Star Trek Deep Space Nine‘s Chief Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) shares a tragic similarity with Star Trek legend Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Despite being born over a century apart, both O’Brien and Kirk have played key roles in Star Trek history. Captain James T. Kirk aided the peace process between the Klingon Empire and the Federation that led to an alliance that continued into O’Brien’s time. Meanwhile, Chief Miles O’Brien played a key role in the Dominion War, serving under Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) aboard both Deep Space Nine and the USS Defiant.
Both O’Brien and Kirk were old soldiers whose traumatic experiences in the battlefield led to prejudice against their former enemies. Captain Kirk’s darkest movie moment came when he angrily told Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to let the Klingons die in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Decades later, Miles O’Brien was deeply affected by his experiences during the Federation-Cardassian war, and ended up working on Deep Space Nine, a former Cardassian space station. In their greatest Star Trek stories, both O’Brien and Kirk had to reconcile their respective prejudices to gain a more enlightened perspective.
Overcoming Prejudice Gave Kirk & O’Brien Great Star Trek Stories
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a movie about the destructive power of prejudice and the dangers of refusing to embrace a new outlook. An alliance between the Klingons and the Federation is deemed to be a sign of weakness by key figures both at Starfleet Command and the Klingon home planet in Star Trek VI. Because of Kirk’s hatred of the Klingons following the death of his son David Marcus (Merritt Butrick), he becomes an easy target for the conspiracy to derail the alliance. Ultimately, Kirk overcame his anti-Klingon prejudice to honor his son’s death by ensuring a lasting peace that ensured that other fathers would not have to bury their sons.
Unfortunately, a new threat emerged between the Federation-Klingon alliance in The Undiscovered Country and the start of the Star Trek: The Next Generation timeline. The war between the Cardassian Union and the Federation lasted for several years, and left a lasting impact on Miles O’Brien. In TNG season 4, episode 12, “The Wounded”, O’Brien’s former Captain is accused of attacking Cardassian ships and facilities. This forced O’Brien to confront his own experiences during the war, eventually confiding in Cardassian Glin Daro (Time Winters) that it wasn’t Cardassians that he hated, but it was the man that the Federation-Cardassian war had forced him to become.
How O’Brien & The Cardassians Echoed Kirk & The Klingons
The clearest link between O’Brien and Kirk is in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2, episode 25, “Tribunal.” Like Kirk in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Miles is framed for a crime he didn’t commit and is forced to endure an alien legal system. Aided by DS9’s Constable Odo (Rene Auberjonois), O’Brien endures a trial that assumes his guilt and uses his anti-Cardassian prejudice as evidence for why he was supplying weapons to the Maquis.
Like Kirk’s crew on the USS Enterprise-A, O’Brien’s crew mates back on Deep Space Nine doggedly investigate the crime, discovering that he was framed. The Cardassian Union used O’Brien’s anti-Cardassian prejudice as part of an elaborate deception to justify an attack on Federation colonies. As with Kirk, O’Brien’s innocence in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine proved that he had overcome his prejudice to avoid further bloodshed, in honor of those that he had lost.
