                            O'BRIEN FAQ FILE
                                   by 
                            Scott Hollifield

Since there's been so much discussion and debate concerning O'Brien and
exactly what his rank and station is, I thought I'd write this file which,
while not exactly arriving at a conclusion, will lay out the facts and make
things a little clearer for those who are confused.


        1.   Didn't O'Brien appear in the first season as a
             helmsman/security officer/ Ops officer?

First, let's begin with Colm Meaney's early appearances.  In "Encounter At
Farpoint", he appeared in a red uniform, and was stationed at the helm, or
Conn, station on the battle bridge.  In "Lonely Among Us", he appeared in
a gold uniform and was depicted as a security officer.

Note that NEITHER of these appearances were as O'Brien.  The character was
not named in either instance.  Colm was simply showing up as bit player, and
no one could predict that he would be made into a major supporting character.
Someone COULD argue that O'Brien simply got around a lot, and served in
several areas of specialization, but this is stretching it a bit, especially
in light of later details.

(Note that O'Brien never appeared as an Ops officer.  Confusion over this
stems from the fact that, on the battle bridge, the Ops and helm stations
are *reversed* from their configuration on the main bridge; some people
thought that Colm Meaney's red-shirted character from "Farpoint" was an
Ops officer as a result.)


        2.   Okay, so when was Colm Meaney finally O'Brien?

Let's move to what is widely considered to be the first appearance of
O'Brien himself.  This was in "The Child", the first show of the second
season, and the first time Colm Meaney appeared as a transporter officer.
He wore two pips in this episode, and was addressed neither by name or by
rank.

His second appearance was in the next episode, "Where Silence Has Lease",
in which he was still unnamed.  The character then skipped three episodes
("Elementary Dear Data", "The Outrageous Okona" and "The Schizoid Man"),
and then appeared again without a name in "Loud As A Whisper".  In the
episode after that, "Unnatural Selection", the character was finally named
O'Brien.  (If I'm not mistaken, I also believe that this was the first
time he was referred to as "Chief".)


        3.   He was called a lieutenant in "Where Silence Has Lease"!
             Doesn't that settle the argument?

Well, not really.  It's true that he was addressed as such in that episode.
The exact moment was when Riker and Worf were being beamed over to the
fake Yamato, and Riker gave O'Brien the instruction "Aft station,
Lieutenant."  However, it's quite significant that (1) This was a very early
appearance of the character - his second in fact; (2) He has NEVER been
addressed as "lieutenant" since; and (3) Errors and confusion of this type
was relatively common during the first two seasons, when the producers
weren't as concerned with maintaining a tight continuity.  (Data has been
called a lieutenant, incorrectly, more than once, and there are other
examples as well.)

It's also true that this example has never been conclusively contradicted,
but evidence HAS popped up since which, while inconclusive, does shed
plenty of doubt on this, and at least raises the possibility that Riker's
line was a mistake.


        4.   Okay, so they started calling him "Chief" with "Unnatural
             Selection".  Can't he still be a lieutenant?  What exactly
             does "Chief" mean in this context, anyway?

A tricky question.  The way I see it, "Chief" means one of two things:
(1) Chief Petty (or Warrant) Officer, or (2) Chief of a particular
division.

(A Chief Petty Officer is enlisted, a non-commissioned officer, who is
someone who hasn't been through the academy, and therefore doesn't have
a commissioned rank like ensign or lieutenant.)

O'Brien is transporter chief, that much is certain - so you figure that
(2) applies for sure.  (Until question #10 - put that aside for later.)
However, the Enterprise's senior staff is full of (2)-type chiefs:
Geordi is Chief Engineer, Worf is Chief Security Officer, etc.  So why
aren't they called "Chief LaForge" and "Chief Worf"?

Well, one could say that falling under number (2) doesn't mean that you
actually get called "Chief" - that you have to be a Chief Petty Officer
for that.  That too, however, is not a flawless theory.  The chief
engineers who preceded Geordi, such as Argyle and MacDougal, were called
"Chief" - and were NOT Chief Petty Officers.  Also, there's no rule that
says no division chief can't be called "Chief".

This is an example of what I call the Betazoid Counselor Principle (BCP),
which is an invalidation of a general application of assumptions.  It
basically states that, just because Deanna Troi is both Betazoid and the
ship's counselor, it doesn't mean that ALL ship's counselors are required
to be Betazoid, even though some people think so and even though it does
make a certain amount of sense.

Likewise - given that O'Brien is a commissioned officer (which we're
assuming for the purposes of this one argument), it doesn't mean that he
HAS to be called "Lieutenant O'Brien" as opposed to Chief O'Brien.
There are a number of potential explanations for this.  Perhaps O'Brien
is accustomed to being called "Chief" throughout his career.  Perhaps
transporter chiefs are traditionally called "Chief", regardless of
commission.  Perhaps some people like to be called "Chief" and some people
don't.  The only thing that is certain is that there doesn't have to be a
hard and fast rule in effect here.  There is so much ambiguity that arguing
either side of the argument is fairly useless.


        5.   In "Family", Worf's foster father came out and called O'Brien
             a chief petty officer!  Now, doesn't THAT settle the argument?

Heh, no.  I thought so at the time...

The actual scene features Worf's dad, Sergei Rozhenko, walking up to O'Brien
and saying, "Ah, always good to meet another chief petty officer."  O'Brien
then introduces himself by his full name (revealed for the first time).

When I saw this, I thought that the writers were saying to us, "Ignore
any previous evidence that O'Brien was a commissioned officer.  He is,
according to us, a CPO."  Sergei even recognized him as a CPO right away,
without seeming to examine his pips!  What does this mean?

Okay, the one thing I'm pretty sure about is that the WRITER of that scene
meant for O'Brien to be a CPO.  Lots of people have railed against the idea,
saying that Sergei was an old guy, didn't know what he was talking about,
had forgotten the way things worked, served at a time when things worked
differently, was possibly senile, etc.  However, the writer clearly intended
none of this - he or she thought that O'Brien should be recognized as a CPO.

In fact, only two things contradict this view: the line from "Where Silence
Has Lease", explained above in question #3, and.... the pips (see question
#9).


        7.   In "The Wounded", it's said that O'Brien used to be the
             Chief Tactical Officer on the USS Rutledge.  Doesn't that
             mean that he was and is probably a lieutenant, since the
             Enterprise's Chief Tactical Officer, Worf, is also a
             lieutenant?

It doesn't mean he has to be.  It's entirely possible that the Rutledge,
being a smaller and less important ship (perhaps), didn't need a fully
commissioned lieutenant to be tactical chief.


        8.    But what about all those years of service?  O'Brien has
              evidently been in Starfleet quite a while - shouldn't he
              be a full lieutenant by now?

Again, not neccessarily.  A lot of people, 20th century types AND Starfleet
people, choose not to go to the Academy and earn a commission.  Worf's
dad never did.  It's possible that O'Brien didn't, and doesn't want to; why
would he, he's serving on the Enterprise!

        9.   What ABOUT those darn pips anyhow?  O'Brien wears two solid
             pips - that means lieutenant!  Right?

Er - right.  But it's not quite that easy.  A number of things need to be
considered:

Star Trek, as everyone knows, does not maintain a perfect consistency.
It's not always possible to reconcile all the little mistakes, no matter how
contrived the explanation is.  The reason for this is that the writers are
always changing their minds about something - or, better put, that old writers
go away and new ones come in and change things.  O'Brien may have been
originally intended to actually be a lieutenant.  Back in the early second
season, someone may have told Costuming, "Hey, this character's a lieutenant -
give him two solid pips on his uniform."  Costuming dutifully produced the
appropriate uniform, and then maybe someone, somewhere in the writing staff,
decided that O'Brien WASN'T a lieutenant.  Fine - start calling him Chief, not
lieutenant.  Write an episode that says he's a CPO.  What?  The uniform?  Oh,
leave it - no one will care about the insignia.

Then there's the infamous Silver Pips conspiracy.  This past summer, a
user named Karl Perjoran posted the following info on the Fidonet TNG echo,
which he said came from someone named John Patritski, who allegedly has
contacts with Paramount's Costuming department.  (So we're talking third-
hand information here - fourth-hand if you're reading this.)

  "1) Officers wear Gold pips. Non-Commissioned Officers wear Silver pips."

  "2) In reference to Silver pips worn by Petty Officers:
        CPO (E7 pay grade) - Transporter operator in "The Next Phase."
                        = one hollow pip
        Senior CPO (E8 pay grade)"
                        = one solid pip
        Master CPO (E9 pay grade) - Miles O'Brien."
                        = two solid pips

  "3) Non-Commissioned officers below CPO wear no pips, such as Mr. Tarses in
      "The Drumhead."


Is this true?  Beats me.  I don't know Karl Pejoran or John Patritski.
One person, James Dixon, claims that the information is bogus.

Are the pips on O'Brien's outfit silver?  Again, it's virtually impossible
to tell.  Lighting on the set is such that this kind of detail is hard to
make out.  There are those who swear that O'Brien's pips are gold, and
there are those who swear that the things are silver.  Dixon claims that
he's seen photo stills of O'Brien, showing gold pips.  He may be telling
the truth, but again, I would allow for the possibility that still
photography could also be misleading.

The only real way to know for sure would be to see the costume in person -
impossible for most of us.

However, this whole conspiracy is now irrelevant - because the writers have
changed their minds *again*.


        10.  The transporter officer in "The Next Phase" was called "Chief"!
             And she wore one hollow pip!  What is going on here?

Oh boy.  First, a word about the notorious hollow pip.

A few months ago, Starlog magazine published a TNG "Technical Journal",
written by Shane Johnson, to compete with Pocket Books' official TNG
Technical Manual.  (Johnson himself has written carelessly erroneous
and made-up info about Trek before, but let's forget that for now.)  Anyhow,
the Journal was fairly accurate, if redundant, most of the time, but there
was a mistake: Johnson identified the insignia of one hollow pip as "Ensign
Junior Grade".  Actually, there is no such rank.  It has never been seen on
the show, it is not present in the U.S. Navy ranking system, on which TNG's
Starfleet system is based.  Johnson apparently just created the rank himself.
So, if you were ever confused about that, forget it completely.

Up until "The Next Phase", we had never seen a single hollow pip.  In
that episode, however, we see a lady working the transporter who is called
"Chief Brossmer" - and yep, she's wearing the SHP.  A few people, keeping
Shane Johnson's book in mind, started shouting "Ensign Junior Grade!", and
at first glance, it looked like they might have been right.  But this lady
was also called "Chief"!  How can she and O'Brien BOTH be Chief Transporter
Officer?

Well, at first, I thought O'Brien might have simply been on vacation, or
off-ship, or something, thus making someone else "Chief" for a while.  But
in "Man of the People", we saw yet ANOTHER transporter officer whom they
call "Chief" (and this guy also had a single hollow pip)!  What are we
to think?  Keep reading.

        11.  The worst has happened!  In "Realm of Fear", O'Brien's rank
             insignia is shown as ONE HOLLOW PIP!  What happened to the
             two solid pips?  Has he been demoted?

He's still transporter chief - at least ONE of them, right?  Apparently,
from what I can tell, someone on the show finally noticed all this
confusion and said, let's fix it.  So they did something they should have
done a long time ago: they changed O'Brien's pips to accurately reflect his
status.

Which is?  Transporter chief, of course.  Look at it this way: since "The
Next Phase", we've seen three transporter chiefs - O'Brien, Brossmer, and
the guy from "Man of the People" - all with one hollow pip, all called
Chief.  I think it's pretty clear what the current TNG line on this is -
someone looked at O'Brien, finally, and said, Why is this man wearing
two solid pips?  Let's change that.  So now, he's a non-commissioned
officer, along with Brossmer and whats-his-name.

The hollow pip is the key.  Regardless of what anyone thought it meant before
"The Next Phase", it apparently now means some enlisted rank.  (Whether that
rank is Master CPO or whatever, I'm not going to worry about.)  This is a
major, major example of what is known as "retcon" - retroactive continuity,
going back and redefining history, kind of like Winston Smith in "1984".
It has three drawbacks: (1) It's confusing for people who don't know what's
going on.  (2) It's messy - unlike in "1984", WE can remember, and even
re-watch, the history as presented before the change.  (3) It can change
again in the future.

Right now, continuity says that O'Brien is an enlisted, non-commissioned
officer.  Common sense says that he, Brossmer, and Mr. Man are all
transporter chiefs - but O'Brien, being the demonstrated head of the
department, is what I'll call "Chief of Transporter Operations".  Yes,
that's right - "Chief" now has a third definition.  If you're a
transporter officer, you're apparently called "Chief", no matter what
else you may be.  That's according to what the CURRENT continuity says,
as of early sixth season.  Every transporter officer is "Chief X", but
O'Brien is the chief of them all.


        12.  I've seen other, seemingly official sources that say O'Brien
             is a lieutenant anyway.

The guy who wrote the recently released TNG Companion - Larry something -
seems to think so.  He calls the character "Lieutenant O'Brien" in every
guest cast listing, despite the inconsistency we went over in question #3,
and when he gets to "Family", he puzzles over Sergei's "mistake".

My response to this is that the TNG Companion is not neccesarily
authoritative -- it obviously has a LOT of official information in it,
and most of it is probably right.  However, O'Brien's chieftancy is one
of the stickier little details of TNG's continuity, and I doubt that ANY
one person - Larry So-and-So, James Dixon, John Patritski, Colm Meaney
or Rick Berman - has actually stopped long enough to consider and weigh
ALL of the details involved in this misleadingly trivial situation, the
way we're doing now.

Plus, like I said, continuity is ever-changing - and it would seem that
Larry Companion and the current continuity are at odds.  (I'd like to
hear his reaction when he sees the pips in "Realm of Fear".)


        13.  Whew!  Okay, keeping all that in mind - what will happen
             when O'Brien moves to Deep Space Nine?

Good question!  O'Brien will reportedly be assuming the position of "Chief
Operations Officer" on the station - but what they decide his rank to be
is anyone's guess.  (My hope is that the above revisionism - changing him
to a hollow pip man - was done with DS9 in mind.)

------------------

That was a lot more information than I even intended to write when I first
started.  Some people might be inclined to think, "Geez, HE's got a lot of
time on his hands.  Why doesn't he get a life?"  Well, I have a life, but I
also happened to have a spare rainy afternoon and nothing to do.  And
there's been SO much talk about this, I thought that perhaps a FAQ of some
kind was in order.  I hope it's been helpful and entertaining!


