Star Trek icon Colm Meaney has revealed whether he’d reprise his role from The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and shares his honest thoughts on the Trekkie fandom in this exclusive interview excerpt.
Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine introduced a long list of iconic characters, and while some made a bigger impact than others, Miles O’Brien understandably remains a firm fan favourite.
Irish actor Colm Meaney played the transporter chief of the USS Enterprise-D and was later promoted to chief of operations of Deep Space Nine. Miles appeared in 225 episodes overall and clocked up the second most appearances, second only to Michael Dorn’s Worf.
Last week, we caught up with Meaney to discuss his memorable role in Duchess. During our conversation with the actor, we asked whether he has any interest in reprising the role of Miles O’Brien (Picard recently took us back to The Next Generation era and O’Brien was sadly M.I.A.).
“I think seven years in a space suit was enough, you know?” Meaney says in the video below. “I’m often asked that question and you never say never, of course, but first of all I wouldn’t fit in it anymore [Laughs] and…I remember people saying at the time when Voyager got going, ‘How many times can you go to the well? How many times can you revamp this?'”
“They successfully did it with Star Trek and they’re still doing it. Good luck to them,” he continued. “Do you want to see an elderly Miles O’Brien? I don’t know. It’s certainly not at the top of my agenda of things I’d like to do at the moment.”
Elsewhere in the interview, we asked Meaney for his thoughts on dealing with Trekkies and the sort of legacy a franchise like Star Trek has.
While Meaney clearly looks back at his time exploring space with a certain level of fondness, it appears we can forget about him playing O’Brien again. It’s a shame as the character really is beloved, but not tampering with that legacy isn’t necessarily the worst idea.
You can hear more from Meaney on Star Trek and Duchess in the video below.