. . | Name:
Year of birth : Place of birth: Education : Rank : Race : Position: Defiant: Status : |
Odo'ital
(given)
2337 (discovered) Founders Homeworld, Gamma quadrant Bajoran Institute For Science, as specimen 2356-63 Chief of security,Bajoran millitia, DS9 detachment Changeling (Founder) Head of security, constable --- Active duty |
Found
adrift and alone in the Denorious Belt in his natural gelatinous state
with no clue to his origin, this
unique
shapeshifter was returned to Cardassian-occupied Bajor in 2356 and given
to Dr. Mora Pol at the
Bajoran
Institute for Science to research under much pressure. However, after a
lifetime of wondering, it
was
not until early 2371 that Odo discovered he was one of 100 changeling Founders
sent out at an
unspecified
earlier time as an exploratory contact mission from the Dominion, implanted
genetically with
the
need to return home someday.
Initially
it was only the formative Odo's duplication of his container, a Krokian
Petri beaker, that alerted
Mora
to his sentience. Even after gaining intelligence, communication skills
and a refined morphing ability
he'd
had trouble with "social integration," Mora noted. His name stems from
the Cardassian words for
"nothing"
- the literal translation of "Odo'ital," which Dr. Mora's Cardassian overseer
took as the meaning of
his
intended specimen label "Unknown Sample" that was affixed to his container.
After he was known to be
sentient,
the native scientists as a joke "Bajorized" it into "Odo Ital," and later
just "Odo." The irony of the
name
"Nothing" was not lost on the homeless, friendless alien then, who turned
the self-image around
after
the coming of Kira and the Starfleet crew.
As
he grew and matured his humiliation in this role only mounted, thanks to
incidents such as those which
culminated
with his coerced performance in 2363 of a mocking "neck trick" for visiting
Cardassian Central
Command
members, including Gul Dukat, and he walked out on Mora and the lab soon
after. Even so, he
kept
his hair style, maintained after much practice, which was copied from Pol's,
and the period reinforced
his
self-reliance.
After
two years of building a reputation as a neutral arbiter settling simple
squabbles among Bajorans, he
was
coerced by Dukat into solving a murder on DS9 (then Terok Nor), where he
met Quark and a
mysterious
resistance-fighter Kira for the first time. The case went unsolved for
five years, but he
eventually
realized the murderer was indeed Kira, taking vengeance on a turncoat Bajoran
collaborator.
The
incident and good work prompted Dukat to keep him on in a steady and satisfying
role there as long as
his
own sense of justice was allowed; he was less open and decisive, an outsider
without status, but had no
fear
about sounding off on Cardassian injustice on Bajor. Years later, during
the accidental activation of Terok
Nor's
old counter-insurgency system, he realized how much Dukat and the occupying
Cardassians distrusted
their
security chief as an "honorable man": his forcefields were left on a separate
supply than those reopened
by
the program in case he sided with the workers. His old Cardassian access
codes were still valid,
but
the Level 6 clearance level wasn't enough to disable the program when it
ran amok in 2371.
By
2367 he had been designated an officer of the Cardassian court to testify
in criminal cases -a title never
revoked.
He knew Cardassian occupation liaison and collaborator Kubus well; he had
known Prylar Bek in
passing
as well and thought him a good man before his public suicide for a role
in the Kendra Valley Massacre.
Following
the Cardassian withdrawal in 2369 he proved invaluable to the new Starfleet
commander Sisko and
was
invited to stay on; he guessed at the time about 500 people would want
to frame him for murder.
Although
he was soon cleared after a temporary resignation when accused of just
that crime, Sisko often
had
to defend him to a skeptical or outright suspicious Starfleet. Odo zealously
guarded the independence
of
his office and methods when the two butted heads, but eventually he and
Sisko came to see eye-to-eye.
Even
so, Odo has threatened his resignation at least three times, each when
he felt his job was threatened
by
Starfleet officers: Lt. George Primmin in 2369, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Eddington
in 2371,
and
Lt. Cmdr. Worf in 2372.
Most
of the senior officers call him "constable" as does even Quark and occasional
visitors, but he doesn't
like
it, preferring "chief of security;" He can fly a Runabout but is not a
combat pilot by any means.
As
tensions mounted upon discovery of the Dominion and its warning to avoid
use of the wormhole, in early
2371
he finally met his own people, the changeling Founders, but out of conscience
he refused their bid to
join
their Great Link and leave "Solids" behind.
When
captured later that year by Enabran Tain and the Romulan-Cardassian strike
force attacking the
Founders
homeworld, he was interrogated by Garak about his people while held by
force against regenerating.
With
no information to divulge he never cracked, only admitting he wanted to
go home eventually - an idea
he
later refuted. Weeks later, Dax's former host Curzon talked him into remaining
joined permanently during
Jadzia's
zhian'tara, but he apologized later after she persuaded Curzon to give
it up.
As
mere shapeshifting wore thin for him, he disagreed with his onetime female
mentor Changeling that what
he's
lived his life for is not justice but "order." Through several more attempts
to woo him over, he later
became
the first changeling to ever harm another when scuffling with an infiltrator
aboard the U.S.S. Defiant.
Previously,
even as a security officer he had never taken a life or used any kind of
weapon other than his
own
body.
Not
surprisingly, he hates parties and socializing, although after the attitude
change that came with his
newfound
identity and independence in 2371 he began to practice morphing a draining
drink glass merely to
do
just that - with Kira at their former weekly security reports review, and
for breakfasts with Garak. Seeing
no
good in humanoids' need for material gain, he has never learned the rules
to dabo - though he once
played
Kalevian Montar with Gul Dukat. He's taken to reading Terran police mysteries,
including some
borrowed
from O'Brien; the chief had also talked him into joining him twice for
holosuite kayaking by
late
2371, ca. SD 48521.
As
a changeling who chooses to retain solid form most of the time, he must
return to his gelatinous natural
state
every 16 hours of the 26-hour Bajoran day to regenerate, and appears to
need no more than an hour's
rest;
the cycle rarely varies, and he feels no need to stay gelatinous any longer
than needed. He originally
poured
himself into a bucket kept in the back of his office to regenerate until
discovering his true roots,
and
so now uses formal quarters filled with a wide array of forms and textures
to explore his shapeshifter
nature,
opting to mimic anything or regenerate in a puddle anywhere he chooses
with his newfound privacy.
The
bucket became a pot for Kira's housewarming gift , a house plant. Except
for Dr. Pol, he says no one
until
Lwaxana Troi, circa SD 46925, had seen him in his transitional form, but
others followed as DS missions
mounted.
Verad's gang forced him into gelatinous-state confinement in a small stasis
box secured with
a
Delgorian lock.
In
their mutual mistrust he and Quark have a running duel of wits, and he
has even been forced to turn to him
in
a pinch, but they actually respect each other and have betrayed some affection
for the other at times. He
stops
by Quark's three or four times a day usually, but keeps a full-time watch
during the Gratitude Festival.
Constable
Odo has an unexpressed and unrequited love for Kira - after years of proclaiming
humanoid love
as
among the qualities he can't fathom, and feigned shock at Bolian Lysia
Arlin's onetime crush on him,
and
even Lwaxana Troi's ongoing infatuation which they ended with an affectionate
understanding. Kira
often
turns to him for counsel, is a staunch defender and affectionate friend,
but she has never guessed
his
true feelings toward her. He took off work for the first time ever to see
her during the Gratitude Festival
of
2371, as his Bajoran deputies do, and left it with Starfleet security -
but he has quietly stepped aside,
first
for Vedek Bareil and now First Minister Shakaar. I suppose that's the reason
for the end of their weekly
review
of Security Activity Reports.
update, cmo J.Holzken
On
a sad note, the constable had a hard time admitting his sense of loss in
mourning for the baby Founder,
but
on the other hand the event helped seal a rift like no other between he
and Dr. Mora as Odo experienced
what
it was like to check out an infant, lifeless Changeling baby. Ironically,
Odo had mentioned only weeks
before
that child-rearing would require too much work and thus he wouldn't be
any good at it.
However,
it was his conversion to a Solid that led to Odo's Great Link image of
Gowron as a changeling,
and
the subsequent and extremely dangerous covert action to check this theory:
an operation that ended
with
Odo fingering Martok as the Changeling and Gowron the latest to gain a
healthy respect for his abilities.
Despite
Starfleet's many reservation over the years, it is with a good deal of
irony that I witnessed Michael
Eddington,
Odo's onetime replacement, hunted and captured as a Maquis.
And
then there is the strange case of appending Ambassador Lwaxana Troi to
this file. An old embarrassment
to
Odo, he agreed to marry her late last year so she would not have to give
up her unborn son to its father,
as
per Tavnian custom and law. This to me is surprising, as I observe how
he continues to dismiss many
female
admirers such as Bajoran restaurateur Chalan Aroyo.
This
may be only exceeded by what Quark swears to me is Odo's dallying with
romance novels of the
20th
century -- which he dismisses as criminal profile research.