Matthew's Star Trek Page

Rene Auberjonois- Odo

Played By: Rene Auberjonois
Position: Security chief, Bajoran Militia, DS9 detachment
Species: Founder Changeling
Given Name: Odo'ital
Date of birth: Discovered ca. 2337 in Denorious Belt, Bajoran system
Place of birth: Founders Homeworld, Dominion, Gamma Quadrant
Education: Bajoran Institute for Science, as specimen: 2356-63
Office: Security Office, Promenade

Psycho-Medical Profile, Medical File Extract: Report of Chief Medical Officer Julian Bashir, M.D. (acting in counselor's capacity) Bajoran Central Archives File appended

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.

ADD TO FILE: Odo REPORT BY: --- REPORT ENTERED: Quark's Place, Promenade, DS9

This addendum may only be viewed for a price.

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.

That's it, for the record.

Psycho-Medical Profile, Medical File Extract: CMO J. Bashir, M.D. (acting in counselor's capacity)

I update this file noting that, having been punished by his own people during his first and only time in the Great Link, Odo began this year as a Solid (with type O-negative blood) and now, after enduring the further trauma of losing a child of his own kind, is back to his old self. And it's just as well: I do not know how much longer we could put up with the poor constable experimenting with food, beverages, and even worse forgetting his mortal limits and injuring himself. While I do not fully understand the mechanics of this process, I have identified several strains of morphogenic particles which are a trademark of cellular metamorphosis, and we received many more insights from his short-lived "baby" Changeling.

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.