Top 10 Deaths and Resurrections in Star Trek History

Star Trek Deep Space Nine Visionary – Miles Edward O’Brien views his own dead body.

#4 – Miles Edward O’Brien

During the Deep Space Nine episode Visionary the chief was seen jumping through time repeatedly, unfortunately for him the jumps turned deadly for him and the station.

The character with, perhaps, the most growth during The Next Generation era of the Star Trek franchise, Miles O’Brien started his on-screen tour of duty as the relief fight controller aboard the Enterprise D and subsequently progressed to transporter chief, family man, Chief of Operations and later Professor of Engineering at Starfleet Academy. from the guy who stood in the transporter room with absolutely nothing to do, to a Professor is quite the arc for any character to take.

He was always one of my favourite characters, so getting to see as many O’Brien centric episodes as we did, especially during Star Trek Deep Space Nine was a real treat, but none stand out for me more then the fantastic third season episode Visionary in which he travels to the future every few hours and witnesses a series of events that he tries to stop from happening, each more devastating then the last.

How it happened:

Thanks to an orbiting quantum singularity, which turns out to be a cloaked Romulan ship, O’Brien is cast in to the future where he dies not once, but three times during this episode. The first time he died as the result of a laser planted inside of a panel, he witnesses his own death during one of his time jumps and manages to stop it, the second death was the result of radiation which is also a part of the reason he is jumping through time, he is also able to stop this death by having Dr. Bashir run a basilar arterial scan.

But his true death is also the cause of his ultimate resurrection, during his final random time jump he witnesses the destruction of Deep Space Nine and volunteers for a final controlled jump which he knows will most likely kill him, which it does.

How he returned: 

At the last minute the dying Chief hands his radioactive isotope injection device to his future counterpart sending him back to the past where he is able to warn Captain Sisko that the singularity orbiting the station is actually a cloaked Romulan Warbird which is preparing to attack the station. The result is the first Chief O’Brien died so that the future version of himself can take his place.

This great episode and the Chief’s sacrifice of his own life has allowed us to rank his death and resurrection number 4 on our list.