Towards the end of episode 3x12, "Past Tense, Part II", Chief O'Brien offers up a random year (a 1 in 3 chance essentially) for their final transport that they should travel back to, and Kira nonchalantly says "that's fine with me". Is there any particular reason the two didn't attempt to align major Earth history events with the 3 possible years they could have picked to make a more educated guess? I can understand her lack of knowledge with regard to Earth history, but it seems to me that if the result of their arrival lead to Starfleet never being formed, they would have to know that the away team arrived at a critical point in time, and the Bell Riots must have stood out in comparison to the other possibilities.
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5It's Miles O'brien how could you never not trust his guestimates...– JaredCommented Aug 6, 2012 at 22:49
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1Miles O'Brien is quite literally the most experienced time traveler in Starfleet history. His guesses are as good as everyone else's calculations– ValorumCommented Jun 20, 2016 at 20:50
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1 Answer
From the episode:
O'Brien: "Well, we know one thing. They arrived before the year 2048."
Odo: "How can you be sure?"
O'Brien: "'Cause we were just there... And it's nothing like the mid-21st century I read about in school. It's been changed.. I mean, Earth history has been through its rough patches, but never that rough."
Kira: "If we limit our search to dates before 2048, how many possibilities does that leave us with?"
(Odo hands PADD to O'Brien)
O'Brien: "According to my calculations, three. But we only have enough chroniton particles for one more try."
Kira: "Well.. Pick one, chief! Lets hope you get lucky."
O'Brien: (examines the PADD for a moment, taps a date, hands it back to Odo) "It's my best guess."
Kira: "That's good enough for me."
We have a Bajoran, an alien shapeshifter, and Miles O'Brien on-hand. Kira and Odo have little to no knowledge of Earth's history (at least, pre-Federation (which was 2161, over a hundred years after 2048)). And just look at O'Brien's face when he's trying to figure it out:
Kira put him on the spot (not too unreasonable given the circumstances), and he made his best guess given the available information, since no one else was on-hand to help, and Kira, Odo, and everyone else was relying on him. His "best guess" is an estimated guess, given limited information.
The other two points in time apparently weren't critical moments, which is why he chose the Bell riots.
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2This makes a lot of sense, thanks. Perfect picture, too :) Commented Aug 9, 2012 at 21:47
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@anaranjada I prefer not to game the system to what I see as the detriment of the site. As Randal'Thor points out on the linked meta question, not only is it totally unnecessary, the generic tag was meant for franchise-wide/backstory/background questions that aren't tied to a specific series like this one is.– IzkataCommented May 10, 2016 at 0:22
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An important factor to note is that O'Brien has actually studied Earth history, "O'BRIEN: Because we were just there. And that wasn't the mid-twenty-first century that I read about in school. It's been changed. Earth history had its rough patches, but never that rough." It's reasonable that he could guess how much change has occurred and how long such a change would have taken to take effect.– ValorumCommented Oct 28, 2018 at 22:42