3 times Harry Kim proved time and space was meaningless in Star Trek

Star Trek has always been a show that didn’t take concepts like the “space-time continuum” seriously.

Star Trek is whacky. It can literally do whatever it wants as a story medium and either sum it up to “lol science” or “lol aliens”. And it’ll just work. It shouldn’t. It’s nonsense so much of the time but it works and we love it. So when we see Harry Kim over on Star Trek: Voyager basically defining time and space regularly, no one should be surprised.

Kim was a master at defining the time-space continuum. He did it practically every season. He actively defied the laws of science. His entire existence in the show just breaks reality. He died but was replaced by an exact replica. This man can do anything.

But get a date. Or be promoted.

So here are three times Harry Kim did the impossible and made time travel a joke.

Three times Harry Kim made time and space into nonsense

When Harry Kim hopped timelines in No Sequitor

In what should honestly be the biggest “LOL Kim” moment in the show, Harry finally got himself a girlfriend. I’m as shocked as anyone. Not only did he finally get himself a girl, but he had to go to a different timeline to do. After accidentally colliding with an alien ship, Harry wakes up in San Francisco, having never made it on the Voyager, yet retaining his memories of that past life. In typical Harry fashion, being happy and about to be engaged was just too simple of a life for him, so he had to get that realities’ Tom Paris involved (long story) and the two single-handily screwed up Harry’s dating life again by sending him back to his timeline. So he can be a lonely ensign on a starship. I don’t think he thought that through.

When Harry Kim sent a message back through time in Timeless

Kathryne Janeway said it best, “My advice on making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple: don’t even try.” And that line summed up arguably the greatest episode in Voyager history. Kim and Chakotay are stuck in an alternate future, where they made it back to the Alpha Quadrant but Voyager was destroyed in the process. They find a way to send a message back in time (because of sci-fi nonsense), and Future Kim is able to communicate with Seven of Nine and Past Kim instructions on how to save the ship. So even though they do it, Past Kim is still upset because apparently Future Kim no longer existed and that concerns him, because again, temporal paradoxes. Or maybe it’s because Future Kim represented a future where he finally got promoted.

When Harry Kim helped Janeway in Endgame

Maybe Harry Kim just hates being anything but an ensign. In the one episode in the series where Harry Kim was a captain, he helps Admiral Kathryn Janeway go back in time and reset everything, ruining his promotion. What are you doing Harry…Harry’s sacrifice saves Chakotay’s life and helps Tuvok avoid dealing with a Vulcan neurological issue, all while getting the Voyager home 68 years sooner than expected. And all he had to do was go back to being an ensign.