VOY: "Mortal Coil"

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Sisko is the most transitioned character in all of Trek.

[McAvoy]

Even DS9 didn't fundamentally change its characters. Season seven Sisko is pretty much the same as season one Sisko except that he's gotten past Jennifer's death.

Serialized TV has its risks. Focus too much on character dynamics and you can turn your show into a high concept soap opera like The Walking Dead.

Perhaps you are right about Sisko up to a point. He didn't like being Emissary and eventually embraced it. He didn't want to be DS9 but early on accepted it.

Other characters though did change with maybe not O'Brian. He seems to be the same person though he did grow to like and become friends with Bashir.

Kira, Odo, Quark, Bashir (for different reasons), Dax (for many reasons) and even Worf did change over the course of the series.

With Torres she just repeated the same thing over and over again. With each episode ending like she may have learned something. In real life this may be true. Some just don't learn.

[Fianna]

You can't have O'Brien change as a character, because if they're capable of change, then all those "O'Brien Must Suffer!" episodes would result in someone too traumatized to function in society. (Heck, "Hard Time" alone would accomplish that.)

[McAvoy]

You can't have O'Brien change as a character, because if they're capable of change, then all those "O'Brien Must Suffer!" episodes would result in someone too traumatized to function in society. (Heck, "Hard Time" alone would accomplish that.)

Hard Time should have been a permanent one. You don't make a character who went through all of that and on top of that, suicidal and just press the reset button.

[CrypticMirror]

Star Trek does canonically have memory suppressants, so O'Brien not using them and being permanently broken would have broke continuity and worldbuilding.

[clearspira]

I wanted to change the subject here over to protomatter. Because yeah, Chuck is right. That is some bullshit.

It has to be said that the hundred years between The Wrath of Khan and Voyager is no joke, but all that means is that it goes from ''a team of the Federation's best scientists'' to ''Voyager's engineering team.'' The idea that Neelix has experience with it, let alone is the point guy over anyone else on board the ship, is a joke. If anything, Janeway being a former science officer probably would have more experience with it in this ''brand new age of mastering protomatter'' than Neelix should.

And as Chuck notes, the fact that he ends up KILLING HIMSELF should be all the proof needed that Dunning Kruger here was bullshitting. Again. Lets add ''protomatter expert who gets himself killed by protomatter'' to the list:
Expert Cook who routinely makes people ill. Expert rock climber who nearly killed himself and Torres. Survival expert who doesn't know that you can eat bugs. Delta Quadrant guide who routinely knows nothing about the Delta Quadrant.

This is kind of on the Voyager crew at this point.

[Fianna]

But it doesn't really matter how well proto-matter is understood in the Federation, since Neelix isn't from the Federation, or even the Alpha Quadrant. Maybe on Talaxia, proto-matter was mastered ages ago, and handling it is something you do in high school science class.

[Frustration]

Except the Delta Quadrant is less advanced than the Federation as a whole, and Neelix certainly doesn't have advanced knowledge in anything.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Except the Delta Quadrant is less advanced than the Federation as a whole, and Neelix certainly doesn't have advanced knowledge in anything.

I think I know what you’re getting at but I don’t think advanced is the right word. More like developed or established.

[Madner Kami]

Except the Delta Quadrant is less advanced than the Federation as a whole, and Neelix certainly doesn't have advanced knowledge in anything.

Counter-point: The Borg.
Counter-point: A pre-warp civ that can nearly stabilize the Omega-particle.
Counter-point: Dinosaurs in space.
Counter-point: Krenim time weaponry.
Counter-point: The Caretaker-species.

Nothing says, that a species can't be highly advanced in one regard, but be technologically inferior in some other regard, compared to the Federation. The Feds themselves have a lot of blindspots as well.