In November 1998 UPN will air Timeless, a sweeping epic that begins 15 years in Voyager’s future in a snowy wasteland, where Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) and Chakotay (Robert Beltran) are the sole survivors of a terrible tragedy. The wrecked Voyager is frozen beneath the ice, the rest of the crew are all long dead, and together the pair embark on a obsessive mission to alter this bleak scenario.

Sitting in his trailer on the Paramount lot, Garrett Wang can barely contain his enthusiasm for the landmark story. Timeless promises to be a classic episode, and as Harry Kim, Wang is the focus.

“I remember [executive producer] Brannon Braga calling me up and saying, ‘We’ve got a really huge episode, probably the biggest episode in the history of the whole of Voyager’,” the actor tells TV Zone. “I said, ‘Is it going to be a two-parter?’ And he said, ‘No, we want to encapsulate it all into one. We had many discussions whether to make it two parts or not, but we want to concentrate it and this way it will be a classic like City on the Edge of Forever from the original series.’”

Fortunately, Wang was not disappointed when he first read the script, which delivered all the thrills and concise storytelling that Braga had promised.

“I was very impressed,” he enthuses. “We’ve done a lot of Time things, but I was impressed by the way it was written, and how the scenes were structured. I think any story can be a great story, but it just depends how you tell it. It depends on where you place emphasis, where you put certain scenes, and the scenes are tight, and it’s jumping back and forth between the Future and the Present. The action keeps flowing all the way, there’s never a stop and the images are very cinematic. They are high concept images that play big. This episode is a ‘Wow!’ episode.”

Timeless certainly boasts all the markings of an unforgettable Star Trek: aside from the magnificent concept, there’s some slick direction from LeVar Burton, who also reprises his role of Geordi LaForge from The Next Generation. Wang worked closely with the director to define the character of the older Kim, who is burdened with guilt over Voyager’s icy fate...

"(Robert) Picardo is the only one who has been able to let it out" says Garrett Wang. What does he mean? You'll need to read on