Miles O'Brien (Star Trek)

Miles Edward O'Brien is a character in the Star Trek franchise, portrayed by actor Colm Meaney. O'Brien appears occasionally in all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and is a main cast member of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. O'Brien was originally the transporter chief of the USS Enterprise-D. He was later promoted to chief of operations of Deep Space Nine. Being portrayed in 225 episodes overall, O'Brien is the Star Trek character with the second most appearances in the Star Trek franchise, second only to Worf (Michael Dorn). O'Brien is the only major Star Trek character described as both ethnically Irish and born in Ireland; Colm Meaney, the actor who portrays him, is Irish. Early appearances According to Colm Meaney, at first O'Brien "was just there, not really established as a character, and that went on for a bit." He has a few lines in the pilot TNG episode, "Encounter at Farpoint". Appearing on and off in subsequent episodes, mainly operating the ship's transporters, it wasn't until the second-season episode "Unnatural Selection" that Meaney's character was named, and the second episode of season 4, "Family," before the character was given a first name, and his personal life began to be developed. However, Meaney came to like the arrangement of being hired on an episode-by-episode basis, and was hesitant to sign on as a regular on DS9. Along with Worf, Miles O'Brien is one of the two characters that moved from TNG to be a main character on DS9. Rick Berman said the character was named Miles after his nephew. Character postings USS Rutledge Junior tactical Officer Setlik III - Skirmish with Cardassian forces during the Cardassian/Federation war USS Enterprise-D Conn officer Transporter chief Operations and engineering Acting tactical Officer Deep Space Nine (Federation administered Bajoran station) Chief of Operations Chief Engineer USS Defiant (Support starship assigned to Deep Space Nine) Starfleet Academy - San Francisco, California, Earth Professor of Engineering