So, earlier today the radio station at work had an interview with Colm Meaney, where he was asked about Star Trek. In the past, I've heard he's been a bit insulting about the fans (let's grain of salt that one unless someone can provide a reference), but his good humoured response to it was that the spacesuit wouldn't fit him anymore (Colm Meaney, you were never in a space suit, coz you weren't in that scene in First Contact. You wore a military uniform, with the sleeves rolled up for easy access to malfunctioning equipment. Dude). And while I don't know just exactly what Colm Meaney thinks of Star Trek, I would hope that it is the fan culture he dislikes, rather than the show. Because I am very proud of what Colm Meaney and Star Trek did together.
In order to understand why I'm proud of him, you have to understand why it can sometimes be annoying to be an Irish person watching American television. We're represented as drunks, or druids; every evil fairy or elf has an atrocious country Irish accent. In fact, let's take a moment to discuss the accent. There isn't just one! We have four regional dialects of our native language on this not very big island, for crying out loud, of course we have different accents! I won't deny accent work is hard (I wasn't particularly good at them in my drama classes; I firmly believe my attempts at a Belfast accent embarrassed my mother no end), but if you are going to do it, do it right, please. And while we're on the subject of doing it right, please stop putting extra syllables in our words. Yes, we know they are confusing, but in this day and age, Google search should be sufficient to fix these things. Two of the most heinous recent examples of this are in shows I love: Supernatural chose to butcher the name of the Irish god Samhain, pronounced 'Sow-in' as 'Sam-hane'. Yeah. No. Not a bit. Also, the bit where you said he was a demon? No. It is in fact a season, and a month (November). These latter bits I can forgive, because it's Supernatural and I love it, but at least say the name right boys! The other recent culprit is in Lost Girl, where Ciara, played by Lina Roessler, is repeatedly referred to as 'Key-ar-ah'. She is supposed to be an Irish fairy (as far as I can tell), and over here, we pronounce is as 'Keer-ah'. This is all the more frustrating because they get most of it very right, and I don't understand why they messed with a lovely name, making it sound clunky and unfriendly (neither of which describes the character). There are many more examples of what frustrates the Irish viewer of American television, but I presume this puts forth some of the major complaints (I advise you not to get me started on the accents of Irish criminals in American crime shows).
Given that one person I know is very conscious of spoilers, and there's at least one in here, the rest of this is going behind a cut.
However, in Miles Edward O'Brien we had a proper Irish man, not a redhead, who was competent, intelligent, had a great sense of humour (the slightly culchie accent only ever seemed to come out when he was making fun of a senior officer and had the sense not to make it too obvious), and was utterly nonchalant about his Irish-ness. This is important in depictions of the Irish, and it's what makes many elements of Lost Girl pretty enjoyable. Irish characters do not need to hold up a sign to show that they are Irish. A good example of this is in The Next Generation episode 'The Wounded'. In this, Miles and Keiko are clearly trying to get used to married life and their different cultural backgrounds, reflected in their mutual confusion over the other's choice of meals. Keiko presents a traditional Japanese meal and is oblivious to her husband's discomfort. For his part, while Keiko is poking at O'Brien's potato stew, he is equally oblivious to her distress. In fact, the name of the dish is a throwaway line, with him returning to reminiscing about the Cardassian War. He's a good tactician, a likeable boss if his repair crew's reactions are anything to go by, stubborn, loyal, and an engineering genius (he got Deep Space Nine in working order, where any sane engineer would have said 'Can we not build a new one?'). In fact, Tor.com have dedicated a blog post to how awesome O'Brien (and his repeated suffering) is. He's also an Everyman, the one who puts his family before his career repeatedly, to the extent that he settles for a teaching job on Earth at the end of Deep Space Nine for the sake of raising his kids outside of a war zone (never a bad idea, ya know).
His name is even wonderful. 'Miles' reads just like the latin for soldier, which he is. According to some baby naming websites, it means 'servant', and as the repairman to the Federation, he certainly replaces the role a highly valued servant would have had in older times (I'm thinking of the kind of person who looks after the horses and whose word is law in the stables. If such a thing existed...). His middle name, 'Edward', speaks to the Anglo-Irish history of our country, where many of us - your blogger included - have just such a mixed heritage. And in my opinion, there are few names more Irish than 'O'Brien'. There's a richness of meaning in just his name, and it's one that Colm Meaney lived up to. He always played the character as if he truly cared about him, and I loved that, especially when Star Trek could occasionally disappoint, with Voyager's abysmal and frustrating Fairhaven, and The Next Generation's space culchies in 'Up the Long Ladder' (any bonus points they won for the colony name of 'Bringloidí', ie, Dreams, is very quickly squashed by the leader Danilo O'Dell, complete with nagging, redheaded, barefoot daughter. I kid you not. And let's not forget that every Bringloidí woman is required to have children with three different men. Because body control is not a thing. Gah). Colm Meaney did for us, albeit on a far smaller scale, what Nichelle Nichols did for people of colour in The Original Series; he represented us, not as a stage Irishman, a parody, an homage, or some nostalgic view of an old country that never existed, but as actual, real people. Through him, the world saw the Irish not as tricksters or saints, not as backwards country people, but as sophisticated (he played the cello), clever people, who happened to come from a country where, I suppose, technically, the mountains are all hills if you're from somewhere like South America (another crewman actually made this joke at O'Brien in a later episode).
So I am proud of Colm Meaney, and I hope he understands that the reason I and his other Irish fans love him and Miles O'Brien is because he gave us the fictional Irish role model we had always wanted. Here's to O'Brien and his quiet life of teaching; here's hoping it's not too boring for him.
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