Well, I didn't make him super evil or anything. Just... moderately naughty. He was prone to pranking his colleagues by manipulating the ship's systems, manipulating his captain, and seducing both his best friend's girlfriend and the ship's resident ice queen.
Sure there is. "Somebody has to be the Ensign". Seems pretty rational to me. Anyway I thought the Officers moved up by assassination?
Well, let's see. TNG, considered to be one of the high points of Trek, had a commissioned ensign in the main cast... for 12 episodes. DS9, considered the pinnacle show by some, never had one at all. TNG had a recurring ensign (Ro Laren). She was promoted after about two years. DS9 had a recurring ensign (Nog). He was promoted after two years. Conclusions: (1) No, nobody HAS to be the ensign. And (2) Ensigns are fine, but they should not STAY ensigns. They should become LIEUTENANTS. You can call it rational if you want... I don't.
I agree, that was quite stupid. It would have been a simple matter to give Hoshi and Travis a second rank pip and change their appearance a bit to allow for six years. Maybe a third for Reed as well. That or just rewrite the episode to delete the six-year interim. Still, I don't count their cases to be as bad as Kim's. If we figure that there was no LTJG (or LCDR) rank in 2100's Starfleet, it's not far off for ensignhood to last longer. And, the Enterprise finale was like "Threshold", a one-time catastrophe. Given that Harry should have been promoted about two years into Voyager (par for an outstanding officer), it was a five-year, thought-out decision on the writers' part to keep him at ensign. Five years of continuous stupidity is far worse than a single episode of it.
Ezri was not considered station personnel during those episodes. Upon her acceptance of the Station Counselor post, she was a JG. But, even if I give you those two, that's TWO episodes with an ensign in the main cast. TNG had twelve. Had Harry been promoted at a reasonable time (early 3rd season), Voyager would have had an ensign for around 50 episodes.
But this is Janeway's ship, where she sets the rules and no-one else. She decides the Borg are toast, she decides she can defeat death, punish the Equinox crew and have infinite torpedoes . If she decides one has to be the Ensign, that really ends the discussion. Seriously though, if the producers really said that, it may have been an indication they were thinking in fixed and determined roles ('the rebellious one', 'the clever one', 'the responsible one', etc. without the fluidity that characters in some other shows were allowed to evolve over time).
The fact that Janeway, being the Chuck Norris of Star Trek (my explanation is in the Voyager forum, you can find it easily) COULD destroy Harry's career by keeping him at ensign until the end of time... it's irrelevant. The question is why WOULD she. Janeway might be capable of insane feats, but she doesn't do things without a reason. And she has no rational reason for ruining Harry's career, unless she secretly hates him. But what reason would she have for that?
Actually, even if we discount Ezri as "not station personnel" during her initial appearance, Nog was an ensign during most of Season 6 and all of Season 7 bar the outro scenes of WYLB when he was promoted to JG.
I wouldn't dare to presume to know the mind of Almighty Janeway. She might have her reasons, too deep for us mere lowly mortals to fathom.
Reread my post. It specifically mentions Nog as a RECURRING character, i.e. an important character whose name is not in the opening credits. But if you want to compare the two, fine and dandy. Nog became an ensign. He served an appropriate period of time as one. He was promoted. Had Harry Kim arrived on the show as an ensign, but gained a hollow pip on his collar round about early Season 3, that would have been perfectly potty. If you've ever watched Walker Texas Ranger, you know that Chuck Norris doesn't turn against his own. Neither should his Trek-verse counterpart.
yeah, fourth season at he latest. After that even casual fans started to notice the elephant in the room
Yes. As a brand spanking new officer, ensign was the proper rank for him to be... FOR A SHORT TIME! Sadly, the schmucks in charge wanted to have him act like a highly trained and capable officer 98% of the time, but keep him at newbie rank for the 2% of the time when they needed someone to be completely clueless... through all seven seasons. And they thought we were stupid enough not to notice, which is downright insulting.
Normally, Janeway would normally just send her crew evals to Starfleet. They would monitor officer quality and duration of service, then direct her to promote certain people. If a person's higher rank rated a new assignment, they would transfer them. With Tuvok, Janeway evaluated his length and quality of service, then granted him field promotion based on it. With Tom, same thing. The Maquis received field commissions: Janeway either reactivated existing commissions (Tom, Chakotay) or assigned them ranks based on their status in the organization (Ayala, Seska) or skillset (Torres). Compare these actions: Promotion of a lieutenant to LCDR: Reasonable, but not automatic. Promotion of a demoted ensign (Tom) back to LTJG after one year: At least allowable. Commissioning the Maquis: Questionable under normal circumstances. But probably Ok in an extreme situation. Promoting a brand new ensign who has served competently to LTJG after 2-3 years: essentially automatic. If an officer is stuck at ensign for 7 years, he'll be lucky to get a posting on a garbage scow afterward.
Voyager's writers didn't like Harry Kim, which is likely why they never promoted him. The only reason he was even still on the show after the third season was because People magazine named Garret Wang one of TV's most beautiful people and as a result UPN overruled the plans already in place to write kill Harry off.