1 Weird Star Trek Thing DS9’s Chief O’Brien And Voyager’s Harry Kim Have In Common

They may seem poles apart in terms of age and experience, but Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Chief O'Brien (Colm Meaney) and Star Trek: Voyager's Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) have one weird thing in common. In terms of their obvious similarities, neither Chief O'Brien nor Harry Kim had an easy time on their respective Star Trek shows. For example, Harry Kim was killed four separate times during Voyager's seven seasons, while DS9's Chief had such a hard time that he invented a whole O'Brien Must Suffer subgenre of Star Trek episode.

Both Chief O'Brien and Ensign Harry Kim had a positive friendship with slightly arrogant fellow Starfleet officers. Chief O'Brien's friendship with Doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is one of the franchise's greatest partnerships, built on affectionate rivalry and mutual respect. Meanwhile, Harry Kim's friendship with Star Trek: Voyager's Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) brought the untested young officer out of his shell. However, neither Tom Paris nor Doctor Bashir could save Harry Kim and O'Brien from a bizarre shared tragedy.

Star Trek: DS9’s Chief O’Brien And Voyager’s Harry Kim Have 1 Weird Thing In Common

Both Chief O'Brien and Harry Kim have died, only to be replaced by a version of themselves from another timeline. In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 3, episode 17, "Visionary", Chief O'Brien is exposed to radiation that enables him to jump through time. O'Brien's time jumps expose a plot to destroy the station by the Romulans, but they also result in him dying from radioactive exposure. Before he dies, Prime O'Brien sends his future self back in time to save the station. From this moment on, Future O'Brien replaces Prime O'Brien on DS9, causing a momentary existential crisis for the Chief.

In Star Trek: Voyager season 2, episode 21, "Deadlock", the USS Voyager is duplicated, which leads to the two Voyagers accidentally damaging each other with a series of proton bursts. The proton bursts cause a severe hull rupture, which sends "our" Harry Kim hurtling into the vacuum of space. When the duplicated Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) was forced to enable a self-destruct sequence, she sent her Harry Kim to "our" Voyager with the newborn Naomi Wildman. Which means that Voyager's Naomi Wildman also joins Chief O'Brien and Harry Kim's unique club.

Replacing Chief O’Brien On DS9 Satisfied A Star Trek: TNG Ambition

Killing off Chief O'Brien and replacing him with his future self was the closest that Ronald D. Moore came to fulfilling an ambition he had during Star Trek: The Next Generation. While working on TNG season 6, episode 24, "Second Chances" introduced Thomas Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Moore and the writing team considered killing off Commander William T. Riker and replacing him with his transporter clone. Rick Berman vetoed the idea, due to the tentative plans for a series of TNG movies, as he recalled in Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages:

" Basically, you're putting a character on the ship who has not experienced anything of the last six years and doesn't know any of the characters. "

Introducing Commander Riker's clone as a regular would have been a dramatic change ahead of Star Trek: The Next Generation's final season. However, Berman's veto does partly explain why Harry Kim and Chief O'Brien's deaths and swift replacements never really changed anything on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Both Chief O'Brien and Harry Kim's replacements retained those characters' experiences, they just had one or two later memories that their predecessor never possessed.