In the fifth episode of the second season of Voyager, Harry is transported through time to a reality where he never boarded the Voyager. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.
I really did want to like this episode because, as you all know, I am obsessed with parallel universes. OBSESSED IS NOT EVEN STRONG ENOUGH OF A WORD. So it speaks to the weakness of this script that I spent a good portion of this episode bored. Uniterested. Wishing that the writers had done anything with such a goldmine of potential rather than have Harry Kim wander through San Francisco with not much to do.
On the one hand, that’s frustrating to me because I really like Kim as a character. He’s more or less the newbie on Voyager, and you would think that the show would exploit this by isolating him from his friends and exploring how he’d react to a disaster like this. But for some reason, Garrett Wang was apparently told to mute his portrayal. I say that without any knowledge of what went on behind-the-scenes; it’s just that in the final scenes, Harry is suddenly alive. It’s as if he slept through most of “Non Sequitur†until that last shuttlecraft flight, then awoke to realize that HE WAS STEALING A SHIP FROM STARFLEET.
Indeed, most of this episode left me perplexed. After the events of “The 37’s,†you would think that a Voyager crew member who gets to go back to Earth would be excited and overwhelmed by the experience. What about the chance to have non-replicated food from San Francisco? What about the joy of standing on Earth? What about Harry’s family??? We heard so much about them and how much Harry missed them in the first season, and yet?
Look, my issue here is that for some reason, Wang was directed to drift through his scenes with wide eyes and a numb reaction. I get it; shock can make people react strangely or in unexpected ways. But Harry is home. He did the impossible, and when it’s revealed to be a very real thing, he still never seems to appreciate it. Oh, we’re told that it’s a big struggle for him knowing that his friend Danny took his place, or that Tom Paris is living a much different (and less awesome) life. But these are realities that deal with other people. What does Harry Kim want? What drives him to stay on Earth or to go back to Voyager? Ultimately, it’s other characters and the lives and their development that motivate Harry, and that feels like a cop out. Why even center this story on Harry if he’s not going to matter much to it anyway?
It sucks because this truly felt like the first time Harry Kim got a huge story devoted entirely to him. But there’s no chemistry between him and his fianceé. They gave the story of a crew member refusing to go home on these terms to the one character who is most homesick out of the bunch. Plus, I don’t actually understand the mechanics of the temporal shift. When Harry returns to his timeline, does the other one erase, or is his fianceé just waiting there for someone who will never, ever return? Did Tom die in the explosion, or did that act reset the timeline? Who were the aliens in the timestream???
Too many unanswered questions for my taste, y’all.
The video for “Non Sequitur†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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