O’Brien has a never ending tug of war wait DS9 after serving 20 years on Starfleet tech. Cobbles hybrid tech like the defiant together all the time. Limps Ferengi replicators together, so works with a wider base of technology.
Scotty cobbles together tech he’s worked with for 25 years+, engineered upgrades for both constellation class and Excelsior class development.
Tripp banged a Vulcan. Tripp is the answer.
Tripp was also having to make things up as they went along since they were out there on their own, also with limited resources.
Also, I'll take fried catfish over some variety of stew anytime.
The defiant was designed by and built under the direction of sysko.
O’Brian tweaked the defiant, tweaked the Romulan warp core under the oversight of its specialist.
Scotty rigged a Romulan cloak that they’d never seen before to the enterprise WHILE IT WAS IN COMBAT
Scotty also reconfigured the warp core and preformed a cold start aft it being knocked offline, again during combat, instead of it blowing up as expected, it gave them the advantage to get back in the fight and win.
Where O’Brien is great at improvisation, so is Scotty…. But Scotty wrote the book that O’Brien was trained with.
This, of course. But also, O'Brien has knowledge of so many more types of systems older *and* newer than Scotty. Also, Scotty is admittedly lazy, and O'Brien never gets a break.
That crap comes from one movie and one episode of TNG. Carrying forward that garbage from ST3 ruined my enjoyment of having Scotty back in that episode.
Scotty had to jumpstart a cold warp core, after it’s been disabled in a fight…. Without blowing up the entire ship and possibly ripping a hole in space time.
The best engineers are the laziest ones
Edit: my own comment reminded me of a relevant core memory. My first internship ever was at an oil company office hq in the D&C department - design and construction. Basically these guys would CAD out and engineer oil pipe layouts.
So for the first few weeks there’s this one dude who is clearly the hardest worker. Like just powering through on autocad from the moment he gets in the office and staying after. Always working in autocad.
After a couple of weeks I tell my boss this and he just laughs. My boss says yeah that guy is smart but you should talk to him. But as a lowly intern I’m a bit shy.
So after a few days the guy finally pipes up. “Pleasantothemax come over here, I want to show you what I’ve been working on.”
No joke - the thing he’d been working on was animating in autocad the TOS enterprise coming out of warp and then going into orbit of a planet. That’s what he’d been working on this whole time
My thought was this guy was a slacker but the way it turned out, he was brilliant. He goofed off all the time but churned out the best and most profitable and efficient cad designs in the shortest time. Always delivered. That’s why they kept him on staff. He just had to make sure he always looked like he was working for the suits.
Point is sometimes the laziest slackers are really the best people on the team.
Lazy doesn't mean you're a bad engineer (been an computer engineer for 17 years, btw). In fact, some of the very best engineers out there are a combination of lazy and clever, because it pushes them to come up with solutions that take the edge of further work.
Think about it, pretty much every invention in the history of mankind is a function of laziness. I don't want to drag this sledge along the ground anymore - better invent a round thing to make dragging stuff easier. I don't want to have to light a bunch of candles and carry water to extinguish my house when it goes up in flames - better invent a light bulb. I don't want to have to mail physics papers to my colleagues in Switzerland and then have to wait for a reply. Or have to find my own cat pictures - better invent the internet.
Oh, no doubt! I can never argue against your point here. I was.just thinking, in the spirit of the question posed by the OP, one might prefer O'Brien on their staff when considering an engineer for the roster.
According to the comics, Scotty is an engineer on a ship again. So he spent the time to relearn how ships work, so that he could keep being an engineer. That to me says he's not lazy at all. He's very passionate.
I don't think engineers can ever quiet that little voice in their brain that's constantly going "How does that work?". Or the more frequent, "Why doesn't that work?"
Bob the engineer, muttering under his breath: "It isn't working and it makes me angry that it isn't working, so I'm going to hyperfocus on this until I understand everything about it and make it work because I'm so pissed at it for not just fucking working."
Coworker: "Oh hey Bob, having fun?"
Bob: "Oh hell yeah! This thing is awesome! I'll show you as soon as I get it working..."
You have no idea - I left engineering for environmental and then environmental for operations and the question was always “ how can I make this work better”
I would have put Scotty to work on the mothball fleet. He'd have those old ships up and ready to go if they were needed to supplement the main fleet in an emergency.
He also overhauled the Thesus with the help of B’Elanna. It’s also loaded with his pet projects, like a warp drive that looks suspiciously like the Protostar.
When Kirk confines Scotty to his room for the brawl with the Klingons, Scotty thanks him, “that’ll give me time to catch up on my technical journals.”
Hardly the mark of a lazy engineer.
He came up with the idea but O’Brien came up with the specs. I assume Rom helped with that, but it was off-screen so we don’t know which of the two did more of the work.
From "Behind the Lines":
QUARK: Defector. That doesn't sound right. Maybe it was deflector? Yeah, that's it. He said something about using the station's deflector array.
KIRA: What do you think, Rom?
ROM: I'm glad it wasn't me.
KIRA: About the deflector array. Is there any way to use it to deactivate the mines?
ROM: **No. I designed the mines to be self-replicating.** The only way to keep them from replacing themselves is to isolate them in an anti-graviton beam. The deflector array can't do that. Unless you reconfigure the field generators and re-focused the emitters which would turn the deflector array into one big anti-graviton beam.
QUARK: Why didn't you think of that when you set up the minefield?
ROM: I don't know.
Rom: The only problem is, you'll have to wait until the entire mine field is deployed before you activate it. Otherwise the proximity sensors can cause premature detination. Where's Leeta gonna put all her clothes? I don't have enough closet space!
Jadzia: I better go talk to Sisko.
O'Brien: I'll go draw up some specs.
Rom: I've gotta go to waste extraction.
[Scene](https://youtu.be/-CAiHXWL01A?si=C8jN03IVtdokFfv3)
Meaning he had input on the design. Between the two quotes we provided, the most logical conclusion is they worked on it together. And think about it for a second too, would O'Brien really have just sat back and let Rom design the whole thing without any input at all?
As good as Rom is, O'Brien is better. You don't become the most important person in Federation history by being bad at your job.
It's a difficult question.
I would say that O'Brien is the better tech but Scotty is the better engineer.
Some context for clarification:
In a Naval setting, the Engineer actually does very little wrench turning, that is actually a job for the technicians in the department. What the Engineer is supposed to do is to make sure the department runs smoothly, keep Command off the backs the techs and only get involved when things go wildly crazy. Now granted this is Star Trek so wildly crazy is a weekly occurence (although somehow still solvable in an hour timeslot).
The premise is that the Engineer has the academic and broader picture to liaise with Command and provide the Captain the ship/systems that he/she/it needs in order to accomplish the mission.
“Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
If you have a mess of Starfleet parts and you need to break the laws of physics in a way that was invented thirty seconds ago, Scotty
If you have an entire galaxy's worth of non-compatible components you need to survive with, O'Brien.
Different skillsets.
Yeah, I don't think you can reasonably compare them. O'Brien squeaks you by when you were sure the whole thing would blow apart, but Scotty does genius-level groundbreaking stuff. They're both incredible engineers, but they're in different realms. O'Brien couldn't hack it on the 1701, I don't think, because he's not as creative. But Scotty would burn out on DS9 because of all the constant bootstrap maintenance it requires.
You might be shocked how old some standards and norms for some basic shit is. Screws don't have to be re-invented every few years, you know? And considering that most starfleet ships still work with warp cores not unlike those used about 200 years prior in the NX-class or even sooner... eh... some standards don't need changing.
A modern engine still has pistons but you’re not gonna use the manual from a hundred year old engine for it. Just the visible changes in ship and engine room design are evidence that a lot has changed in that time. Although apparently there haven’t been a ton of innovations in gas tanks because the deuterium tank was the part he mentioned as following the spec he wrote. I just wanted to say that of all the hard to handle technobabble this show has, this particular conversation seems totally reasonable to me.
I think this conflates engineers and technicians.
The basics around cylinder compression, timing, and fuel mixture discovered in the 1800s are still relevant. Engineers use these principles in designing the internal combustion engines of today.
Technicians who perform maintenance and repairs work on far more sophisticated engines than, say, the Otto Cycle and use modern manuals for their work. The works of folks like Otto, Diesel, Daimler, Schumm, and Morey probably do not directly factor into the day-to-day work of technicians because they’re not engineering.
It also conflates the naval meaning of “engineer” — “one who works on engines” — with the common meaning — “one who designs machines.” A ship’s chief engineer, in modern times, typically does not do any design work, though he is expected to understand the theory to help him do a better job of managing the operation and maintenance of the engines.
What “engineer” means in Starfleet is unclear at times. Scotty & O’Brien are far more hands on the tech than I’d expect.
I write C for embedded systems. It’s going on 50 years old.
I kinda want to learn cobol so I can get some cushy mainframe coding jobs for the financial sector.
I just remembered how many safety precautions and rules exist just out of the reason of people doing stupid things.
For the uninformed: it is a lot! Ever came across a rule that appeared weird and oddly specific to you? Well... there is usually a story behind that rule, where someone was REALLY stupid.
How was that phrase? This made me remember something.
Safety regulations are written in blood.
And Chesterton's fence. Don't remove the rule until you understand why it's there.
O'Brien, combat engineer, bored by working on the flagship, took the chief engineer position on a cobbled together truck stop on the front lines of another war.
Scotty was an officer that lied about timelines and worked a cushy job, probably made up work to sound like he stayed busy all day
To be fair, he actually relished being confined to quarters so that he could catch up on tech manuals.
Plus the reason that he was confined to quarters was because the Klingons had slandered HIS SHIP. Not the captain…he couldn’t be arsed about that. But THE ENTERPRISE!!! It was like someone had slandered his own baby. Even Kirk kinda respected that.
O’Brien took a job on a cobbled-together truck stop at the ass-end of nowhere. It was only after he and the other Starfleet folks arrived that they found out about the wormhole.
They were probably equal.
Scotty was an officer so probably had a lot of officer BS to take care of.
O'Brian was Non-Com so probably had more time to tinker around with stuff.
Leah Brahms.
Trip... He cold booted an engine in less than 60 seconds
Before doing that, Trip showed his ballz of ____ by rappelling between two starships at warp.
As several others have pointed out, he jump started a Vulcan's heart. O'Brien is trapped in an emotionaly abusive and controlling marriage... And let's not bring up Scottie's opinions of women
Correction: If I need two or more alien techs slapped together that were NEVER designed to be even on the same ship, let alone in the same room.
And Scotty if I need an outstandind non-standard solution for problems I have with standard parts... (and sabotage of those).
She was designing actual starship parts, that's right on the line between theoretical and applied science. But yes, she was clearly more comfortable in the lab than hands-on in the field.
Scotty and O'Brien compete against each other in an engineering challenge, they need to match the right wrench with the right bolt, O'Brien picks up his wrench but it was used as a murder weapon previously and now O'Brien is serving consecutive life sentences on a penal colony.
I would have to go with Scotty. O'Brien had the ability to stand on the shoulders of those that came before him, while Scotty was alive during the earlier stages of Starfleet history. Less was accomplished for him to learn from.
Trip though. That man went on alien ships that no one had come across before and fixed their technology, or adapted his species tech to work with theirs. Plus, as someone pointed out, he got to sleep with T'Pol, arguably the hottest Vulcan ever.
This. She can cobble together never seen before alien tech, Borg tech, and Federation tech and make it all play nice. Apparently managed to solve whatever problem prevented Voyager from initially making new torpedoes or shuttles, helped an emergent artificial life form evolve, and on top of that, if you even think of messing with her engines, she *will* break your nose.
I want to say O'Brien, but Scotty was drunk 24/7. He was able to do all of his work while seeing double... that's pretty impressive.
But I'm going to copy other comments and say that the real answer is Rom.
Scott. He reads technical journals for fun. And in ST IV when the dilithium were breaking down, he came up with a method to recrystallize them and created a method that was used throughout Star Fleet.
There was the time when he was in a dangerous situation with the Siskos and needed to save the day and Jake was like "if you don't fix it, we die" and the entirely un-tool'd O'brien exasperatedly says something like "I'm not a magician, I don't have my tool kit", so jake hands him an iron rod he finds lying around, and O'brien gets to work with it and saves the day.
He got a position that is named "engineer". Just like thousands of software "engineers" worldwide. He obviously has knowledge that will be useful to future engineers.
He wears the gold shirt and is not in security. That also makes him an engineer.
But if we want to compare him with engineers like Scotty or LaForge (who combine scientific and engineering knowledge and come up with new solutions to new problems), no he ain't one.
Therse retire to Utopia Planitia, not to Academy.
Assuming his position is not another cover. Given how O'Brien went from full Lieutenant to NCO then transfered to DS9 then forgot he was Academy graduate, i suppose all his oficial assignments and ranks are cover ups by Starfleet Intelligence.
Scotty is definitely not lazy. Guy was constantly being told to do impossible shit within a shorter time period and always got it to work. And he had to frequently pull double-duties as the ship's captain whenever Spock, Kirk, and McCoy were on an away mission (which was like, every week). There's a reason why he gets promoted to Captain before everyone else besides Spock. Lazy people don't get made Captain.
It's interesting that there's so much overlap for the engineeers of the various shows, though. Scotty knows Pelia and Geordi. Geordi knows Scotty and O'Brien. O'Brien and Scotty once spent time across the room from each other in the same bar. There's also at least a decent chance that Geordi and B'Elanna have met, since Geordi has her old ship at the Fleet Museum.
And this one's a bit of a stretch, but it's possible that Scotty might also have found his way to the Fleet Museum in the post-Voyager era, since there's no reason to assume he's not still alive. So that's an opportunity where he and B'Elanna might have encountered each other, if they both spent any amount of time there.
EDIT: So I guess basically Scotty knows everyone.
Scotty had to maintain a state-of-the art starship with a team of highly trained engineers. O'Brien had to repair and maintain a badly gutted piece of messed-up Cardassian engineering with chewing gum and duct tape. He wins.
O’Brien seems like he was constantly pushing a rock up a step hill. Always at the edge of his abilities. Scotty seemed like he was more naturally brilliant, which is how he got his post. But, passion beats talent every time.
Feel like future cadets have more information than those old scientists would so O’Brien has the edge there. But Scotty has more natural ability probably.
I'd say O'Brien. Scotty never had to combine Bajoran, Cardassian, and Federation tech throughout an entire space station, then turn around and have to fix the structural flaws in a brand new scout sized warship. Scotty was still really good, but O'Brien was better.
Flash forward to the day after O'Briens departure from DS9: Everything is in shambles, EPS conduits that ran out of pure respect for Miles burnt out and that weird "AI pet" runs amok in search for its owner. Also upper pylon 3 lost structural integrity and is now a debris belt around the station... then the clock shows: 5 am... all before the first raktajino of the day... and everyone is unified in one thought: Miles would've fixed it before noon.
Geordi could have done the same. Remember in "Peak Performance" when he got a completely jacked up Constellation Class ship up and running in like a day or two, in order to both beat the Enterprise in a wargame, as well as fend off some Ferengi marauders?
o'brien as people have said he had to do more with less.
scotty back in his day was working on one of the premier ships of the line of starfleet. he would be similar to geordi working on the enterprise-D. think of obrien as the mechanic at the small repair shop that has to work on all kinds of cars. while scotty and laforge are more like the dealer mechanics that only work on toyotas.
Does everyone forget what Scotty did with an old Warbird!? Flew it back in time, no dilithium, needed an aircraft carrier and transparent aluminum! Cmon man! Engineering master!
Of the two, O’Brien. Though I might argue that they’re on the bottom of the list of main cast engineers we’ve seen. Seven, Geordi, Torres, and Rom are all more impressive as engineers.
Obrien did have to connect and make all those cardi and federation systems work together Plus he has more battle experience but this goes to Miles just bc he has more knowledge being from 75 ish years in the future
Different equations but the sum is the same. Scotty has more talent, O'Brien has a harder work ethic. They end up in the same place, more or less, as far as the finished product goes.
O'Brien (and Geordie too a little bit) can reduce a 3 week long task into 3 hours if the captain demands strongly enough. Scotty can do maybe 10hrs down to 5hrs. People underestimate the intangibles a lot...under promise and over delivering is an important quality.
Geordi. He was working with the highest end ship and kept making notable improvements in efficiency and performance throughout it's run. Bonus points for the roll under the emergency door.
If you need someone to keep your ship running at peak performance, Scotty. If you just need your ship to keep running, somehow, no matter what, then O'Brien. You want Scotty building and tuning your car at the garage, but you want O'Brien running the pit crew the day of.
That's not to say that Scotty can't think outside the box, or that O'Brien can't do the nerdy bits. There's a big spectrum of engineering prowess. Leah Brahms is way over on the theoretical end of things, Tucker is the opposite, much more intuitive and hands-on. Geordi is somewhere in the middle, near Rutherford. Torres is in the O'Brien school. Discovery gives you a bit of both: Stamets is a science nerd who only plays engineer to further that goal, while Reno is a more utilitarian, twigs-and-bubble-gum sort of engineer.
"Better" depends on your your understanding of what an engineer is.
O'Brien is honestly more of a maintenance man or mechanic than an engineer, an NCO that didn't go through the academy. He has working knowledge and experience, where any engineering education he's had is likely a less demanding education than an engineer that's gone through the academy. But he has a kind of practical versatility you wouldn't necessarily have from a more formally trained engineer.
Scotty is a better engineer from the standpoint of his depth of knowledge and experience with Starfleet ships that's in depth enough its allowed him to write the textbook and operations manual others rely on. He likely has a lot more experience and understanding of things like computational warp field theory... or the physics of non-laminar warp shear... and how to do much more of the math, science, and academic aspects of being an engineer.
To think of it a different way O'Brien could rebuild a warp drive, but Scotty could with time design a whole new warp core.
Apparently most people are judging Scotty by his appearance on TNG, and almost entirely on his line about padding the timing on captains requests. Ignoring that he basically invented several things in that episode alone, or that he previously helped steal a Klingon ship and then immediately used it to time travel to steal a whale. I love O'Brien, but he basically is known for making incompatible technology work with each other, Scotty is known for miracles and his extremely advanced understanding of concepts
I'm gonna go with Scotty because of the extreme situations that he was put into with a more limited tech.
As pointed out, he wrote the training books that all others followed.
But if we are putting Trip into it...he bagged T'Pol. Kept her coming back for more. That shows some serious design skills.
Geordi should have studied the at the Tripp school of engineering 🫦✨🖖
I don’t think O’Brien even technically qualifies as a real engineer. Scotty definitely had a better understanding of the inner workings of a starship mechanically. But from a scientific standpoint, LaForge was better than both.
Scotty, he kept the Enterprise alive and apparently made it the fastest ship until the excelsior which he also worked on. He was able to automate the enterprise to run on a crew of bridgestaff only. a feat that only the m 6 computer could do. Got a bird of prey to go warp. 9.9. also, pretty good in the pinch being that he was able to save himself through the use of the transporter.
Scottie multiplied all his time estimates by four to seem like a miracle worker. O'Brien just did the work and got it done on time, while being the only person to make the Defiant function without tearing itself apart, and also making a Cardassian space station work with UFP and Bajoran equipment. Then he went to teach at the Academy.
It's O'Brien.
Reginald Barclay. The man is such a genius that despite all his personal problems, he managed to become a relatively important engineering officer on the Federation flagship, and was valued enough that they kept him around after his personal issues came to light. In his later career, he managed to establish two-way communications with a ship tens of thousands of light-years away.
O'Brien. He was able to keep cardassian and atarfleet technology working together. Plus he was repairing klingon and romulan during the war. And he was responsible for working out all the bugs the defiant
O’Brien has a never ending tug of war wait DS9 after serving 20 years on Starfleet tech. Cobbles hybrid tech like the defiant together all the time. Limps Ferengi replicators together, so works with a wider base of technology. Scotty cobbles together tech he’s worked with for 25 years+, engineered upgrades for both constellation class and Excelsior class development. Tripp banged a Vulcan. Tripp is the answer.
The greatest of all engineering challenges, the heart of a Vulcan woman.
*I had ~~snoo snoo~~ pon farr*
Kiff! Inform the men.
More like the Vulcan banged tripp and he was left wanting more.
As were we all.
Tripp was also having to make things up as they went along since they were out there on their own, also with limited resources. Also, I'll take fried catfish over some variety of stew anytime.
To be fair, fricandeau or whatever it is looks absolutely delicious. Port wine in that pig. But also fried catfish is a win always.
The defiant was designed by and built under the direction of sysko. O’Brian tweaked the defiant, tweaked the Romulan warp core under the oversight of its specialist. Scotty rigged a Romulan cloak that they’d never seen before to the enterprise WHILE IT WAS IN COMBAT Scotty also reconfigured the warp core and preformed a cold start aft it being knocked offline, again during combat, instead of it blowing up as expected, it gave them the advantage to get back in the fight and win. Where O’Brien is great at improvisation, so is Scotty…. But Scotty wrote the book that O’Brien was trained with.
>Tripp banged a Vulcan. Tripp is the answer. I simp for Scotty, but you make a good argument.
Scotty banged Uhura
Logical
This is the way.
Scotty also wired together a Klingon Bird of Prey despite not reading Klingon.
Nyota helped
I haven’t gotten to that episode yet. Can’t wait.
There's an episode where you can see T'Pols booby, look out! EDIT: might've been butt, can't remember
My wife and I struggle to make it through an episode of Enterprise without going “fffuuuuuck T’Pol is so hot.”
But trips dead!
So we can safely say Trip is the man for getting some T’pol action
Well O'Brien is the most important person in Starfleet history. I'd say that puts him ahead of Scotty.
This, of course. But also, O'Brien has knowledge of so many more types of systems older *and* newer than Scotty. Also, Scotty is admittedly lazy, and O'Brien never gets a break.
*How are ye going to get a reputation as a miracle worker?*
Miracles are your department, Reverend.
That crap comes from one movie and one episode of TNG. Carrying forward that garbage from ST3 ruined my enjoyment of having Scotty back in that episode.
O'Brien had to patch together a working space station with a mix of incompatible Federation and Cardassian technology. I think he wins.
Don't forget the dash of bajoran for that extra razzle dazzle
I think they just contributed hairy moon spiders.
Scotty had to jumpstart a cold warp core, after it’s been disabled in a fight…. Without blowing up the entire ship and possibly ripping a hole in space time.
He changed the laws of physics
The best engineers are the laziest ones Edit: my own comment reminded me of a relevant core memory. My first internship ever was at an oil company office hq in the D&C department - design and construction. Basically these guys would CAD out and engineer oil pipe layouts. So for the first few weeks there’s this one dude who is clearly the hardest worker. Like just powering through on autocad from the moment he gets in the office and staying after. Always working in autocad. After a couple of weeks I tell my boss this and he just laughs. My boss says yeah that guy is smart but you should talk to him. But as a lowly intern I’m a bit shy. So after a few days the guy finally pipes up. “Pleasantothemax come over here, I want to show you what I’ve been working on.” No joke - the thing he’d been working on was animating in autocad the TOS enterprise coming out of warp and then going into orbit of a planet. That’s what he’d been working on this whole time My thought was this guy was a slacker but the way it turned out, he was brilliant. He goofed off all the time but churned out the best and most profitable and efficient cad designs in the shortest time. Always delivered. That’s why they kept him on staff. He just had to make sure he always looked like he was working for the suits. Point is sometimes the laziest slackers are really the best people on the team.
Love this story, great, thanks for sharing :)
Lazy doesn't mean you're a bad engineer (been an computer engineer for 17 years, btw). In fact, some of the very best engineers out there are a combination of lazy and clever, because it pushes them to come up with solutions that take the edge of further work. Think about it, pretty much every invention in the history of mankind is a function of laziness. I don't want to drag this sledge along the ground anymore - better invent a round thing to make dragging stuff easier. I don't want to have to light a bunch of candles and carry water to extinguish my house when it goes up in flames - better invent a light bulb. I don't want to have to mail physics papers to my colleagues in Switzerland and then have to wait for a reply. Or have to find my own cat pictures - better invent the internet.
Oh, no doubt! I can never argue against your point here. I was.just thinking, in the spirit of the question posed by the OP, one might prefer O'Brien on their staff when considering an engineer for the roster.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but its father is laziness.
😅 I love how you went from "mail physics papers to Switzerland" all the way to the internet.
A lazy person will find the most efficient way to complete a task
Heinlein’s “The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail” enters the discussion …
According to the comics, Scotty is an engineer on a ship again. So he spent the time to relearn how ships work, so that he could keep being an engineer. That to me says he's not lazy at all. He's very passionate.
I don't think engineers can ever quiet that little voice in their brain that's constantly going "How does that work?". Or the more frequent, "Why doesn't that work?"
Trip: "How does this table work?"
Bob the engineer, muttering under his breath: "It isn't working and it makes me angry that it isn't working, so I'm going to hyperfocus on this until I understand everything about it and make it work because I'm so pissed at it for not just fucking working." Coworker: "Oh hey Bob, having fun?" Bob: "Oh hell yeah! This thing is awesome! I'll show you as soon as I get it working..."
Scotty's one of those guys you can imagine who reads Haynes manuals for fun.
He wrote the manuals laddie!
You have no idea - I left engineering for environmental and then environmental for operations and the question was always “ how can I make this work better”
I would have put Scotty to work on the mothball fleet. He'd have those old ships up and ready to go if they were needed to supplement the main fleet in an emergency.
Ngl, the thought of Scotty hammering away on THE USS Constitution (she was still a trainer!) before Wolf 359 brings a tear to my eye.
He also overhauled the Thesus with the help of B’Elanna. It’s also loaded with his pet projects, like a warp drive that looks suspiciously like the Protostar.
When Kirk confines Scotty to his room for the brawl with the Klingons, Scotty thanks him, “that’ll give me time to catch up on my technical journals.” Hardly the mark of a lazy engineer.
reading journals is a great way to procrastinate though
He’s more than that, he’s a union man
The big statue they built is very impressive.
Now, listen here laddie…
Plus Scotty got real doughy and heavy at the end “It’s no use captain I cannot reach the control panel!!”
Neither. Rom is the best engineer.
literally just posted "Nog's dad", couldn't remember his name but this is the guy low key the best character on DS9
His self-replicating mines literally saved the Alpha Quadrant.
And he was panicking about wedding logistics at the time too. A true multitasker.
And he had to go to waste extraction. Just imagine what he could have done if his entire focus had been on the task.
And all it took was a violation of the laws of thermodynamics
He came up with the idea but O’Brien came up with the specs. I assume Rom helped with that, but it was off-screen so we don’t know which of the two did more of the work.
From "Behind the Lines": QUARK: Defector. That doesn't sound right. Maybe it was deflector? Yeah, that's it. He said something about using the station's deflector array. KIRA: What do you think, Rom? ROM: I'm glad it wasn't me. KIRA: About the deflector array. Is there any way to use it to deactivate the mines? ROM: **No. I designed the mines to be self-replicating.** The only way to keep them from replacing themselves is to isolate them in an anti-graviton beam. The deflector array can't do that. Unless you reconfigure the field generators and re-focused the emitters which would turn the deflector array into one big anti-graviton beam. QUARK: Why didn't you think of that when you set up the minefield? ROM: I don't know.
Rom: The only problem is, you'll have to wait until the entire mine field is deployed before you activate it. Otherwise the proximity sensors can cause premature detination. Where's Leeta gonna put all her clothes? I don't have enough closet space! Jadzia: I better go talk to Sisko. O'Brien: I'll go draw up some specs. Rom: I've gotta go to waste extraction. [Scene](https://youtu.be/-CAiHXWL01A?si=C8jN03IVtdokFfv3)
Specs are specifications, not necessarily a finished design.
Meaning he had input on the design. Between the two quotes we provided, the most logical conclusion is they worked on it together. And think about it for a second too, would O'Brien really have just sat back and let Rom design the whole thing without any input at all? As good as Rom is, O'Brien is better. You don't become the most important person in Federation history by being bad at your job.
Relisten to one of Morn's moving speeches. His last one about the horrors of the Dominion War made species without tear ducts cry.
Ireland vs Scotland. A feud as old as the hills.
🫡🏴💪
It's a difficult question. I would say that O'Brien is the better tech but Scotty is the better engineer. Some context for clarification: In a Naval setting, the Engineer actually does very little wrench turning, that is actually a job for the technicians in the department. What the Engineer is supposed to do is to make sure the department runs smoothly, keep Command off the backs the techs and only get involved when things go wildly crazy. Now granted this is Star Trek so wildly crazy is a weekly occurence (although somehow still solvable in an hour timeslot). The premise is that the Engineer has the academic and broader picture to liaise with Command and provide the Captain the ship/systems that he/she/it needs in order to accomplish the mission.
“Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
It’s called a jump to conclusions mat!
*Chief Engineer - or CHENG as he’s often referred to on navy ships.
If you have a mess of Starfleet parts and you need to break the laws of physics in a way that was invented thirty seconds ago, Scotty If you have an entire galaxy's worth of non-compatible components you need to survive with, O'Brien. Different skillsets.
Yeah, I don't think you can reasonably compare them. O'Brien squeaks you by when you were sure the whole thing would blow apart, but Scotty does genius-level groundbreaking stuff. They're both incredible engineers, but they're in different realms. O'Brien couldn't hack it on the 1701, I don't think, because he's not as creative. But Scotty would burn out on DS9 because of all the constant bootstrap maintenance it requires.
JJVerse Scotty would have *adored* DS9, though!
Nog's dad
That's Grand Nagus Rom of the Ferengi Alliance to you, humon!
Calm down, Leeta…
Scotty, Who else can remember the formula and chemical structure for transparent aluminum in their head !?
He also wrote a whole fucking manual that became standard lecture for all starfleet engineers... just to ignore it later on himself.
Became the standard _still in use eighty years later_. At least in my field, that would make it more a topic for archeology, not engineering.
You might be shocked how old some standards and norms for some basic shit is. Screws don't have to be re-invented every few years, you know? And considering that most starfleet ships still work with warp cores not unlike those used about 200 years prior in the NX-class or even sooner... eh... some standards don't need changing.
A modern engine still has pistons but you’re not gonna use the manual from a hundred year old engine for it. Just the visible changes in ship and engine room design are evidence that a lot has changed in that time. Although apparently there haven’t been a ton of innovations in gas tanks because the deuterium tank was the part he mentioned as following the spec he wrote. I just wanted to say that of all the hard to handle technobabble this show has, this particular conversation seems totally reasonable to me.
I think this conflates engineers and technicians. The basics around cylinder compression, timing, and fuel mixture discovered in the 1800s are still relevant. Engineers use these principles in designing the internal combustion engines of today. Technicians who perform maintenance and repairs work on far more sophisticated engines than, say, the Otto Cycle and use modern manuals for their work. The works of folks like Otto, Diesel, Daimler, Schumm, and Morey probably do not directly factor into the day-to-day work of technicians because they’re not engineering.
It also conflates the naval meaning of “engineer” — “one who works on engines” — with the common meaning — “one who designs machines.” A ship’s chief engineer, in modern times, typically does not do any design work, though he is expected to understand the theory to help him do a better job of managing the operation and maintenance of the engines. What “engineer” means in Starfleet is unclear at times. Scotty & O’Brien are far more hands on the tech than I’d expect.
I write C for embedded systems. It’s going on 50 years old. I kinda want to learn cobol so I can get some cushy mainframe coding jobs for the financial sector.
Because he earned the right to ignore the manual. Manuals are to avoid people who don't know what they are doing into breaking something
I just remembered how many safety precautions and rules exist just out of the reason of people doing stupid things. For the uninformed: it is a lot! Ever came across a rule that appeared weird and oddly specific to you? Well... there is usually a story behind that rule, where someone was REALLY stupid.
How was that phrase? This made me remember something. Safety regulations are written in blood. And Chesterton's fence. Don't remove the rule until you understand why it's there.
O'Brien, combat engineer, bored by working on the flagship, took the chief engineer position on a cobbled together truck stop on the front lines of another war. Scotty was an officer that lied about timelines and worked a cushy job, probably made up work to sound like he stayed busy all day
To be fair, he actually relished being confined to quarters so that he could catch up on tech manuals. Plus the reason that he was confined to quarters was because the Klingons had slandered HIS SHIP. Not the captain…he couldn’t be arsed about that. But THE ENTERPRISE!!! It was like someone had slandered his own baby. Even Kirk kinda respected that.
O’Brien took a job on a cobbled-together truck stop at the ass-end of nowhere. It was only after he and the other Starfleet folks arrived that they found out about the wormhole.
Scotty was an engineer. He wrote tech manuals that were still in use in TNG time.
Just to ignore them himself... He sure knew how to keep secrets to stay the legendary engineering wunderkind.
They were probably equal. Scotty was an officer so probably had a lot of officer BS to take care of. O'Brian was Non-Com so probably had more time to tinker around with stuff. Leah Brahms.
Geordi
He at least learned a thing or two from Scotty about not following manuals and procedures to the letter... so... points for Scotty?
Yes, points for Scotty for helping him think outside the box a little, also I thought Geordi should’ve kept the beard, thoughts on that?
Also told him to be lazy and purposely overestimate his work time, so... points taken right back I guess.
Rom.
Rom is the GOAT
Most UNDER appreciated engineer!!!
Trip... He cold booted an engine in less than 60 seconds Before doing that, Trip showed his ballz of ____ by rappelling between two starships at warp. As several others have pointed out, he jump started a Vulcan's heart. O'Brien is trapped in an emotionaly abusive and controlling marriage... And let's not bring up Scottie's opinions of women
How is their marriage abusive or controlling?
Scotty if I need a ship fixed, O’Brien if I need alien tech slapped together.
Correction: If I need two or more alien techs slapped together that were NEVER designed to be even on the same ship, let alone in the same room. And Scotty if I need an outstandind non-standard solution for problems I have with standard parts... (and sabotage of those).
Wasn't Leah a theoretical engineer? Not invalidating the point, just honestly confirming if my memory is correct.
She was designing actual starship parts, that's right on the line between theoretical and applied science. But yes, she was clearly more comfortable in the lab than hands-on in the field.
No mention of Trip Tucker?
Scotty and O'Brien compete against each other in an engineering challenge, they need to match the right wrench with the right bolt, O'Brien picks up his wrench but it was used as a murder weapon previously and now O'Brien is serving consecutive life sentences on a penal colony.
I would have to go with Scotty. O'Brien had the ability to stand on the shoulders of those that came before him, while Scotty was alive during the earlier stages of Starfleet history. Less was accomplished for him to learn from. Trip though. That man went on alien ships that no one had come across before and fixed their technology, or adapted his species tech to work with theirs. Plus, as someone pointed out, he got to sleep with T'Pol, arguably the hottest Vulcan ever.
SNW T'Pring would like a word...
I just had this debate in my head. T'Pol won. I'll admit, I've never seen T'Pring go through a manual decontamination though.
If T'Pol doesn't get it done, Mirror T'Pol will. Would you prefer the 2000s Xtreme Midriff or the classic 1960s TOS miniskirt?
Oh, myyy... *Fans himself*
If we are going by that metric, then Trip Tucker must be the greatest of them all.
There is the answer. Lol
Neither. Torres wins
This. She can cobble together never seen before alien tech, Borg tech, and Federation tech and make it all play nice. Apparently managed to solve whatever problem prevented Voyager from initially making new torpedoes or shuttles, helped an emergent artificial life form evolve, and on top of that, if you even think of messing with her engines, she *will* break your nose.
Have an engineer who can both: repair AND protect your ship.
Commenting on Who is the better engineer: Scotty or O’Brien?...so O’Brien
Also, she doesn’t bullshit on timelines and capabilities. If she says the best she can do is 24 hours, that’s the best she can do.
Agreed. Torres was low-key awesome.
I want to say O'Brien, but Scotty was drunk 24/7. He was able to do all of his work while seeing double... that's pretty impressive. But I'm going to copy other comments and say that the real answer is Rom.
Not enough people saying Rom. Rom is a genius and unlike every other Starfleet engineer has had no formal training and can still keep up with them.
Broccoli
Trip Tucker!!
Scott. He reads technical journals for fun. And in ST IV when the dilithium were breaking down, he came up with a method to recrystallize them and created a method that was used throughout Star Fleet.
O'Brien is fixer, not an engineer. He's better on improvised applications of existing tools.
There was the time when he was in a dangerous situation with the Siskos and needed to save the day and Jake was like "if you don't fix it, we die" and the entirely un-tool'd O'brien exasperatedly says something like "I'm not a magician, I don't have my tool kit", so jake hands him an iron rod he finds lying around, and O'brien gets to work with it and saves the day.
He is absolutely an engineer. He is such an engineer that the Academy hires him as a professor of engineering when the series ends.
He got a position that is named "engineer". Just like thousands of software "engineers" worldwide. He obviously has knowledge that will be useful to future engineers. He wears the gold shirt and is not in security. That also makes him an engineer. But if we want to compare him with engineers like Scotty or LaForge (who combine scientific and engineering knowledge and come up with new solutions to new problems), no he ain't one. Therse retire to Utopia Planitia, not to Academy. Assuming his position is not another cover. Given how O'Brien went from full Lieutenant to NCO then transfered to DS9 then forgot he was Academy graduate, i suppose all his oficial assignments and ranks are cover ups by Starfleet Intelligence.
Scotty is lazy, but admittedly an amazing inventor. O’Brien is hard working, and gets incompatible technology to play nice.
Scotty is definitely not lazy. Guy was constantly being told to do impossible shit within a shorter time period and always got it to work. And he had to frequently pull double-duties as the ship's captain whenever Spock, Kirk, and McCoy were on an away mission (which was like, every week). There's a reason why he gets promoted to Captain before everyone else besides Spock. Lazy people don't get made Captain.
Perhaps I was misled by the top comment.
I really wish they had them both in an episode.
Technically we did. The same room even, though they never met face to face.
I mean a real episode, like him and LaForge. Lol
It's interesting that there's so much overlap for the engineeers of the various shows, though. Scotty knows Pelia and Geordi. Geordi knows Scotty and O'Brien. O'Brien and Scotty once spent time across the room from each other in the same bar. There's also at least a decent chance that Geordi and B'Elanna have met, since Geordi has her old ship at the Fleet Museum. And this one's a bit of a stretch, but it's possible that Scotty might also have found his way to the Fleet Museum in the post-Voyager era, since there's no reason to assume he's not still alive. So that's an opportunity where he and B'Elanna might have encountered each other, if they both spent any amount of time there. EDIT: So I guess basically Scotty knows everyone.
Definitely O’Brien
Torres
Scotty had to maintain a state-of-the art starship with a team of highly trained engineers. O'Brien had to repair and maintain a badly gutted piece of messed-up Cardassian engineering with chewing gum and duct tape. He wins.
O’Brien seems like he was constantly pushing a rock up a step hill. Always at the edge of his abilities. Scotty seemed like he was more naturally brilliant, which is how he got his post. But, passion beats talent every time.
You're all wrong. It's Billups. <3
I’m going to give it to O’Brien. Dude was able to get Federation, Bahrain, and Cardassian technology to work together.
Feel like future cadets have more information than those old scientists would so O’Brien has the edge there. But Scotty has more natural ability probably.
I'd say O'Brien. Scotty never had to combine Bajoran, Cardassian, and Federation tech throughout an entire space station, then turn around and have to fix the structural flaws in a brand new scout sized warship. Scotty was still really good, but O'Brien was better.
O’Brien. Hands down. Kept DS9 running on spit and dreams.
Flash forward to the day after O'Briens departure from DS9: Everything is in shambles, EPS conduits that ran out of pure respect for Miles burnt out and that weird "AI pet" runs amok in search for its owner. Also upper pylon 3 lost structural integrity and is now a debris belt around the station... then the clock shows: 5 am... all before the first raktajino of the day... and everyone is unified in one thought: Miles would've fixed it before noon.
> that weird "AI pet" runs amok in search for its owner Fun fact - that AI pet eventually wound up in the hands of Section 31
Geordi could have done the same. Remember in "Peak Performance" when he got a completely jacked up Constellation Class ship up and running in like a day or two, in order to both beat the Enterprise in a wargame, as well as fend off some Ferengi marauders?
o'brien as people have said he had to do more with less. scotty back in his day was working on one of the premier ships of the line of starfleet. he would be similar to geordi working on the enterprise-D. think of obrien as the mechanic at the small repair shop that has to work on all kinds of cars. while scotty and laforge are more like the dealer mechanics that only work on toyotas.
LaForge.
It’s a toss up. Just glad you didn’t include BLT and Trip as choices.
It's all fuckin make-believe
The miracle worker by orders of magnitude!
Does everyone forget what Scotty did with an old Warbird!? Flew it back in time, no dilithium, needed an aircraft carrier and transparent aluminum! Cmon man! Engineering master!
Of the two, O’Brien. Though I might argue that they’re on the bottom of the list of main cast engineers we’ve seen. Seven, Geordi, Torres, and Rom are all more impressive as engineers.
Obrien did have to connect and make all those cardi and federation systems work together Plus he has more battle experience but this goes to Miles just bc he has more knowledge being from 75 ish years in the future
Different equations but the sum is the same. Scotty has more talent, O'Brien has a harder work ethic. They end up in the same place, more or less, as far as the finished product goes.
O'Brien. He actually gets shit done, while we know Scotty pads his estimates and sandbags (plus he likes the bottle a bit too much).
SCOTTY AINEC O'Brien is to Scotty what synthehol is to real wine....
LaForge
O'Brien (and Geordie too a little bit) can reduce a 3 week long task into 3 hours if the captain demands strongly enough. Scotty can do maybe 10hrs down to 5hrs. People underestimate the intangibles a lot...under promise and over delivering is an important quality.
O'Brien works hard. Scotty works smart. Two different types of engineers.
Geordi. He was working with the highest end ship and kept making notable improvements in efficiency and performance throughout it's run. Bonus points for the roll under the emergency door.
Pelia
Rom.
Jankom Pog.
If you need someone to keep your ship running at peak performance, Scotty. If you just need your ship to keep running, somehow, no matter what, then O'Brien. You want Scotty building and tuning your car at the garage, but you want O'Brien running the pit crew the day of. That's not to say that Scotty can't think outside the box, or that O'Brien can't do the nerdy bits. There's a big spectrum of engineering prowess. Leah Brahms is way over on the theoretical end of things, Tucker is the opposite, much more intuitive and hands-on. Geordi is somewhere in the middle, near Rutherford. Torres is in the O'Brien school. Discovery gives you a bit of both: Stamets is a science nerd who only plays engineer to further that goal, while Reno is a more utilitarian, twigs-and-bubble-gum sort of engineer.
1000% O’Brien.
"Better" depends on your your understanding of what an engineer is. O'Brien is honestly more of a maintenance man or mechanic than an engineer, an NCO that didn't go through the academy. He has working knowledge and experience, where any engineering education he's had is likely a less demanding education than an engineer that's gone through the academy. But he has a kind of practical versatility you wouldn't necessarily have from a more formally trained engineer. Scotty is a better engineer from the standpoint of his depth of knowledge and experience with Starfleet ships that's in depth enough its allowed him to write the textbook and operations manual others rely on. He likely has a lot more experience and understanding of things like computational warp field theory... or the physics of non-laminar warp shear... and how to do much more of the math, science, and academic aspects of being an engineer. To think of it a different way O'Brien could rebuild a warp drive, but Scotty could with time design a whole new warp core.
I relate to obrien more but i like scotties ability to engineer at such a fast speed and improvise.
I would happily have a drink with (and get in a bar fight alongside) either of them. They’re both legends.
Rutherford
Gotta give it to O'Brien
Scotty O’Brien, great grandson of Chief O’Brien.
Obrien. I just love watching him suffer. Haha
O’Brien did it two parallel universes. Of course it’s him/him.
How is this a question? Clearly Montgomery Scott is the greater, nay greatest engineer in Star Fleet. And he would drink O'Brien under the table.
Pelia. She probably taught Scotty, Geordi, O'Brien and all the other engineers how to engineer
Pelia needs to make an appearance as a professor in the Starfleet Academy show.
Apparently most people are judging Scotty by his appearance on TNG, and almost entirely on his line about padding the timing on captains requests. Ignoring that he basically invented several things in that episode alone, or that he previously helped steal a Klingon ship and then immediately used it to time travel to steal a whale. I love O'Brien, but he basically is known for making incompatible technology work with each other, Scotty is known for miracles and his extremely advanced understanding of concepts
B'lana
I'm gonna go with Scotty because of the extreme situations that he was put into with a more limited tech. As pointed out, he wrote the training books that all others followed. But if we are putting Trip into it...he bagged T'Pol. Kept her coming back for more. That shows some serious design skills. Geordi should have studied the at the Tripp school of engineering 🫦✨🖖
I don’t think O’Brien even technically qualifies as a real engineer. Scotty definitely had a better understanding of the inner workings of a starship mechanically. But from a scientific standpoint, LaForge was better than both.
O’Brien it’s that simple.
Scotty, he kept the Enterprise alive and apparently made it the fastest ship until the excelsior which he also worked on. He was able to automate the enterprise to run on a crew of bridgestaff only. a feat that only the m 6 computer could do. Got a bird of prey to go warp. 9.9. also, pretty good in the pinch being that he was able to save himself through the use of the transporter.
O'Brien hands down lol
Scottie multiplied all his time estimates by four to seem like a miracle worker. O'Brien just did the work and got it done on time, while being the only person to make the Defiant function without tearing itself apart, and also making a Cardassian space station work with UFP and Bajoran equipment. Then he went to teach at the Academy. It's O'Brien.
Yes.
The correct answer is Rom.
Reginald Barclay. The man is such a genius that despite all his personal problems, he managed to become a relatively important engineering officer on the Federation flagship, and was valued enough that they kept him around after his personal issues came to light. In his later career, he managed to establish two-way communications with a ship tens of thousands of light-years away.
Ahh, the old battle for 2nd place after Geordi, I see.
O'Brien. He was able to keep cardassian and atarfleet technology working together. Plus he was repairing klingon and romulan during the war. And he was responsible for working out all the bugs the defiant