 Quick Facts:
- Position:
Security chief, Bajoran Militia, DS9 detachment
- Rank: Constable
- Species:
Founder/Changeling
- Given Name:
Odo'ital
- Date of birth:
Discovered ca. 2337 in Denorious Belt, Bajoran system
- Place of birth:
Founders Homeworld
- Education:
Bajoran Institute for Science, as specimen: 2356-63
- Office:
Security Office, Promenade
- First Seen:
"Emissary" (DS9)
- Current Status:
Founder homeworld
Complete Bios:
FROM
STARTREK.COM
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 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 that was 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.
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