crew and Paris. Kim found out that there was an accident as a result of a pilot error which Tom tried to hide by falsifying reports but which he finally admitted was his fault. After Paris told him to stay away from him, Kim told him he could choose his own friends and their friendship started. (VOY: "Caretaker")
They had double dates with the Delaney sisters and spent a lot of time in the holodeck. Harry was shy and unsure around the opposite sex, and went to Paris for relationship advice. In Paris' opinion, Kim always fell in love with the wrong women. (VOY: "Revulsion", "The Disease")
"You wanna know what I remember? Someone saying 'this man is my friend, nobody touches him.' I'll remember that for a long time" - Tom Paris to Harry Kim, regarding their unjust imprisonment (VOY: "The Chute")
[edit] Parents
Kim was very close to his parents, Mary and John Kim. He was in contact with them every week, even during his training missions. They lived in South Carolina. His mother was a school teacher. She became upset because Harry had left his clarinet behind when he was assigned to Voyager and she did not have enough time to send it to him. (VOY: "Caretaker", "Eye of the Needle")
On his mother's birthday in 2377, he got to speak to his parents face-to-face for the first time in seven years. During the conversation his mother stated that Harry was very popular with her 8th graders. Harry Kim's parents were bothered that he hadn't been promoted. (VOY: "Author, Author")
[edit] Ancestors
In "about" 2210, Harry's "uncle" Jack piloted a sleeper ship on a deep-space exploration trip to Beta Capricus. The rest of the crew went into stasis while Jack spent the six months piloting the ship himself alone. Upon arrival, the "star" was found not to exist and to be only an electromagnetic echo of a distant galaxy. Jack chose not to wake the rest of the crew before returning, after a further 6 month journey, back to Earth. When they awoke in Earth orbit they initally questioned why they had never left. (VOY: "11:59")
[edit] Background
Harry Kim was played by actor Garrett Wang throughout the run of Star Trek: Voyager. Taylor Chong portrayed the infant Harry Kim in the second season episode "The Thaw".
[edit] Apocrypha
- In the Voyager relaunch book series, Kim gets back together with Libby and is promoted to full Lieutenant (like many of his crewmates, Harry is promoted two steps in rank, to make up for the time spent in the Delta Quadrant where he could not normally receive promotions). Harry then serves under Captain Chakotay aboard Voyager as chief of security.
- In the novel Pathways, it is stated that a George Mathers was Harry's roommate at the Academy, not James MacAllister. Mathers developed a serious crush on Harry, only to be severely disappointed to the point of moving out when he found out that Harry was heterosexual.
