Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) shares a tragic similarity with Star Trek legend Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Despite being born over a century apart, both O'Brien and Kirk have played key roles in Star Trek history. Captain James T. Kirk aided the peace process between the Klingon Empire and the Federation that led to an alliance that continued into O'Brien's time. Meanwhile, Chief Miles O'Brien played a key role in the Dominion War, serving under Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) aboard both Deep Space Nine and the USS Defiant.
Both O'Brien and Kirk were old soldiers whose traumatic experiences in the battlefield led to prejudice against their former enemies. Captain Kirk's darkest movie moment came when he angrily told Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to let the Klingons die in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Decades later, Miles O'Brien was deeply affected by his experiences during the Federation-Cardassian war, and ended up working on Deep Space Nine, a former Cardassian space station. In their greatest Star Trek stories, both O'Brien and Kirk had to reconcile their respective prejudices to gain a more enlightened perspective.
