By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
One of the most popular Star Trek characters is Chief O’Brien, who went from being a minor supporting character on The Next Generation to being one of the main cast members on Deep Space Nine. He’s a relatable character for many reasons, including the fact that he’s a family man who would rather chill out with his wife and kids rather than explore strange new worlds. However, most fans might not be able to exactly relate to O’Brien’s marriage, and that’s because the chief met and married his wife in only one year, making this one of the fastest-moving couples in the galaxy.
Now, this little detail about Chief O’Brien’s marriage isn’t included in any broadcast episodes…instead, it’s effectively hidden in the deleted scenes of the TNG Season 3 episode “The Price.” In that scene, O’Brien discusses a girlfriend named Mitzi with Counselor Troi. We aren’t introduced to Keiko until the Season 4 episode “Data’s Day,” where she is getting married to everyone’s favorite transporter chief. Their onscreen romance is sweet…so sweet you might miss the shocking fact that O’Brien met, dated, and married someone in about a year, something that would seem unthinkable to most Star Trek fans watching from home.
The O’Briens’ marriage moves fast in other ways, too: for example, less than a year after getting married aboard the Enterprise, the two welcomed their first child, Molly, into the world. Obviously, there’s no “right” time frame for couples to have children, but it’s a bit surprising these newlyweds became parents only two years after meeting each other. Doubly surprising because the Enterprise seemed like a much more dangerous home for children than, say, a space station.
Speaking of which, the next major step in the O’Briens’ marriage was moving to Deep Space Nine, which happened just a little over a year after Molly was born. Generally speaking, this made sense…before the Bajoran wormhole was discovered, DS9 was the kind of safe, slightly dead-end assignment where the chief could safely raise his family. However, we can’t get over the fact that he and Keiko met, married, became parents, and left everything behind, all within a period of about three years.
However, fans who truly know Chief O’Brien may not be that surprised by these marriage details because this is a character who has always known exactly what he wants out of life…the kind of guy who deliberately stayed an enlisted man because he didn’t want to put up with the formal Starfleet dinners that officers must attend. Therefore, we find it completely believable that he’d both marry Keiko and start having children whenever he thought the time was right. This “know thy self” vibe extended to the series finale, in which we discover O’Brien has suddenly decided to leave DS9 for a safe teaching job at Starfleet Academy.
Once Deep Space Nine got the Defiant, Chief O’Brien became its chief engineer, keeping this Borg-busting bird in the air through even the hairiest firefights. At the end of the day, he always made sure the ship could warp him back home to the warmth and comfort of his family. O’Brien was a great engineer, but that’s not surprising…what else would you expect from someone whose marriage had been moving at lightspeed from the beginning?
