Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV Series) Hard Time (1996) User Reviews

Civilized treatment?!

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 3 January 2015]

When the show begins, a much older Mile O'Brien is shown in a prison cell. He has a very long beard and tattered clothing and it's obvious he's been there for many years. However, soon you realize that this prison was a virtual prison and instead of being for 20 years, it actually only lasted a few hours. So what gives? Well, it seems a planet's government think that O'Brien was involved in espionage and they sentenced him to this 'humane' treatment-- implanting very, very clear memories in O'Brien. However, despite being released, it soon becomes obvious that the alien world did TOO GOOD a job on him--and they left him with horrible post-traumatic stress disorder and he's only a shell of his old self.

This episode is truly amazing. The idea is very novel and it really gave Colm Meany (O'Brien) a great chance to act and even further expand his character. Well done and a very sick sort of punishment, to say the least...and a bit heartbreaking as well.

Twenty years in prison for the Chief

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 8 June 2010]

As this episode starts Chief O'Brien is being released from an alien prison after serving twenty years for espionage. As he is taken from his cell he wakes up and learns that in reality only an hour has passed since his sentence began; it was all an implanted memory, although to the Chief it will always seem as though he served those twenty years. Not surprisingly when he gets back to DS9 he has a hard time readjusting to his old life, strangely he also keeps seeing his cell mate even though he knows he is just a figment of his imagination. After an indecent in the bar he is suspended from duty and instructed to see a counsellor until he has come to terms with what happened. The problem is he isn't just dealing with twenty years away, he is also effected by the guilt of what he did to his cell mate even though he knows that in reality the memories are false. He also knows the memories are based on his own personality so the things he remembers are what he would have done if he'd really been there. Eventually he is left contemplating suicide and tells Dr. Bashir what happened.

This episode might not have any real action scenes but it was great; Colm Meaney really shows his acting chops as the Chief, both as he readjusts to life on DS9 and, under a heavy beard, dealing with life in an alien prison. Guest star Craig Wasson also did a fine job as O'Brien's cell mate Ee'char.

Just call on your brother when you need a hand.

[thevacinstaller · 9/10 · 6 July 2021]

There's a lot going on in this episode.

I am fortunate enough to not have had a horrendous experience bad enough to give me flashbacks/panic attacks but I know people who have had such experiences. This episode is partially an examination about the consequences of trauma/guilt mirrored against the positive experiences of friendship and loyalty/concern present in Bashir. I felt the episodes portrayal of O'Brien's reaction to the trauma was believable and the pacing/structure of the episode was perfect.

This was a gripping glimpse into the darker side of the human condition and the power of friendship/communication to help find a way out of it. Commentaries on grief, friendship, suicide, guilt. Great episode with a timeless messages.

Great stuff from Colm Meaney

[gritfrombray-1 · 10/10 · 12 March 2007]

Have always loved Colm Meaney in everything he does. Was more than delighted to see him on the bridge of Next Generation's Enterprise in its pilot. His character slowly developed, got a name and even got married and later transferred to Deep Space 9. This particular episode shows us a different side to O'Brien. His mental anguish at being imprisoned for over 20 years is excellent. This is one seriously overlooked Irish actor. With all this focus on other hotshot Irish actors this guy is superb. When Miles arrives home his family rally to help him as do his friends. But, the damage to his psyche is evident and his slow rehabilitation is sad to watch but compelling viewing. Nice to see Colm stuck with Trek even when his movie career was in the running

Colm Meany kills it in this one.

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 9 December 2011]

Colm Meany is one of the best Character Actors of the 20th and 21st Centuries - And also the 24th century.

I've seen EVERY DS9 Ep - Except this one - I somehow missed it, during the First Run Eps on Fox Syndication - I may have missed it due to the crummy "Syndex" laws in Southern California which prevented syndicated shows from being shown on any stations but the one handling the syndication for that particular city. But enough of that... I never knew there was a DS9 Ep I missed during it's first run.

Upon watching the DS9 4th Season DVD Extras, it mentioned this Episode, and I realised, I had NEVER seen Colm Meany with a huge mane of Irish Hair, in a prison. And I am so thankful for the DVD set which allowed me to go back 16 years and see this amazing Ep.

Colm Meanys - Or Rather, O'Briens inquisitive scientific and engineering nature, gets him into trouble with the "law" on a Gamma Quadrant planet- And they "Incarcerate" him... for a Long time.

But HOW this incarceration was handled, was very interesting... It relates to the TNG Ep "The Inner Light". But whereas Picard has a life-enriching experience, O'Brien has just the opposite.

And so this show deals with how O'Brien deals with his friends and family upon his release. And Dr Bashir cannot help O'Brien out as a "friend" - Only as His Doctor.

I'm not going to say more - This one ep, is so good, that I will NOT put a spoiler in here. I've seen Colm in Feature films like "Con Air" and "Layer Cake" - "Int5ermission" was another of Colm's dark films. He's as good a crook as he is an O'Brien character. This 'sode reveals the darker side of O'Brien.

After season 2 of TNG, I missed NO TNG or DS9 Eps, ever again- Not by choice. This one slipped through the cracks of Syndication.

Had I seen this Ep First Run, I would have reacted the same way a lot of people reacted to TNG's "The Inner Light" - to this Deep Space 9 Ep "Hard Time" - It is Meany at his Irish Best! And that is why I love Ireland and The Irish, mostly due to Colm. Slainte!

The Worst Kind of Mistreatment!

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 24 October 2018]

As the episode opens, we see Miles O'Brien, obviously older and sort of Edmund Dantes in appearance, making symbols in the sand in a prison cell. It turns out that he has been convicted of espionage and before his people can defend him, sentenced to a horrible punishment. In his mind, he spends 20 years in this cell. When he recovers, he is back in his original state, but, in his mind, 20 years older. He hasn't seen his colleagues in all those years, even though they have only aged a few hours. We now have a hardened prisoner, trying to put the pieces together. I know this is a fiction, but one of those people who did this to him should have had the opportunity to experience it. Some have criticized the crew for their responses, but obviously they haven't a clue where he is at. This was incredibly poignant and so depressing.

The darkest and most psychologically heavy Star Trek episode of all time

[TheRedViper · 10/10 · 30 October 2021]

This is up there with 'Duet' as the most thematically intense and important episode of Deep Space Nine, and thus also Star Trek in general. Incredibly powerful. This is an essential episode.

Amazing episode. Colm Meaney shines!

[beanslegit · 9/10 · 12 April 2022]

Talk about a horrible experience to put someone through... Chief Miles falls afoul of "the Agrathans" and they inflict their sick version of justice: virtual prison! He goes through 20 years of hell from his perspective, living every second of it, only to be "woken up" only a few hours in the real world. He's then expected to go back to normal life, with understandable difficulty.

Colm Meaney... That's all. He carries this episode, and it was really moving. Especially near the end, I actually teared up, he's so believable it's unbelievable. Under rated Irish actor, deserves more credit for his acting in ST.

shades of "dark mirror"

[davidm-14 · 9/10 · 12 November 2018]

Mind prison is a topic covered on most of the star trek series, the outer limits, and, most recently, dark mirror, in the horrifying (at least to me) christmas episode. o'brien is treated to a 20 year sentence in a matter of a few minutes. the ongoing trauma makes for a riveting episode. colm meaney has always been one of the best actors on this series, and this is no exception.

It didn't quite sit right with me...

[drewrferrandini · 22 January 2018]

The entire crew expresses this brief sympathy and then kinda acts like Miles just needs to get over it. It was 20 years! There was a lot to explore here and I think this show kind of failed at demonstrating the effect of this trauma and peoples' ability to cope with it.

Then he just kinda gets over it.

typical 90s "mental health" episode

[ashleybmeyer · 7/10 · 17 September 2017]

Rich with a creative sci-fi plot element, but showcases the worst in traditionalist mental health models. No one on the ship (not even the "counselor") is able to help a traumatized person recover from torture. Maybe it was meant to be a cautionary tale, but we see the victim's allies fail to offer real support, and instead just offer varying flavors of tough love and mounting levels of even more punishment. Lots of missed opportunities to address punitive vs restorative justice systems and post-traumatic stress disorder recovery tools.

Finally an episode that lives up to the Trek name

[courtneyjjjjjjjj · 9/10 · 26 April 2021]

After watching almost 4 barely tolerable seasons of DS9 FINALLY we get an episode like "Hard Time".

I don't think it's a coincidence that such a fantastic episode is centred around our favourite Chief. It simply wouldn't have worked with any of the other characters.

Colm Meaney's performance as the happy-go-lucky O'Brien struggling to reconcile the memories from 20 years in prison was fantastic and touching.

And just to for good measure the viewer gets to contemplate the bigger questions. Is this approach to incarceration less cruel than physical incarceration? If Miles killed a character during this mental incarceration, he is a murderer?

This is what Trek has always been about.

Insulting to trauma survivors

[danielbweiner · 3/10 · 24 March 2023]

O'Brien goes through 20 years of sustained trauma, and three-quarters of the show is about him struggling with it. The climax of the show has O'Brien about to take his own life, and it's only after an inspirational talk from Bashir that a switch flips and his trauma (personified by an imaginary cellmate) disappears. The message is that trauma isn't owned by the people who experienced it, it's something that can only be dealt with by some external person. And when it's "dealt with", it just disappears. Every traumatized O'Brien simply needs a convincing Bashir to make it all go away. It's a desperate attempt to look profound at the expense of the people they're writing about.

The writers torture poor Chief again

[snoozejonc · 9/10 · 19 October 2022]

Chief O'Brien has the memory of a 20 year prison sentence implanted in his brain.

This is a very strong episode with a great central performance.

Essentially it's another 'O'Brien must suffer' plot, but it is a particularly good one that takes an excellent sci-fi concept and makes great drama out of it.

Colm Meaney gives one of the great Star Trek performances in a character arc with shades of Picard's experience in 'The Inner Light'. I don't think the overall episode is quite at that level, but it certainly is darker. One crucial flashback scene deals with some very powerful themes.

All performances are strong, with Alexander Siddig on good form and likewise Rosalind Chao.

Visually I think it's excellent, with great use of lighting and sound effects that compliment simple but effective set design.

For me it's an 8.5/10 but I round upwards.

Excellent episode, impeccable acting, but Chief is very Unlikeable

[txriverotter · 9/10 · 15 June 2022]

This is an excellent episode. The premise is terrifyingly good, Colm Meaney's acting is wonderful and the overall quality and pacing of the show is great.

However, I don't understand why so many reviewers accuse Chief's friends and family of basically "giving up" on him after a few weeks, and acting like he should "get over it." I didn't get that at all.

What I did get is that Chief is his usual self, denying there's a problem and using his workload as an excuse to get out of doing whatever it is he's been asked to do that he doesn't want to. He is clearly messed up from what the prison officials did to him, and he needs therapy and a lot of time to just deal with what happened to him. But he won't admit it.

I think when Bashir pulled him off duty, he clearly did the right thing, but when Chief goes to confront him about it, instead of telling him he did what he did because he's his friend, he should have laid it all out for him as a Starfleet doctor, explaining that what he needs is to talk to someone about what happened and stop lying to everyone. Because Chief lies from the get-go about "being alone" in prison.

He can't deal with the fact he "killed" his cell mate, and he refuses to deal with anything else either. Instead he takes it out on everyone around him, and all the property in the storage bay.

While I understand that Chief probably has PTSD from what he went thru, I don't understand blaming his family and friends for his own refusal of help, which is freely offered and in fact, insisted upon.

The only scene I did really dislike, of course, involved Keiko and Molly. After Miles is put on leave because of his attacking people left and right and refusing to seek therapy, he goes home after walking around the station for a while, I guess. He's immediately accosted by Keiko "where have you been, I've been so worried, it'll be alright..." and at the same time his daughter Molly is insisting he look at her coloring pages over and over again. He loses his temper and jumps up to either grab her or yell at her more, and Keiko grabs Molly defensively and looks at Miles like he's a monster.

But knowing what Miles has gone thru, and what he's still going thru and won't deal with, what Keiko should have done was give him a little space, and when Molly wouldn't shut up, pick her up and carry her into the other room. It was too much coming at him when he was already at the breaking point.

And on that one point I do agree that his family let him down a bit. Not intentionally, but all the same.

When he finally breaks down and Bashir walks in on him contemplating suicide, he talks to Bashir about his cell mate and a little about what happened. You can tell things will get better from there, if he will continue talking about it, to someone....anyone.

Horrifying

[rickscorpio-00490 · 10/10 · 30 November 2021]

If you get past all the silly costumes, the mere fact that all the humanoids speak English and are of a symmetrical evolution - almost all of the S. T. stories are amazing. But touched me as much as this one. It wasn't so much the story, as I felt that there was not enough research put into released cons for Miles to actually act like a released con. Didn't work for me.

However, what made this episode just horrifying is that our technology is very close, if not there already(and in use), for doing not only a "compressed" time lapse, spending time in prison as in this case, but anything. Kidnap someone, and put them through this treatment for an hour or so with any scenario, the possibilities are endless.

Yeah, this episode is very scary.

Good but...

[deaeight · 8/10 · 25 July 2022]

....for me, spoiled a bit by Alexander Siddig's awful acting. I mean AWFUL! He's perfectly acceptable as Julian the Doctor, normally (which is what makes it so jarring), but in this episode he is terrible!!! It's not vaudeville, it's half decent Sci Fi! He sapped the escapism out of it, he was so bad. A Good story though, overall.

Boring

[Filmreader · 1/10 · 12 July 2020]

Boring. One of the most boring episodes. I almost slept.

Not my thing

[zombiemockingbird · 1/10 · 2 May 2023]

I watched about 15 minutes of this and found it boring and uninteresting. I came here to read the reviews and synopsis to see if it was going to get any better, and found out very quickly that it wasn't, so I just shut it off and moved on. Most reviewers seem to really like this episode, so apparently my taste differs from the majority. I watch DS9 for space exploration, new and different alien beings and cultures, spaceship battles, and general space sci-fi stuff. If I want to watch someone who's been tortured descend into some hellish madness, I'll watch a soap opera or Dr Phil. I wish they would just stick to the basic premise and stop wandering off into other genres.