"Defiant" - Did ANYONE here, on first airing, before it's revealed suspect that it was Thomas Riker?

[Crewman6]

I remember it was spoiled for me. Not sure how. Teaser or maybe TV Guide or something. But I definitely went into the episode knowing the twist. Alas.

So when the O'Brien moment happened, I wasn't confused, my reaction was, "Ah ha. Makes sense!"

 

[G. Boney]

Rikers rude behavior against O'Brien.

What I know, they were good friends at the Enterprise. At least no conflicts between them.
So why was he so rude to O'Brien? Something must be wrong, I thought.
And then it was all revealed somewhat later.

However, I didn't suspect that it was Tom Riker and that he had become a Maquis. It was just the behavior against O'Brien I found a bit odd.

Yeah, when I first saw the episode and Tom brushed off O'brien that way I was wondering if something happened in an episode of TNG that I'd missed lol. Then as you say, the real reason was revealed shortly after.

 

[Lord Garth]

The Tom Riker reveal threw me in for a surprise, though his exchange with O'Brien did make me think, "What's going on?"

 

[Yuri Nikolayev]

I was young and naive when the episode first aired, so I didn’t pick up on a lot. But at the time, I thought he (Thomas) was a dick to O’Brien for no reason. I was like, bro, WTF did O’Brien do to you? The ONLY thing I could think of at the time, was that because of what happened with the Potemkin, he didn’t trust or like transporter technicians anymore, but that’s kinda weak, IMO.

 

[kkt]

I did think during that episode that Starfleet Security should rethink access to docked starships. Identical twins share DNA and fingerprints. Human identical twins are uncommon but not at all unheard of, and in other species represented in Starfleet they may be much more common. They need a way to distinguish individuals.

 

[Yuri Nikolayev]

I did think during that episode that Starfleet Security should rethink access to docked starships. Identical twins share DNA and fingerprints. Human identical twins are uncommon but not at all unheard of, and in other species represented in Starfleet they may be much more common. They need a way to distinguish individuals.

That’s true, but OTOH, as far as anyone knew, he WAS the XO of the Federation flagship. Granted, that’s probably not enough, but we did see the Enterprise docked at DS9 twice before, and we’ve seen (William) Riker contact Quark from the Enterprise, so it’s likely he was able to develop a rapport with quite a few people during those occasions, and might have maintained friendships with many of them.

 

[DonIago]

He was also being accompanied by the first officer of DS9 at the time.

 

[kkt]

Yes, I remember the episode. Given how many transporter duplicates there are, as well as naturally occurring identical twins, Starfleet clearly needs to do more to keep a genetic duplicate from impersonating a starfleet officer.

 

[Daedalus]

Total surprise, and one of my favourite episodes of DS9. I didn't see it when it first aired, so i'm surprised I wasn't spoilt.