Star Trek: All 4 Times Harry Kim Died (& How)

Ensign Harry Kim continues to be one of the most popular characters from Star Trek: Voyager, but fans witnessed his death and resurrection more than a few times over the course of the show. Star Trek: Voyager, which ran from 1995 to 2001, told the story of the crew of the USS Voyager and their journey across the Delta Quadrant, an uncharted region of space. The show featured a highly diverse cast including the character of Harry Kim, played by actor Garrett Wang (the first Asian main character to be part of a Star Trek cast since Lieutenant Sulu from Star Trek: The Original Series).

Harry was Voyager’s operations officer and served on the bridge for the entirety of the show’s seven seasons. An eager young man fresh out of Starfleet, Harry’s experience on Voyager helped him grow into a model officer and integral part of the crew. He also became a fan-favorite character with the audience and is still widely loved by Star Trek: Voyager fans to this day. Despite this, Harry was the character who was arguably the most under-appreciated out of the whole cast. He was never promoted past Ensign despite numerous opportunities and was quite often the character who was chosen to be wounded or incapacitated by an unknown disease, something that began in Voyager’s pilot episode and continued throughout the rest of the series.

Because of Harry’s numerous brushes with danger, he also ended up being the character to have the most death-and-resurrection storylines on the show. Over the course of Star Trek: Voyager’s 7 seasons, Harry “died” 4 times. These deaths were spread out across multiple seasons and usually took place in episodes that heavily featured Harry and his character development, demonstrating that even in an episode where he was killed off, Harry could still steal the show.

“Emanations”

Harry’s very first brush with death came in the season 1 episode “Emanations.” While exploring the ring system around a planet, Voyager discovered that they had inadvertently found the burial ground for an unknown alien species, where bodies were deposited through seemingly random subspace vacuoles. Not wanting to desecrate the bodies, the away team that had been sent to investigate attempted to beam back to the ship, but a new vacuole opened at the same moment the transporter was activated. Because of the timing, Harry Kim was not transported back to the ship and instead pulled through the vacuole to the alien planet.

Upon arrival on the planet, Harry learned that the species whose burial ground Voyager had discovered was called the Vhnori. The vacuoles were created by Vhnori technology and were designed to transport the bodies of their dead to the “next Emanation,” or their version of heaven. Harry’s appearance caused quite a stir among the Vhnori, who attempted to hold and study him until Harry switched places with a man named Hatil, pretending to be him so that Hatil could escape death and Harry could be transported back to where he’d been taken from. Harry did manage to make it back through a vacuole, but before he was transported the technology used to open the vacuole euthanized him, causing Voyager’s Doctor to have to perform an emergency resuscitation upon Harry’s return. “Emanations” is both a fascinating examination of life and death and also a great episode for Harry as a character early on in the series.

“Deadlock”

Harry Kim’s most dramatic death by far was in the season 2 episode “Deadlock.” The episode reached new dramatic heights for Star Trek: Voyager as a whole at the time. The story revolved around Voyager inadvertently being duplicated into two identical ships after unknowingly passing through a space-time rift. After exiting the rift, both ships experienced power failures and attempted to compensate with proton bursts, but the bursts from one ship accidentally damaged the other, causing ship-wide hull ruptures,  leading to Harry Kim’s death when he was sucked out into space while he and B’Elanna Torres were attempting to repair the ship.

Once the two Voyagers were made aware of each other’s presence and realized what was going on, they attempted to remerge themselves without success. The damaged Voyager’s Captain Janeway was set on activating the self-destruct sequence, but before she could, the Vidiians began attacking the undamaged Voyager and harvesting the crew for their organs. The undamaged ship’s Captain Janeway was forced to activate her self-destruct instead, but not before sending her version of Harry Kim, who was alive and well, back through to the damaged ship with baby Naomi Wildman, who had also died on in the initial attack. The self-destruct obliterated the undamaged Voyager and the Vidiians, and the damaged Voyager with their newly restored Harry and Naomi was left to continue on their way and make repairs. Over the years, there has been much debate among fans about whether it was the original Harry Kim or the duplicate version that died during the episode, but no definitive answer has ever been given.

“Timeless”

“Timeless” is arguably one of Harry Kim’s best episodes in the entire series, but the episode also featured another instance of his death. A classic Star Trek time travel episode set 15 years in the future, “Timeless” was about older versions of Harry and Commander Chakotay trying to change the past after an attempt to return to the Alpha Quadrant caused the deaths of Voyager’s entire crew. The episode jumped back and forth between the future and the past, showing Voyager’s experiment with a new quantum slipstream warp drive that ended in disaster after Harry made a miscalculation that caused the drive to malfunction, and Voyager to crash on an ice planet.

During the episode, Harry and Chakotay worked to send a message back through time to stop the crash from ever happening while being pursued by Starfleet, who were trying to stop them from violating the Temporal Prime Directive and changing the timeline. After a battle with a Starfleet ship near the end of the episode, Harry and Chakotay’s warp core began to overload. By that time, however, Harry had already figured out a way to save Voyager, by sending them a message that would collapse the slipstream and throw the ship safely out into normal space. The plan worked, but at the cost of Harry and Chakotay’s lives when their warp core exploded and killed them both. In addition to this, the timeline was changed by saving Voyager, meaning that the older versions of Harry and Chakotay would now never exist. This meant that, in essence, “Timeless” saw Harry, or at least a version of him, die twice.

“Endgame”

Harry’s final “death” came in the Star Trek: Voyager series finale “Endgame”, although unlike all of the character’s other death scenes, this one was not featured directly on-screen. Similar to “Timeless”, “Endgame” used time travel as an integral part of its storytelling. The episode started out in the future where Voyager had finally made it back to the Alpha Quadrant, but not before the deaths of Seven of Nine and Chakotay, and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok’s severe deterioration from a Vulcan neurological disease. Wracked by guilt, the now Admiral Kathryn Janeway hatched a plan to steal technology from the Klingons and travel back in time to help Voyager get home sooner and prevent the needless suffering of her friends.

Before leaving for the past, however, Admiral Janeway was intercepted by the now Captain Harry Kim, who had been sent by Starfleet to stop her unauthorized time travel attempt. Instead, Admiral Janeway managed to convince Harry to help her, and once Harry was onboard he made sure that her shuttle was equipped for the journey and also helped defend her against attacking Klingons who had come to get the technology back. Ultimately, Admiral Janeway’s plan was successful and helped Voyager return to the Alpha Quadrant with no casualties, but the success of her plan also meant the complete erasure of her alternate future timeline and all the future versions of the Voyager crew, including Captain Kim. While this instance of Harry’s “death” might seem like a stretch, the fact that his long-awaited promotion to a rank higher than Ensign was erased by Admiral Janeway alone makes “Endgame” worthy of inclusion on the list of episodes that feature his “death”.

Despite his penchant for getting into dangerous situations, Harry Kim never managed to get killed off entirely. He continued to be a staple character on Voyager during the show’s entire run and made a great addition to the main cast as well as capturing the hearts of many Star Trek fans. Star Trek: Voyager would not have been the same without Harry Kim, and fans are lucky that death never seemed to stick when it came for him.

About The Author

Dana Hanson
(110 Articles Published)

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Dana Hanson is a trainer and freelance writer for Screen Rant, covering stories about Star Trek for the Movie/TV feature writing team. She attended Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, graduating in 2019 with a degree in Media Arts production and a concentration in Writing for TV and film. She has previous experience working with an online and print publication as a freelance editor and has been passionate about both writing and Star Trek for years. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.

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