Our man O'Brien

When I watched the TNG finale, All Good Things, it had been so long since I'd seen Encounter at Farpoint that I couldn't remember if O'Brien had actually been in it... I was suspicious that they were just throwing him in there because his character had become such an integral part of the show and moved on to become a primary cast member of DS9.  But, sure enough - there's our man O'Brien!

As a secondary character, he gave the audience one of the most unique perspectives of the show.  Eventually they worked in other secondaries like Nurse Ogawa, but O'Brien was there from the beginning.  I wonder if they'd always planned to use him periodically?  I guess I could research this stuff before I blog, but I like wondering and imagining.

Miles O'Brien started in red, working ops on the Battle Bridge and the Main Bridge in the finale.  Then he moved on to the Transporter chief and he figured in prominently in the engineering techno-babble scenes.  It's good to have someone reliable that you can turn to and stick into an episode.  Someone that can say the lines and become familiar to the audience.  Then his character took an unexpected turn.

They gave him a family.  Who was O'Brien that he should have a family?  Not a main character, that's who.  The main characters are the most important, but they're limited because they need to be used for the main storylines.  (I don't count Beverly Crusher and Wesley because they came into it as a set, both primary characters.)  Troi, Riker, Picard  all got to experience parenting in one-off episodes that didn't leave them committed to a family full time. Worf had Alexander, but they could only use him sparingly because Worf had to be used in every episode without being overly tied down to his family.  And really, it's a shame because Alexander was a child character that I sort of liked.  I liked the alien children better than Wesley or Jake because they're ultimately a part of the cultural development of the alien race.  But, anyway, with a secondary character, they were free to build a family from the ground up and follow it through different stages.  The wedding.  Their life together discussing things like food and trying new things from their different ancestral cultures.  Their child, the birth of which provided one of the most golden moments of comic relief in the whole series. The family unit functioning on a starship in the 24th century made a great distraction and addition to many episodes of TNG.

I was even a little surprised when I learned that O'Brien would be a main character in DS9.  That meant transplanting the whole family.  I mean, Worf having Alexander was one thing.  That was just one small child character that could be written off as being in school most of the time.  As could Molly, I guess.  But I wondered about Keiko.  I don't think her character was as popular on the whole.  I admit, she's not my favorite either, but she's such a part of the O'Brien character, she's necessary.  So they had her working on the station and she remained a secondary character and it worked.  That was the unique thing about DS9...it was a stationary space station, so it was like a permanent home instead of gallivanting around on a star ship trying to raise kids.  "Kids" plural, because they decided to write in another child as part of an expanding family.  For a main character!  It ended up as one of the most creative pregnancy coverups ever. The character of Kira could no more have realistically committed to parenthood than Troi, Riker, or Picard.  But, they hid Nana Visitor's real life pregnancy as her character being a surrogate for the O'Brien/Keiko child.

It was made all the more entertaining by the fact that the man who played Dr. Bashir who preformed the transplant to make the surrogacy possible was the father of Nana's child in real life.  One of my favorite stories ever.  And the O'Brien character and his family proceed throughout DS9's run depicting as normal of a life as can be depicted in a science fiction setting.

Who knew when he was on the Battle Bridge in Encounter At Farpoint that O'Brien would become such and indispensable part of the heart of the Star Trek franchise?  It may make him the most important part of that first episode.  I found a great tribute to our man O'Brien to end with :