Biographical Data:Psycho-Medical Profile, Medical File Extract:
Report of Chief Medical Officer Julian Bashir, M.D.
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 realised 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 Julian Bashir, M.D.
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.
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