Garrett Wang is one half of the Delta Flyers podcast crew alongside Robert Duncan McNeill. Both men played roles on Star Trek: Voyager. Wang as Henry Kim and McNeill as Tom Paris. Each Sunday a new episode drops of the podcast where Wang and McNeill review episodes from Voyager, as well as recant fun anecdotes about their time on set together. This week’s episode may have had the best Wang story since the time Wang told everyone about how he nearly killed Harrison Ford. Mostly because it involved Tim Russ, poker, and a long wet walk.
In this week’s episode, Wang tells the audience about a nerve-racking moment while filming the two-parter “Basics”. Since the main cast was in one motel and the crew and extras were in another, everyone had to use a shuttle to get around unless they wanted to walk.
Well, apparently, one night Russ, who played Tuvok, stayed back to play poker at the extras and crew motel. Joining him were Wang, and Jennifer Lien; who played Kes. The night ends with Russ winning $50 dollars in poker. Not a bad haul, but apparently Russ won everything in nickles.
Not wanting to carry around $50 dollars worth of nickles or an extra 11 pounds, Russ decides to go into a fast-food restaurant to try and exchange the money, all while Wang and Lien wait for their shuttle. Wang pleads with Russ to not go into the restaurant, claiming, “If we don’t catch the shuttle, we’ll have to walk.”
The shuttle arrives and wouldn’t you know it, Russ isn’t done having his money counted out and exchanged. Wang and Lien, not wanting to leave their friend behind, decides to stay behind and wait for Russ. Obviously, things go wrong from there.
The three begin walking back to their motel, all while remembering a memo mentioned before about how the crew should be very careful about being in the town by themselves, as it’s a rough area. So what happens, a truck rolls up and stops right next to them. The driver, presumably, starring them down.
Wang, with his trademark wit, told Russ exactly what he was thinking at the moment; “After they kill me, I will kill you.”
Eventually, the truck would drive away with no further incident but the trio was rightfully unsettled but Wang just had to test the universe one more time, as he muttered, “What else could go wrong!?”
Well, as Wang tells it, the skies opened up and it started pouring “cats and dogs” on the three as they walked back to their motel in the dead of night in a town that they’ve already been told is a bit too intense for the cast and crew to be left in by themselves.
Wang does end the story by saying that it wasn’t the town that scared him, but the memo. The memo apparently got him all worked up and caused his imagination to run wild.