Chief Operations Officer Miles Edward O'Brien

Miles Edward O'Brien was born on Earth in Ireland. He has a unique talent for all things mechanical and so studied advanced engineering at the Academy. He has served on the USS Rutledge with Captain Benjamin Maxwell as tactical officer. He never forgot the encounter they had on Setlik III with the Cardassians. It left him skaken and gave him a deep hatred for the Cardassians for what they did, and that he had to kill to defend the survivers. After the Setlik III massacre, he was reassigned to the Enterprise. First, he served as Bridge Conn, then he was promoted to Transporter Chief and he became a transporter specialist.

When Miles was on board the Enterprise, he married Keiko Ishikawa (introduced to him by Lt Cmdr Data) and they had a daughter, Molly (delivered by Worf!). Finally, he was assigned to Deep Space 9 as Chief Operations Officer.

Colm Meaney

A native of Ireland, Colm (pronounced "column") was born in Dublin, Ireland. As a youth he was intrigued by acting and began to pursue it in earnest when he was fourteen.

After his high school graduation he applied for admission to the National Irish Theater drama school. Colm worked on a fishing boat while awaiting word on his acceptance, but as soon as he received word that the school would admit him, he left the world of fishing behind.

For eight years the young actor worked in such British theatrical productions as "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" and, ironically enough considering his recent employment, "Fish in the Sea."

His TV debut was in a then popular police series called "Z CARS" (pronounced Zed Cars as the letter "Z" is pronounced "zed" in England). He also appeared in the film STRANGERS and then made the big decision to move to the United States in 1978.

INTERCONTINENTAL

For the next four years he hop-scotched back and forth between New York and London as he played a number of roles in films, television and on-stage. In 1982 he decided to remain in America permanently to concentrate his professional efforts here. For the next few years he primarily did stage work in regional theater and off-Broadway before making another move, this time from New York to Los Angeles. This enabled him to do more regular auditions for TV and movie roles.

The roles came his way and he made guest shots on such shows as TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE, REMINGTON STEELE, and MOONLIGHTING. Initially he was cast in the tough guy roles playing menacing characters, but he enjoyed the change of pace when he landed the role of Chief O'Brien, who would become an irregular regular, on STAR TREK--THE NEXT GENERATION, appearing in some 60 episodes. When he initially auditioned for the series he not only had never seen any version of STAR TREK, he wasn't even a science fiction fan. He originally auditioned for some of the other roles, including Data, but ultimately was cast as the Enterprise transporter chief, who at the time didn't even have a name. Meaney appeared in the very first episode of NEXT GENERATION, "Encounter At Farpoint," and then made infrequent appearances over the next two years before the producers decided to start beefing up his character to make him more than just a glorified extra.

While working on those early seasons of NEXT GENERATION, Colm often did other work as since it didn't look like his role on the show would ever develop into anything substantial. Following the first three episodes of TNG in 1987, Colm flew back to New York and appeared for nine months in the play "Breaking the Code" with Derek Jacobi. When the play closed after a year, NEXT GENERATION was on hiatus due to the Writer's Guild Strike, so Colm remained in New York and landed a role on the daytime drama ONE LIFE TO LIVE. This role lasted until the fall of 1988, when the Hollywood Writer's Guild strike ended.

RECALLED TO DUTY

Paramount then summoned Colm Meaney back to the studio where the character of the transporter chief was given a name, Chief O'Brien, and more lines as the first stage in developing his character. He appeared in seventeen episodes in the second season of NEXT GENERATION. One of his early featured episodes was the second season outing "Unnatural Selection" in which Chief O'Brien had to call upon his transporter skills in order to save the ship's Chief Surgeon, Dr. Pulaski, from an ailment which had brought about rapid aging.

Unlike most of the other cast members of STAR TREK--THE NEXT GENERATION, Colm Meaney has a number of motion picture credits. These include roles in such films as COME SEE THE PARADISE, DICK TRACY, DIE HARD II: DIE HARDER, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, FAR AND AWAY (where he coached star Tom Cruise on his accent), THE COMMITMENTS and UNDER SIEGE. He also appeared in the TV movie THE GAMBLER III. He even appeared in the pilot episode of DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN but didn't join the subsequent series because of his commitment to DEEP SPACE NINE. he also appeared in the pilot for EQUAL JUSTICE and in the HBO movie PERFECT WITNESS.

In the fourth season episode "Family" he was officially revealed to be Miles Edward O'Brien instead of just Chief O'Brien. Also in the fourth season, O'Brien was featured prominently in "The Wounded" when Captain Picard had him talk to his former captain who had turned renegade and was attacking all Cardassian vessels. It make for a good character scene for the performer as he revealed how he, too, had lost friends at the hands of the Cardassians during the war with them.

Meaney has often had to play villains and while his STAR TREK persona is a very benevolent one, in the fifth season episode "Power Play" the character of Chief O'Brien was possessed by a dangerous alien entity, along with Troi and Data. Behind the scenes the three actors had names for their evil selves which were never revealed on air. Brent Spiner was dubbed Buzz, Marina took the nom de plum of Slugger, and Colm called himself Slasher.

Another interesting episode for Meaney was "Rascals" in which Keiko is transformed into a child due to a transporter accident. The young actress, Caroline Junko King, who played the adolescent Keiko had appeared in COME SEE THE PARADISE, a film Meaney had also appeared in.

FAMILY WAY

Colm was particularly pleased that Rosalind Chao was willing to do the series because this enabled them to play the kind of character situations seldom seen on science fiction shows. "Keiko, Miles and Molly are the ony family we see in space," Meaney explained. "I love the shows where Rosalind is involved and we get to play family situations. The one thing that SF shows tend to lack is simple, real family business, like making a cup of tea or having dinner. There's usually no time for that on TV shows. Interpersonal relationships and the like don't get much air time on SF shows, either. Having Keiko and Molly there gives me more aspects of my character to explore. That's a tremendous plus."

Family relationships are clearly important to Colm for it was after he relocated to the United States that he started his own family when he married his wife, Barbara, and had a daughter named Brenda. When Colm appeared with the other DEEP SPACE NINE cast members at Universal Studios Hollywood in November 1993, his daughter was in the audience and he proudly introduced her to the assembled fans.

In spite of working on a weekly series, Colm has been able to continue working in motion pictures as 1993 saw him appear in two British films: INTO THE WEST and SNAPPER. Regarding the difficulties of working on a series while still fielding feature film offers, Meaney explains that the producers have been very accomodating to him. "This film I just did was in Ireland and they worked out the dates and said, 'Yeah, we can make that work,' and released me to go do it. It gives you the best of both worlds when you can do the series while, at the same time, occasionally get out to do something different."

Colm Meaney has come a long way since he first moved to the United States in 1978 and two STAR TREK series have been all the better for his presence.

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by Mario Guatteri