Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Harry Kim
9. EPS Is Not (Yet) An STD
What Garrett Wang lacked in entries on his acting CV, he largely made up for in knowledge of science and science-fiction. "I'm a huge sci-fi fan and someone who paid attention […] in physics class in high school," he noted in Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration. Whilst others tripped over the technobabble, Wang took Star Trek's complex techno-jargon in his stride. As Wang also noted, his fellow actors would come to him for explanations about the EPS manifolds.
Like actor, like character, Harry's first posting might well have been at ops., but he was ultimately a scientist. Speaking in Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration, Jeri Taylor described how she, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller leaned into that particular trait in the first season, pairing Harry up with B'Elanna "to solve various scientific problems". Producers were testing the waters between "blank canvas" "Starfleet" and hot-headed "Maquis," leading Wang to believe that "after we did the pilot, […] B'Elanna and Kim were going to be in a relationship".
Of course, that liaison never happened, leaving way for Paris a little later. And, with Libby quickly forgotten (on screen, anyway — last mention, The Thaw), Harry's love life throughout the rest of Voyager's run turned more turbulent, and often more life-threatening, than a 0.42 phase variance.