By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Science fiction is often at its best, when unusual sci-fi circumstances are used to highlight real world issues. One of the best examples of this is the way Science fiction handles PTSD and the horrific realities of the practice of torture.
Star Trek in particular, has never shied away from dealing with torture. One of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s very best episodes, “Chain of Command”, revolves around it, and has spawned numerous discussions about the counting of lights. Yet, as much as characters like Picard or Kirk have suffered, no one in the franchise, and maybe not in the history of the entire human race,vhas suffered more than one pivotal sci-fi character.
He wasn’t an officer. He wasn’t a scientist. He’s an enlisted man without any rank. He’s a man who rolls up his sleeves and gets to work in the dirt.
His name, is Miles O’Brien. And he’s a union man.
Miles Edward O’Brien (Colm Meaney) was introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s very first episode and returned as a recurring, supporting cast member. He was regularly featured throughout The Next Generation’s run as the Enterprise’s transporter Chief.
His workmanlike position endeared him to both fans and the creators of the show. So, when the time came for Star Trek’s first spinoff, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, O’Brien was chosen as the character that would act as that show’s Chief of Operations. I suspect he never would have accepted the transfer, had he known the hell that was about to follow.
After his arrival in the first episode, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine quickly embarked on a week-after-week mission to break Miles O’Brien’s body, his spirit, and his mind. There were even times when the show succeeded, though he usually bounced back. Mostly.
At first his torments were more minor annoyances like the station always breaking, constant nagging from his wife, or being forced to go hunting through crawlspaces for Voles. However, the torture of Miles O’Brien, soon took on a much darker tone. After seeing his complete character arc, now there’s no question that Miles O’Brien is the most tormented person in the history of the Federation. And maybe in all of fiction.
What follows is an account of the most horrific ways in which this lovable working stiff was viciously persecuted.
And no, we’re not talking about being married to Keiko. Though, that would be pretty bad.
THE TORMENT OF MILES O’BRIEN
A Visionary Hell
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 3 episode “Visionary,” Miles ends up running into a future version of himself, before actually dying. Again, actually, dying.
This wasn’t one of those fake sci-fi show, he’ll be ok in the end deaths. Deep Space Nine fully kills Miles off. Then to add insult to injury, he’s replaced by his future self. From then on, everyone pretends the real Miles, the Miles who was killed, never existed.
The Miles that replaced him likely endures constant, existential dread. He’s doomed to spend the rest of his life wondering whether he’s really the person everyone thinks he is, or if he’s just a freaky future clone of himself.
A Tribunal Of Humiliation And Pain
In the Deep Space Nine Episode “Tribunal,” it starts out seeming like Miles has finally caught a break. He’s off on a nice vacation with his wife, at least until he’s tortured and falsely imprisoned by the Cardassians.
The Cardassians are especially good at torture, and they do all they can to make Chief O’Brien suffer. It culminates in the hapless Starfleet officer, having one of his teeth ripped out with pliers, before being told he’s already been declared guilty and will soon be executed.
Eventually, his friends prove that he’s been framed and free him, but the fact that he spends an entire week being physically abused in Cardassia’s brutal prison system, while expecting to die, all because he wanted to go on a vacation, had to leave some sort of lasting, psychic damage.
Time’s Orphan Makes The Chief Watch His Daughter Destroyed
Sometimes the torture Miles endures, is due to what happens to others. Miles O’Brien, prides himself on being a devoted family man and an excellent father. So, of course, in the season 6 episode “Time’s Orphan,” his daughter Molly falls into a time portal.
By the time Miles gets Molly back, she’s aged ten years and spent that time living alone as a feral animal. His little girl is gone and in her place is some sort of crazed barbarian. He’s forced to send her back into the time portal and accept her as dead, becaus she’s so damaged she can no longer live in the normal world.
In the end, a younger version of Molly comes out of the portal, and Miles gets her back, but he still had to spend weeks dealing with the psychotic older version and going through the anguish any parent would suffer when they realize their child is gone.
Demented Whispers
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2 episode “Whispers,” Chief Miles O’Brien returns to the space station after completing an engineering job on another planet, only to discover that his crewmates and family are behaving strangely towards him. Everyone is oddly distant and suspicious.
O’Brien’s no fool and he quickly notices subtle changes in the station’s operations. As he tries to uncover the reason for this sudden shift, his paranoia grows, driving him to investigate further.
The tension escalates, when O’Brien decides to flee the station in a runabout, convinced that everyone is part of a plot to replace or harm him. Pursued by his own friends, he heads to a meeting of Federation ambassadors, believing he must warn them of a potential infiltration on DS9.
However, in a dramatic twist, it is revealed that O’Brien is actually a replicant, created by an unknown entity, and the real Chief O’Brien is safely undergoing surgery back on the station. The episode ends tragically for the replicant O’Brien, who is fatally shot just as he begins to understand his own identity.
That episode might sound like a rare win for the real O’Brien, but it’s not. O’Brien is left deeply unsettled by the whole ordeal. He’s particularly affected by the replicant’s desperate attempts to connect with his family and the crew, highlighting a struggle for identity and belonging. The real Miles, tries to reconcile the fact that his duplicate, although not truly him, shared many of his memories and emotions while interacting with the people he cares about.
20 Years Of Torment In Hard Time
What Miles O’Brien endures in the season 4 Deep Space Nine episode “Hard Time,” may be the worst torture anyone has ever experienced.
It kicks off when Chief O’Brien shows interest in some alien technology and ends up wrongly accused of espionage. He’s sentenced to 20 years and thrown in prison.
In case you haven’t noticed, Miles spends a lot of time in prison. This time he doesn’t get out.
Over the course of that episode, we watch the decades go by as the now former Operations Chief lives out the rest of his life in a horrific jail cell. He’s often on the verge of starvation. He’s not allowed visitors or contact with the outside world. His only socialization is with another prisoner, who eventually becomes his best friend.
Conditions become so bad, both O’Brien and his friend start to lose their minds. The guards abandon them and stop feeding them On the edge of total starvation, with their wits already half gone, Miles and his friend start fighting over the few scraps of food they have left. In the ensuing struggle Miles intentoinally and brutally kills his best friend.
That sounds bad enough, but this isn’t a normal prison. It’s a prison simulation, that only happens in his mind. What seemed like decades to Miles was in fact only a few seconds in reality.
To Chief Miles O’Brien it’s utterly real, and always will be. Yet, the twenty years he spent there weren’t real, and when its over he’s thrust right back into his normal life like it never happened. Only, to him it did happen.
The things he believes he did and endured, feed intense PTSD, causing him to attempt suicide rather than continue on. Doctor Bashir, talks him down and gets him in therapy, but Miles O’Brien is never quite right again.
Chief O’Brien’s Endless Torment
We could turn this into an entire book, there are so many horrible things in the Chief’s story.
There was that time Starfleet intelligence forced Miles into going undercover and pressured him into intentionally getting his friend killed.
There’s his distant past which is already haunting and tormenting him before we even meet him. Before we knew Miles on TNG, he was a soldier fighting in brutal conflicts against the Cardassians, barely surviving to tell the tale. So of course he ends up being forced to serve on an old Cardassian space station and make friends with the enemies who killed off his comrades.
There’s more. Like the time he almost died from an ancient biogenic weapon
Or that bizarre incident when an alien takes control of his wife’s body and threatens to kill her, unless he sabotages the station. Miles is left protecting his daughter from her own mother, a horrifying prospect for any father to endure.
Chief O’Brien Is The Most Important Person In Star Trek
If there’s any solace to be had here, it’s that it seems Miles was eventually recognized for his bravery and perseveerence. In the far off future beyond Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Miles O’Brien is recognized as one of the most important people in Starfleet history.
He’s immortalized in the third Star Trek: Lower Decks episode, “Temporal Edict”, during a scene in “the far future” where a classroom learns about noteworthy people in Federation history. The scene ends with the reveal of a huge golden statue, immortalizing Chief O’Brien as one of Starfleet’s greatest figures.
Why was O’Brien chosen for this honor? It’s never stated, but it may very well be, that surviving all these many torments ends up making him into the perfect Starfleet officer.
Or it could just be that he’s the best, because Miles O’Brien, like his ancestor Sean, is more than a hero. He’s a union man.