A quirky question

Why is it that I've been a member of this forum for less than a month and am already a LTjg...
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Yet it's been over 25 years, and Harry Kim is still an Ensign????



(EDIT: corrected my math, somehow screwed up and miscounted the decades)

 

Almost 29 years, VOY started in 1995, but yes!

 

Well, if someone joined the forum using that name, and made 16,000 posts, we would have Admiral Harry Kim.

 

Spoiler: Prodigy season two

Harry won't be an ensign anymore. Picard season 3 nearly had him in it as a captain.

 

The answer to that is really simple, Instead of posting here, Ensign Kim actually did his duty. He should have been posting here if he wanted a higher rank.

 

If he really wanted a promotion then he shouldn't have sexed that alien lady. Janeway doesn't like her little boy to get freaky.

 

I think the only mistake they made was promoting Tuvok and Tom. Then Janeway could have said "NOBODY'S GETTING PROMOTIONS!" Also in their circumstances, did it even matter? The status quo was always the same. Chakotay wasn't getting his own ship out there. Harry was a member of the senior staff from the first episode.

 

Irrelevant. He should have had that hollow pip on his collar by end of the second season, third at the latest. In the "Non Sequitur" timeline, he was on his way to earning it in only eight months.

That would have worked, yes. If no one had a box on their chair, no one could complain about not noticing one.

As for PRO S2, though I think it's more likely than not that Harry will appear, there's no guarantee. It's possible he wasn't supposed to join the cast until Season 3. If the Trek powers that be want to keep him in rank limbo indefinitely, a good way to do it is assign him to a season of a show that will probably never occur.

 

Exactly. Harry is so bad at getting promoted that it only happens in alternate realities.

 

When viewers started complaining about Harry not ranking up, the powers that be clung to it with the ferocity of a two-year-old who's picked up someone else's teddy bear. That's not incompetence; it's a vendetta.

 

Part of me loves that idea. It's like the Worf/Troi relationship, it never happened in the real world. I bet even evil Harry in "Living Witness" was a Lieutenant.

 

Which always get cancelled out by the end of those episodes.

 

I agree to that. If they'd actually done that (save for the field commission of Lt. to Tom in Caretaker and the provisional Maquis ranks to integrate them into the Starfleet crew) it at least would've been a consistent and understandable narrative (no open higher posts unless someone dies, so nowhere to go with your career, hence no promotions).

TPTB probably would have used Evil Lt. Kim's rank as proof that Evil Janeway was Evil, if only that thought had occurred to them.

 

I think it would have been super awkward if, in "Thirty Days", Harry had shown up with Tom's lieutenant pip on his collar. "Yeah, the captain said we had an extra ensign now, and an open lieutenant slot, so... sorry?"
And Tom, good friend that he is, responds: "Don't be, Harry. You've earned it."

And, Tom could still be reinstated later.

 

Now I wonder if this dialog would've worked on Voyager

(Ensign) Tom Paris: How can we be sure these schematics are accurate?
Lt. Harry Kim : 'Sir'.
Tom: Oh, no need to stand on formality here. Just call me Tom.
Harry : No, I meant you should call me 'Sir'.
Tom : Don't be ridiculous.
Harry : You mean 'Don't be ridiculous, Sir'.
Janeway: Gentleman, please let's not squabble. We're a team Harry.
Chakotay: [corrects her] We're a team, sir.
Janeway : Stay out of this.

 

Harry Kim was cut off from TBBS in the Delta Quadrant and was never able to get his post count high enough for a promotion.

 

^Which probably was why he was so desperate to get home (or at least to upload his 'letters') all the time in the first place

 

Tom would probably call him "sir" the way he calls Janeway "ma'am" and "captain". With that slight hint of insouciance that makes him so endearing.