“On the next episode of Deep Space Nine! Tensions rise when Miles O’Brien’s wife is possessed by a sadistic, emasculating space demon, and he can’t tell the difference.”
This is what you get when you marry a cryptography company.
Obligatory chiefobrienatwork.com
Edit: updated text for more accurate characterization
better than when she was a 12 year old
Notice how in this episode, Miles reacts with concern for his wife. He goes along with things while desperately trying to to save the woman he loves. He constantly believes she’s in there and wants her to fight it.
Now compare this with how Keiko acted on the episode of TNG when Miles was possessed by an alien entity. Abject fear. Disgust. Even when a part of O’Brien seems to surface when he recognizes her and is clearly struggling, she does nothing but cower and scream at him to get away from her.
In short, more evidence that Keiko is an awful wife to O’Brien and seems to despise him.
In all fairness, she also had infant Molly with her. The instinct to protect her child kinda overrides. She was still written rather coldly overall and there is no apparent chemistry when things are going relatively well. As a couple, they are great at arguing and proper credit to that aspect of both actors.
It’s not like Molly isn’t also O’Brien’s child. The only difference between the episodes is that she’s older, but still needs protection.
The lack of chemistry is the real problem. Colm Meany and Rosalind Chao are both good actors, but for some reason they just didn’t feel like a truly loving couple. They just were never able to pull it off, which was probably fine for the single TNG episode they expected this to be relevant in when they cast Chao.
Rewatching DS9 I don’t find her that bad. She’s left the luxury of the enterprise to go with her husband to the arse end of the galaxy, didn’t really have a purpose to be there. She wasn’t really that pissy about it all things considered. She encouraged her husband to have close friends adventuring with in the holodeck. When she knew that needed it set up a man date for him and said friend.
It’s also pretty lenient of her considering that friend is super horny all the time.
And then there’s this conversation that likely happened because of it:
“Sorry, what!? You want to go into the holodeck every week and be Julian’s wing man?!”
“It’s not like that, honey! We’re playing World War II allied pilots!”
“You’re fighting Japan?!?”
Maybe Keiko is more understanding than we thought.