this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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They couldn't get Chao or Meaney quite as frequently as everyone else because of their film careers. I know with Meaney they really wanted to show off his acting skills when they had him and determined that he portrayed suffering really well, so O'Brien suffered a lot. I think Keiko's problem was that she was only in a couple episodes per season and the focus was typically on whatever horror was happening to Miles that week. She's not so much a bad wife as a barely present side character.
She just doesn't seem to be a particularly talented actor to me, so she can't act like she loves him.
Honestly, she's fine in other roles. There was just something about Keiko that didn't work and I do think it had something to do with her interpretation of Keiko. But she's been in lots of other shows (she got a lot of notice for her performance in M*A*S*H) and she did a perfectly good job in them. She would be very unlikely to have 139 acting credits to her name on the IMDB if she was not a talented actor.
So I just can't say what went wrong there. It wasn't the writing, because totally different writers were handling her on DS9 than they were on TNG, but the problem existed on both shows (although certainly TNG to a lesser extent). It wasn't that she isn't a good actress, because (at least IMO) she is a good actress. So that leaves two options that I can think of, feel free to come up with your own:
1- She interpreted the character all wrong and by the time they really developed her, it was too late.
2- Rick Berman fucked around behind the scenes as usual.
I don't think either one of those is implausible.
I think both charectors are supposed to be workaholics, people that lose themselves in their job and basically spurn family dynamics. Miles has engineering and Keiko has botany. Both technical and demanding disciplines.
I think the writers wanted there to be that "we are both focused on our work and not each other" dynamic to their relationship, and wanted Keiko to be frustrated as a workaholic denied, being pushed into both the family role for their daughter and having no plant life to study on DS9, with Miles always forced by the rickety ass station to be absent in workaholic mode. Its a situation that breeds real resentment.
The "become a teacher for the kids" was a sublimation that worked for a while for her on the station, letting her do useful work and watch their daughter, but that of course fell apart.
The other hand of it to is that theirs is one of the few relationships where you can feel the strain of competing needs on Trek. Most relationship issues in star trek are pretty low stakes, even the ones played up like worf/jadeza wedding. Like, it is all going to be wrapped in a tidy bow and we know it. Keiko/O'Brien felt like real people under relationship strain.
Miles and Kieko were both driven people, and Kieko was being stalled out and was frustrated by it. There was no easy answer, just like the real world. Sometimes relationships, even otherwise healthy ones, have issues. Both actors were able to show that well, so they leaned into it.
Unfortunately, it makes for unlikeable people at times, and i think Kieko takes that brunt because she was much more of a side character so she was less fleshed out as a person, and to be blunt, because she was a she. The "shrew" wife is a centuries old trope in literature, and unfortunately the Trek writers left her in that trope too long and too often.
I can see what you're saying, but I still find something very unlikeable about Keiko as a character and have felt that way as far back as the original run on DS9, if not TNG (not sure what I thought of her before watching reruns). I think I'm far from alone.
And like I said, it's not Rosalind Chao as an actress. I have no problem enjoying her characters in other shows.