Article taken from Star Trek Monthly Sept 1996, Vol 1, No. 19
“Sometimes I think we almost have too much fun on the set," insists Garrett Wang,
Settling into his position on the U.S.S. Voyager's bridge didn't take Wang very long,
One of Wang's first chances to shine during that first season was the thought provoking
Another high point for Wang was the second season episode, Non Sequitur, which "pretty much
During his time away from the set, Wang hopes to branch out into another area of the programme
Joe Nazzaro
who recently finished his second season as Star Trek: Voyager's Ops/Communications
officer,Harry Kim. "For instance," Wang explains, "when we get hit with something on
the ship and the camera shakes, we have to shake too. With the possible exception of
Tim Russ, who had done so many Star Trek episodes,everybody else on the show was new to
this whole shaking on cue thing. If you think about it, you feel
really odd, because no one
else is shaking on the set except you and the camera, while you're going through this convulsion and trying to play it serious at the same time. They never teach you how to shake in acting class!"
once the initial butterflies had disappeared. "I felt much more comfortable after the first
day and realizing what I'd shot was fine. After a couple of episodes, I started getting
much more at ease with the language, the technobabble, so I can rattle that stuff off better
than I could before, but even now I don't think I'm completely comfortable. If somebody is
comfortable, I don't think there's any growth going on."
Emanations, in which Kim is transported to another dimension, where the inhabitants believe
he hasreturned from the dead. "I really enjoyed a lot of the work, and some of the moments
we discovered were quite fantastic. In terms of airing that episode, it would have been nice
to have it closer to the end instead of the beginning. Think about it: this is a life-changing
event, and maybe it would have been a smarter move to put this episode towards the end so Kim
comes into the second season a wiser soul. Because it was placed closer to the beginning, I had a
tough time trying to keep my 'green around the gills' image."
had all the elements I had been missing. Kim flips back to Earth in a freak shuttle accident
and basically wakes up in bed with his fiancee, and the whole episode revolves around Kim
trying to find a way back to what he knows reality to be. The struggle is, should he find a
way back, or stay back on Earth, which is where he wanted to be in the first place? That's a
really big episode for me."
by writing a possible Star Trek: Voyager 'spec' or unsolicited script. "It's very ambitious
to say that, but it's something I'm looking into now, and we'll see what happens. I'd prefer to
stay low-key about it, because that's not what I'm hired to do. I'm hired to be an actor on this
show, but when I'm not heavily featured in an episode, I'm going to go ahead and come up with an
entire script on my own time." Looking ahead, Garrett Wang is pleased with the direction that
Harry Kim is now headed in. "Other than increased contact with some of the other characters, it's
already going along the track where Kim is becoming a more confident, on-top-of-it character.
There's still a lot of work to be done, a lot to flush out. It's an ongoing process, which is one
of the most exciting things about acting.
