VISIONARY one of best epsisodes but I do have a question.

[Mutara Nebula 1967]

O'Brien goes into the future and sees the station destroyed. Returns to the present and the gang cooks up a way for him to do a controlled trip into the future to get more intel.

O'Brien arrives and wakes his sleeping self and the two make their way to Ops.

The question is...how can there be a sleeping O'Brien...Once Miles learned of the destruction and returned to the present there seems to be no scenario where he could be visiting a sleeping version of himself as their seems no way O'Brien would go to bed and be asleep with the knowledge the station was to be destroyed. WHERE does this sleeping O'Brien come from..he should not exist right?

Also part of me feels like the O'Brien we have after this episode is not quite the one we first met in ENCOUNTER at FARPOINT...much like the real Harry Kim and Namoi Wilder died during the DEADLOCK episode of VOYAGER.

 

[Finn]

^Visionary occurs YEARS after Encounter at Farpoint. BOTH O'Briens experienced the TNG pilot. It's like saying the Harry Kim we saw after Deadlock wasn't the one we saw in Caretaker...

 

[Tosk]

The "future" Miles does not have "present" Miles' memories of his recent time travel adventures*, so there's no reason for him not to be asleep. He doesn't know that the station will explode soon.

*Otherwise he'd always know when other-Miles is about to appear, which is not the case.