Voy: Alter Ego

[SabreMau]

Star Trek fans are the types who would LOVE to keep tabs on this and count the amount of torpedoes Voyager is using,

youtu.be/PIGxMENwq1k

[Shuboy07]

Harry Kim is so poorly written that you can see Garrett Wang just refusing to give a crap about this episode.

Wasn't this the episode where Wang had flu and was filming with a 102 fever or something?

Either way, I agree the episode stank. Then again, it's a Harry Kim sex episode, which is a bit like trying to put on a serious performance of Shakespeare where every character is wearing a massive pair of fake tits, it just terminally weighs the episode down to the point where I barely remembered that it was a Tuvok episode until I watched the review.

I've never heard that story, so if it's this episode, that might explain why he looks like he doesn't want to be there. I simply assumed he was so annoyed by the writing he was hoping to make it through the scene before he started rolling his eyes.

It is this episode. During Kim's Vulcan meditation scene, Wang is clearly struggling with delivering his lines with a plugged nose.

[Shuboy07]

The scene with Marayna analyzing Tuvok is actually very interesting (hence why Chuck included it in the review). As Genre Savvy Star Trek fans will note, smart/perceptive holograms are usually a sign of trouble ahead.

[bronnt]

Harry, Harry, Harry...

1) Falling in love with a holadeck character is like falling in love with an Inflate-A-Date™ or a RealDoll™.
2) Me thinks you're making that all too common mistake of getting love and lust mixed up.
3) As usual, you're a cautionary tale waiting to happen when it comes to such matters.

I just don't understand why the writers constantly want Harry Kim's role to be an embarrassment. I get that this episode is more about Tuvok than it is him, but Harry's role in this is just so pathetic.

He just opens with the need to purge all his emotions without any context, leaving us to envision two possibilities. The first is that he's so obsessed with this woman and his feelings toward her that it's making it impossible for him to function....which is pathetic and embarrassing. The second is that he's so overwhelmed by the shame of feeling affection toward a nonsentient being (who turns out to be sentient after all) that he's going to shun the ability to get emotionally attached to anything....which is a pathetic and embarrassing overreaction.

If this were a Harry Kim episode we could maybe show him developing his relationship with this character and see what drives him to this point of looking pathetic and embarrassing, but since the episode will be more about Tuvok, he just cold opens with that. How sad.

[Admiral X]

Harry kind of strikes me as VOY's version of Wesley, or rather, how Wesley was treated in the con circuit. I remember reading stuff from when Wil Wheaton was doing TNG episode reviews about how the writers would give him crap at the cons, like it was somehow his fault that they wrote his character that way, and how the blooper reels from the first season would go out of their way to treat his character like a dweeb because they knew the fans liked that crap. I kind of see their treatment of Harry the same way, honestly.

[Madner Kami]

Will Wheaton is a dweeb and he deserves the shit being thrown at Wesley, landing on him.

[Archon_Wing]

Harry Kim is what happens when you run out paper thin characterization.

I think he's actually more of the Geordi of TNG, though more lamer on virtue of it being Voyager. TNG would also hammer it in that Geordi also had a messed up relationship with the opposite gender, though at least Picard would let him advance. Incidentially, they were both captains in alternate timelines

Which also reminds me of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSGX08GwMKc

[bronnt]

Harry Kim is what happens when you run out paper thin characterization.

I think he's actually more of the Geordi of TNG, though more lamer on virtue of it being Voyager. TNG would also hammer it in that Geordi also had a messed up relationship with the opposite gender, though at least Picard would let him advance. Incidentially, they were both captains in alternate timelines

If Voyager had any sense of internal character continuity, that might be fine. See, Geordi fell in love on the holodeck once. This comes up at least 4 more times in later episodes. The writers remember this bit of characterization, and it makes him feel like a real person instead of a caricature. Also, aside from having a bit of hard luck with women, he's one of the most socially well-adjusted people in the show. He has an easy time making friends and working with difficult people, whether it be Reginald Barclay or a Romulan on Galorndon Core.

One episode establishes that Harry Kim has a long-term girlfriend he left back home, which comes out of the blue and was never implied before. After ending the episode with the suggestion that he's still in love with her, she's completely forgotten. Then he can continue going on dates with one of the Delaney twins, or he can fall in love with Lyndsay Ballard, or whichever alien of the week shows up.

[TGLS]

See, Geordi fell in love on the holodeck once.

Well, so did Riker.

[Robovski]

Will Wheaton is a dweeb and he deserves the shit being thrown at Wesley, landing on him.

I would have more sympathy for WW but he blocked me on Twitter despite never having interacted with him, possibly because I tweeted I didn't much like Ready Player One but thought his reading of the audiobook was appropriate for protagonist.

The thing about Harry Kim for all the shit he gets on the show is that I wanted to like that character and for him to succeed, even if only a little. They give him nothing but the back hand almost every episode - why does Voyager need a whipping boy? DS9 had a ''let's fuck with O'Brien'' episode every season (to the point where this strip about his TNG years is relevant: http://chiefobrienatwork.com/ ) but he had other things going for him in the season and some history coming with him.