Star Trek: Deep Space Nine always put Chief O'Brien through a wringer but how do you rank the worst experiences for him?
When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began in 1993, a great link to The Next Generation was Chief Miles O'Brien. Colm Meaney had been a popular recurring face as the transporter chief on the Enterprise and moving him to the new spinoff helped get attention.
O'Brien had a great presence on DS9 as the chief engineer of the station, good friendships with Dr. Bashir, and it was wonderful seeing him and his wife Keiko (Rosalind Chao) raise a family. However, for some reason, the DS9 writers seemed to have it in making O'Brien suffer over the course of the series.
We're not talking about the typical Trek bits of enduring disasters or attacks or such. No, for O'Brien, the poor guy had to be put through some brutal experiences that would have broken anyone else. He kept going and did get a good ending. However, these have to rank as the best examples of Star Trek outright torturing O'Brien more than any other DS9 character.
10. The Wounded (TNG Season 4 episode 12)
Kicking it off with the TNG episode that gave us our first true focus on O'Brien. It also introduced the Cardassians, making it a must-watch for DS9 fans. When O'Brien's former captain goes rogue and starts attacking Cardassian ships, the Enterprise must stop him. That has O'Brien remembering his experiences in the war with the other species.
The scene of O'Brien relating how he killed a Cardassian in self-defense is powerful and the first moment Meany got the shine in the role. There's also his trying to talk his captain down from his crusade. While he doesn't get tortured as much on-screen, this episode does show the first sufferings for O'Brien.
9. Power Play (TNG Season 5 episode 15)
Using a nightmarish scenario, this storyline has O'Brien helping some crew members investigating a seemingly abandoned moon. After being knocked out, O'Brien, Data and Troi are possessed by beings who quickly take over Ten Forward. So we have the sight of O'Brien threatening his own wife with a phaser.
While the crew tries to settle this, Picard has doubts about the aliens' claims on who they say they are (and for good reason). It ends in a powerful sequence where Keiko shows her own backbone to free O'Brien. His guilt afterward was the prelude to how much suffering he'd be in for with DS9.
8. Time's Orphan (DS9 Season 6 episode 24)
There's no such thing as a peaceful vacation for the DS9 crew. What should be a nice, quiet picnic for the O'Brien family takes a harsh turn when Molly explores a cave and falls into a portal. The crew is able to rescue her, only it's a now teenage Molly who's become a savage person who had to survive in the past. The O'Briens try to live with this new Molly, but it's not easy.
It's bad enough for O'Brien to adjust to a much older daughter. It gets worse as Molly is out of control to the point of being imprisoned. O'Brien goes to extremes to save his daughter and while it works out in the end, this was a nasty experience for the family.
7. Armageddon Game (season 2 episode 13)
This is a great episode for showing the first sign of the close friendship of O'Brien and Bashir. Too bad it had to come in harsh circumstances. After the pair stop a bioweapon, they find themselves hunted by a government determined to ensure there are no witnesses to it. Those aliens make it appear as if O'Brien and Bashir were killed in an accident, but luckily, Keiko is able to see through it.
As it happens, O'Brien gets infected by that bioweapon and slowly dying, with Bashir trying to tend to him as they keep on the run. That does lead to a good moment of O'Brien choosing to die on his feet facing execution. Thankfully, the crew arrives in time to rescue them, with O'Brien pushed to the limit for the first time on DS9.
6. The Assignment (Season 5 episode 5)
The love of O'Brien and Keiko was put to the true test in this dark episode. Returning from a trip, Keiko is now possessed by one of the evil Pah-Wraith demons. It wants O'Brien to do a task for it, threatening to kill Keiko if he refuses. O'Brien has to put on a face of everything being normal, with Chao doing a marvelous job as the Pah-Wraith in Keiko's body, putting a sinister vibe on things.
O'Brien has to handle so much, from his worries about his wife to letting Rom take the fall for some of his sneaky moves to stopping the Pah-Wraith's plans. It culminates in having to shoot his own wife and putting O'Brien in extremes to save his family.
5. Honor Among Thieves (Season 6 episode 15)
This is an odd episode, playing more like a CBS cop show than Star Trek. It has an intriguing setup as O'Brien is chosen by Starfleet to go undercover in the Orion Syndicate. What looks like a simple assignment gets more complex when O'Brien discovers the Dominion is using the Syndicate to assassinate a Klingon ambassador.
Like many stories in this theme, O'Brien befriends one criminal, Bilby, seeing him as a good guy stuck in this criminal life. So when he realizes Bilby is likely to be killed by the Klingons, O'Brien is caught between his duty and friendship. It's a harsh choice for O'Brien that makes him question who's truly right or wrong, and his uncertainty about whether he did the right thing haunts him. A seventh-season episode had a brief follow-up of O'Brien trying to make things right to show he couldn't get over this experience.
4. Whispers (Season 2 episode 14)
The opening of this episode throws us in the middle of the story with O'Brien fleeing DS9 through the wormhole. He starts a log relating how he returned from a mission a few days earlier only to find something off on the station. Everyone from Keiko to Sisko and others seemed to act odd around him, he was cut off from his usual duties and begins to suspect a conspiracy afoot.
The paranoia ramps up as it goes with O'Brien realizing he can't trust anyone. It builds to him running off from the entire station. There is a wild twist that changes the tale and a strangely heartbreaking end that tops an episode that sets O'Brien against his own friends.
3. Tribunal (Season 3 episode 17)
Once again, a seemingly quiet vacation goes horribly awry for the O'Briens. In this case, he's abducted by Cardassians before a horrified Keiko. O'Brien is put on trial for supplying the Maquis terrorists with arms. Calling this a kangaroo court is an insult to kangaroos, as Cardassian trials are already set with a guilty verdict before they even begin, so this is all a show.
O'Brien is beaten in prison, facing an already determined death sentence and time is running out. Thankfully, the crew is able to expose who's really behind this and make O'Brien the first guy to get a fair trial on Cardassia, but the poor Chief really needed a true vacation after this ordeal.
2. Visionary (Season 3 episode 17)
There's suffering and then there's watching yourself die multiple times. When an episode opens with O'Brien flat on his back after being blasted by an energy console, it's going to get rough for him. Thanks to the usual wacky Trek time-travel shenanigans, O'Brien starts bouncing around time, seeing himself from the future. It seems funny at first until O'Brien sees himself killed by a laser.
While he avoids that fate, O'Brien soon sees his corpse after dying of another condition and then sees the entire station be destroyed. He eventually gives himself a fatal dose of radiation so he can warn his earlier self to stop the station's destruction, only to die. It's a bizarre paradox and one can wonder how it felt for O'Brien to witness his own demise so many times.
1. Hard Time (Season 4 episode 19)
The opening of this episode is one of the most gripping in Star Trek lore. A bearded, broken O'Brien is in a prison cell and told that his 20-year sentence is up. Suddenly, a younger O'Brien wakes up in a lab with Kira waiting for him. It seems an alien race mistook O'Brien for a thief and sentenced him to a virtual reality world implanting twenty years of prison time in a few minutes.
As he tries to acclimate back to the station, O'Brien cannot escape what was to him two decades of actual prison time. The flashbacks to his ordeal are horrific, which include killing a fellow inmate. It drives O'Brien to nearly take his own life before Bashir is able to talk him down. Few Star Trek episodes have gone to such a dark place and the biggest example ever of the writers seemingly loving to torture poor O'Brien.
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